American Made Knot

I have two overt things on my mind.  I just forgot one, but certainly that will be at the pleasure of Big Brother.  He doesn't want you to remember, but human memory is indispensable.  Since I can't remember either thing, I will contribute, "Flying Under the Radar."  With a quick Google search the information readily is available about aircraft positioning.  I was curious about terrestrial radar and discovered rotating radar units at airports tasked with providing plane positions to air traffic controllers for about a perimeter of sixty miles.  This data is upon what they rely to control incoming and outgoing air traffic at our airports.  We don't want any collisions.  There is in interesting Hollywood film about this subject starring Billy Bob Thornton and John Cusack.  "Pushing Tin" humorously shows us the lives of two men working in this profession.  I hear planes, and yet they are not showing up on the Flightaware website.  No biggie.  The military practices "Flying Under the Radar."  When I am driving our Toyota Sienna van down Bragg Boulevard in the middle of the day and look over my shoulder, the only explanation for what I see is "Flying Under the Radar."  Over my left shoulder just above the tree tops is a massive jet.  I'll repeat.  "Just above the tree tops."  This image evidently is ensconced in my human memory, and never will it go away.  People's memories and their emotional experiences are a core component of who they are.  Although I reached a juncture in my life where I was forced to leave the past behind, eventually these memories and lessons of life will return.  You will have a different filter engaged, and that is a good thing.  Terrible things do happen for inexplicable reasons.  Depression is one of them.  When it hits you the first time this pain is inexplicable.  It is pain that is real, because most everything in your daily life has been put asunder.  Your immediate environment has disintegrated, and you have no day to day infrastructure.  You have no immediate plans for your future.  This is a daunting and disturbing scenario.  Slaves in America learned to improvise for a similar reason.  There are portions of our life that are based upon infrastructure.  It might be our younger years are the most dependent, because spirituality that could carry us through a drastic loss has not yet been developed.  When we are young still we have things to accomplish, and perhaps we are not yet comfortable with ourselves and our achievements.  We have more to give.  Improvisation, or making the best of your situation, is a useful tool.  Also it could be described as multitasking over the long haul.  These things are not about what I wanted to write this evening.  Oh yes.  One question I have is, "Who was buying the drugs from Barry Seal?"  In the film "American Made" Tom Cruise plays professional pilot Barry Seal who was one of the most prolific drug runners in American history.  He didn't produce the drugs, but he did distribute them from the manufacturer to the retailer.  He smuggled these drugs into America through the Gulf of Mexico flying, "Below the Radar."  It you flew your plane at a particularly low altitude, you were not visible to the airport network radar system.  RASN.  Radar airport system network.  I am making up my own acronym.  I read about this system last night, and it is in transition to a GPS-based network.  Space borne satellites it would seem have become a more reliable source of aircraft positioning.  I believe that traditional RADAR is being replaced with data sent in the microwave frequency.  Microwaves.  Since past President Bill Clinton solely is responsible for the entire cell phone industry (which has become wireless communications) and a major component of the American economy, let's thank him for this transition.  Are microwaves better than RADAR?  I need to Google what the frequency of radar is, because RADAR is a standing electromagnetic wave.  I would say initially not having a standing electromagnetic wave in my garage is positive.  The source of these standing waves is nebulous, and because lower frequencies modulate higher frequencies and also carry other frequencies, I overtly prefer not to have standing waves in my garage.  Do microwaves stand?  I do not know the answer to that question, and I am not going to Google the frequency of RADAR.  Adding junk to space seems threatening to Earth's delicate ecological balance.  We may not know it, but rocketing into and out of space continually cannot be good for the atmosphere.  I heard on the news tonight that algae converts CO2 to oxygen, but algae sheets kill bodies of water.  They were making something similar to green beer with algae, but they were using algae in a positive way.  The green substance that grows on my driveway, on my patio, and all in my centipede grass has become invasive.  Today I burned much of it, and consequently I have little grass left.  So be it.  Grass will grow back.  The "Green Gungee" needs to stay away as does the black biofilm that also appeared on our driveway.  The Jefferson Memorial dome in Washington, DC was beset with a similar problem.  It's white marble dome turned black and slimy.  They deduced that the substances on the dome were a combination of bacterial, fungus, and algae.  Biofilm.  This biofilm is what was growing on my patio and my driveway.  Oh DeJoy!  The price quoted for cleaning the Jefferson Memorial with lasers is tens of millions of dollars.  I pressure washed mine, and it is working for the moment.  They said, "Increased traffic at Reagan International Airport" may be a contributor to this unwanted phenomenon.  Aircraft have made it a habit since 2011 of flying directly above our neighborhood.  Ask the residents of Boulder how they feel about this.  One of Donald Trump's appointed federal judges threw the case out on a whim.  It was reported he did not even know the specifics of the case, that the exact moment the Coronavirus appeared in March was the month that air traffic changed in Colorado allowing commercial jet to fly directly above people's homes in neighborhoods.  It would be easy to say they dropped the bomb and got the hell out of dodge, if you were a conspiracy kind of person.  It is disconcerting having mostly unregulated air traffic free to fly wherever they please.  Yes, they file rough flight plans, but often the destination is blank.  Dejoy riding I would say.  What I do know is everyday I peruse the Flightaware websight a new batch of small private planes run amuck over our homes.  I have become familiar with some of these recurring aircraft, and one is the Sanderson Farms Gulfstream jet.  Amazon sends FENIX over our neighborhood at 1:30 a.m.  LabCorp flies its high tech expensive fleet of planes to ferry lab data and results to and from Washington, DC and other places.  The planes freely that fly from south Florida to RDU at all hours of the morning?  Who was buying the drugs carried by Barry Seal?  Evidently he was rolling in the cash in the millions, and chartered quite a few financial institutions in Alabama to hold his money.  (or they became chartered for him with his money)  Whence did this money come?  Who in the United States had the economic means to spend millions of dollars buying and distributing these drugs?  We don't yet know the answer to this question.  I would say the PSA Airlines "Blue Streak" jet I hear right now at one in the morning flying from Charlotte to Jacksonville probably has something to do with Camp Lejeune.  (that sounds French)  I guess those Marine officers are flying commercial.  This, of course, only is speculation.  The other helicopter I hear does not appear.  What does any of this mean?  I don't really know, except for America is very fickle and very hypocritical in her thinking, and the Republican Party and its minions are very selective in the freedoms they choose to legislate.  Many of the freedoms of the American citizen slowly are being legislated away, and in their place corporate America has begun to run amuck.  I don't feel it is appropriate for commercial jet traffic to be able to fly directly above my house, when previously this did not happen.  The flight paths were changed by a corrupt or rather persuaded or lobbied Federal Aviation Administration that like the EPA and many other government agencies no longer adhere to their mission statements of protecting the American people.  Instead they have become tools of the Far Alt Right devised by those sympathetic with Roger Ailes and Fox news.  In a nutshell this hostile takeover of America is Communism, and I an unhappy to say the evening national news on television has become nothing more than childish giberish.  "Get your vaccine!"  "A new variant."  "The end is coming."  "No Christmas for you."  Meanwhile Fauci is laughing all the way to the bank.  

God's Drug Dealers

In our modern world in recent years many ways have evolved to be able to sell drugs.  Once and traditionally the medical profession was ethical.  (or was it?)  I am too young to know the answer to that question.  I am not quite a Baby Boomer.  Born in 1962 I fall in the cracks of American culture.  Ideally, if I got to choose, I would live in the early part of the 20th century.  There was so much going on in the 1920's, "The Jazz Age," and it was progressive.  Expressionism was in its infancy with urgency from the Second Viennese School.  To this day the music of Alban Berg and Anton Webern under the tutelage of Arnold Schoenberg forged a new era of human consciousness.  It is unfortunate America will not recognize this transformation.  If you asked the average American what they would like to hear for music, it is unlikely they would say, "An Elliot Carter string quartet."  Maybe they would listen to George Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess," but music in America no longer traverses boundaries.  We have become more compartmentalized if anything.  Pop/Country has been our mainstream music for several decades, and now it would seem Disney has invaded Drum Corp International.  I am contradicting myself.  If there are more ways to sell drugs in America, isn't that diversity?  Opportunity has changed, and this is the concept.  The internet has changed America more than any one thing I can think of, and it is because of our Capitalist system.  Jeff Bezos figured this out quickly, but had to work diligently for a long time to become the richest man in the world.  I would say the internet has become lucrative, but is this economic opportunity available to everyone?  I would say, "No."  That is because the internet is not regulated, as it should be.  If the most money in the world has been made from selling goods on the internet, then logically this system must be regulated.  Without appropriate oversight it is now.  There is a dark web, and murderous illicit drugs are being imported covertly from Mexico and China.  Pot is being transported through the U.S. Mail.  Regulation in America has flown out the window, and it is the crux of our problems.  I am tired of preaching that you can't keep all the money.  For Capitalism to work the money has to flow through the social classes.  Everyone needs to make money to be able to spend it, and that has not been happening.  The three ways of selling drugs are not an exact metaphor for our devolution in regulation.  Perhaps they are.  The Sackler family successfully pitched their product through a legitimate pharmaceutical company.  It was a far reaching, illegal, and immoral campaign of making money while turning Americans into useless and often dead junkies.  Oversight was a problem.  The other way is to deal drugs from the street corner, and perhaps if there is a respected way to sell illicit drugs, this is it.  The convenience of unregulated internet commerce has facilitated this ill.  That you can log onto the "dark web" and order drugs from China is a disservice to America.  It also is a disservice to allow common citizens to own criminal assault weapons.  The right to bear arms if fundamental in the Constitution, and staunchly I support this.  A long rifle, a shotgun, and a pistol are enough to ensure the sanctity of your home.  These armaments should be accompanied by an appropriate training course.  We do not let our children drive without training, although Driver's Ed is a shadow of its former self.  It is a worthy metaphor for the change in American insensibility.  How can we let our children drive a dangerous metal projectile capable of mass murder while looking at a smartphone screen?  It is unconscionable.  There should be a federal law prohibiting such activity.  Both hands on the wheel, and eyes on the road always.  Human life is worth this commitment.  We still let it happen.  If if guy can get the product and risks his life hawking it on the street, perhaps he deserves the monetary reward.  The Sackler Family used a well respected institution in the medical establishment to sell their drugs.  Perhaps they are the biggest instigators of white collar crime, the minions of Satan.  They killed hundreds of thousands of people like DuPont, and yet they walk free.  This is America.  In between the corrupt pharmaceutical company and the street corner drug dealer is the active duty military smuggler.  Most likely they are supplying some of the street corner product, but not most of it.  They are operating in a different theater of education and legitimacy.  Exploiting the military isn't that different from exploiting our medical establishment.  It is not as evil, but it is scourge.  We once were indoctrinated to respect the United States military, and perhaps at certain points it merited this respect of patriotism.  Veterans of the World Wars were heroes.  Like America the military has changed.  We are yet to discover and understand America's "Second Cold War."  What we do know if that the American military initiative absolutely failed in their mission in Afghanistan because of the defense industry.  It is simple and grassroots.  Patriotism is blood.  It is not big business, corporate America, or government.  To survive and defend a nation it takes blood, sweat, and tears, not Black Hawk helicopters.  We erroneously pitched this snake oil as practical and effective nation building.  Instead of trying to understand the Afghani people and their culture, we tried to superimpose American democracy.  They were very happy to continue to cloak themselves in dessert savvy attire and don an assault weapon on the streets like drug dealers.  They enjoyed this aspect of the job more the white collar crime.  The dollar was not the ultimate desire.  They are attracted to a lifestyle not contingent upon mass wealth.  Instead they could get by with a lifestyle that offered them blood, sweat, and tears.  America has become the land of posers, and posers sit on the couch attempting to move money around at their leisure.  All of us to some extent have been sitting on the couch cloistered at home during the Coronavirus outbreak.  Necessarily I have not dug in the dirt, planted flowers, or tilled the earth for fear of infecting myself with bacteria or fungi.  It would seem these substances are everywhere including our own bodies, but a compromised immune system allows them to overpopulate and thrive.  Doing these things, like most things we do as enlightened human beings, is symbolic.  Our actions and habits always may not have direct results, but they represent appropriate human behavior always.  Even if you are depressed or disabled, healthy daily habits will sustain you.  If you can't manage to form a coherent thought or solve a problem, always you can mow the grass.  You can plant a vegetable.  You can water the flowers.  You can prepare a meal. (if you know how)  Our actions really are symbolic, and being such we must understand that.  God's kingdom is the same.  Our worship of Him and our prayers are fomenting our future relationship with Him.  My roommate on a ship once said to me, "When you get to the Pearly Gates, why should God let you in?"  We may believe God knows all, and hence he knows us and our lives, but using human interaction as a model politics is the ensurer of security.  If you think the job will come to you without diligent politicking, think again.  You have to make it happen, and that occurs through people.  God is no different.  You and He will benefit from your communication.  

The Demise of the Havana Satellite

I am becoming convinced the news no longer is unbiased.  Congress has been irresponsible in many ways bowing to the desires of big business.  The corporate lobby machine has grown strong and rich.  Free flowing money in Washington has been effective swaying the morality of our federal lawmakers.  America has spun 180 degrees, and a nation that once was a pinnacle of hope and opportunity has become murderous and oppressive.  I have a handful of issues that merit class action lawsuits against corporations, agencies, and politicians.  It is intertwined, and it is a bit daunting.  I have no fear, because I don't have much to lose.  I live each day thinking murderous thugs may visit my home.  It is not a bad way to live, with extreme caution.  What has caused this trepidation with life?  The answer would be a deadly man made pandemic of which we do not yet know the source.  I am not becoming convinced; I all ready am convinced Covid was conceived, manufactured, and distributed by man.  Most likely the traitors in Washington DC are included in this conspiracy.  Socialism is not the enemy, and no matter how pundits continue to shout this word, never will accept that socialism in any way threatens America.  What threatens America is Communism, and it does not take a genius to discern this.  Freedom in America once was personified by swing.  Most don't know what swing it, but it can be explained in a myriad of ways.  Swingers are married couples who choose to dabble in infidelity.  That is not a great ethical choice, but freedom in America allows married adults to choose this lifestyle.  Also they can choose to experience pornography if they so wish.  You can also choose not to experience it.  Freedom in America means you have these choices, and our government should not be tasked with legislating morality.  Unfortunately they are; they are because America has tried to eliminate God from her consciousness.  The lessons of God documented in the Bible are the crux of human behavior, or they once were.  Now America has become free range, and human behavior has devolved.  The Current Conditions of America succinctly demonstrate human beings no longer are capable of honing their own moral consciences.  We have lost touch with right and wrong and good and evil.  The Trump regime actively and effectively has disguised these choices, and their appropriate God like responses.  Once it was human emotion that drove these responses.  The human organism was instrumental in constructing moral behavior through involuntary emotional responses.  How we felt about things was a part of our understanding of situations.  Past President Barack Obama wrote in his book that Mitch McConnell was surprising to him, because he was able to legislate with almost zero moral conscience.  It doesn't matter to him what is right or wrong or good or bad.  He operates with emotional impunity seeking only to provide fortune for himself.  A Chinese related shipping company certainly would prove lucrative in a global supply crisis.  Consequently the price for shipping a metal container from China to the U.S. has risen to twenty thousand dollars a pop.  That is worthy profit.  We know Washington has been operating with little moral conscience, and consequently American democracy has been threatened.  It would seem freedom and personal profit are not related at least in their perspective.  The reality of the success of American democracy is it manifests itself within the people, and the majority of these people are middle class.  Inspiration to become middle class also is a large component of American freedom and Capitalism.  Hoarding American wealth, although not visibly connected with the military, is Communistic.  Hoarding wealth, denying economic opportunity, and oppressing the populace further personify Communism.  Militarism and lack of personal freedom disguise democracy.  I will not go so far to say the United States military has become Communist, but if such a movement was implemented the military would be a starting point.  Dictatorship and accompanying federal armies represent Communism.  Luckily the Chairman of the Joints Chief of Staff was lucid enough to see through the cloudy murk of Donald Trump.  What people don't understand is how well thought out and devised his plan was.  This afternoon I heard from family members a theory that had not occurred to me.  The paper trail of Trump's conspiracy became concrete evidence as he filed lawsuit after lawsuit trying to overturn the presidential election legally.  He knew all of the inroads of the American legal system to be able to challenge our election system.  Luckily most of them were both absurd and false.  Still he knew every single method of trying to influence an election.  Part of his plan with this concrete knowledge was to blame the Democrats for what he had done.  I don't feel the Democrats had any inclinations to try and usurp the American legal system.  Instead they won the election the right way, and that meant the serious implementation of political science.  They won the election with activism, diligent work, and spirit.  The words I heard this afternoon was, "Trump stole the election from Hillary."  I thought back on how Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by a large margin, and how surprised the entire country was when Donald Trump was announced the victor.  What the fuck happened?  The answer is all of Trump's devices for influencing an election all ready had been implemented without our knowledge.  We only saw them come to visibility in 2020, when he lost and tried to overturn the result.  The Republicans all ready had used these techniques to influence state governments, their elected officials, and civil employees.  This political savvy was based upon an in depth knowledge of American law and election policies, and yet winning an election with obscure facts isn't American.  It is corporate.  It lacks spirit and moral conscience.  It is articulate and informed, but it is spineless and weak.  America never was based upon anything spineless and weak.  America has been based upon sweat, muscle, blood, spirit, and religious allegiance.  The Republican operation isn't American in any way.  It is Communist and to a degree fascist, and we as a nation must realize there are millions of adherents to this governmental doctrine.  The Trump movement successfully has mobilized these supporters, invigorated them, and used them for his success.  The problem is there are not enlightened enough to understand for what they represent.  In ways it has been like a cult.  The results of cultism are well known, and often they result in mass murder.  On a side note if a Russian satellite was blown out of space by a military strike endangering those ensconced in the International Space Station, then that satellite was of major importance in international relations.  I think it is a good place to look for the source of the Havana Syndrome, and hopefully it has been blown out of the sky.  

The Survival of American Democracy

It's all a bit much to absorb, this assault on our democracy. I knew it was coming, and I have been writing about if for several years.  I have said my generation has been lucky not have have experienced war on the level of America's previous wars.  As I look back at history it reveals itself that war is the soul of the nation.  Is this a tragedy?  Is it correct that the Civil War gives us the proper perspective for our current lives?  This is the issue I believe that is upon us.  Black Lives Matter seems to be the metaphor for the atrocity of slavery.  George Floyd in my humble opinion was not the appropriate martyr.  A convicted recurring criminal isn't martyr material, but he didn't deserve to die the way he did.  It is appropriate that police brutality was exposed, but America's response to it has been problematic.  The statement "Defund the police" absolutely was the wrong answer.  While policing in America originally was implemented to handle aberrant slaves, certainly in other nations it is there to ensure public safety.  Whether you are threatened by roaming black men is your own issue, but policing it has proven is necessary in America.  Lack of an appropriate police presence, or more specifically the diligent enforcement of our current laws, is responsible for increased violence.  America has ridden the roller coaster of policing.  There was the bill that resulted in "Stop and frisk" in New York.  It is apparent there is racial bias in American policing, but a few bad apples do not represent the entirety of the American police force.  We have come to understand the success or failure of most American values is determined by state government.  States have regressed in their ability to handle these responsibilities.  Increased partisan separation has proven divisive to our populace.  Most of this lack of solidarity arose with the election of Donald Trump.  He proved to be root of the division of America.  It must be considered that eight years of America's first black president instigated the election of Mr. Trump.  Without such a divisive president spending four years inciting hostility and division, it is possible America would not be where she is.  The damage has been done, and now we are attempting to clean up his mess.  Were these sentiments simmering under the surface?  I don't think so, because I don't recall any of these problems during Barack Obama's presidency.  There were issues, but we were not on the cusp of a civil or revolutionary war.  All of it can be represented by an all out war on democracy.  We are battling Communism.  The Cold War never ended, it just moved to Afghanistan.  A lawless society who does not enforce her policies is a metaphor for revolution.  In the case of America the revolution is not one fighting for freedom.  It is a fight for the rich to take and maintain control of a formerly free and self-ruled Republic.  The current flock of Americans sadly is not capable of understanding and governing themselves.  This has set the stage for this Communist siege.  There are many examples of this struggle, and whether America's democracy will sustain is yet to be seen.  The examples around the globe are not positive.  To sustain and promulgate a successful democracy, intelligence is needed.  This is the one thing America lacks, and it is lacking because of the neglect of our youth.  Public education once was the system that ensured America's democracy would continue.  This is why we felt so strongly about educating our children.  We are investing in America's future, because no one lives forever.  It was irresponsible to preen a narcissistic society, and this movement was led by Donald Trump.  I choose to now define this movement as heretical.  The Spanish Inquisition comes to mind as do the Salem Witch Trials.  The crux of this movement is the good guys become persecuted.  The best example of this behavior is the persecution of Jesus Christ.  Christians and Jews always have been falsely persecuted as evil.  In fact they are the good guys.  No good deed goes unpunished.  We are at war, and it is a religious war.  Like most things now they go mislabeled, unreported, and misunderstood.  Modern media is doing a poor job of maintaining American clarity.  We are in an active trend of cancel culture, because many of our issues have happened and been dealt with before.  Recently I have tried to find examples of models of American behavior concerning our issues.  I have to travel back in time to do so.  We have little today to represent successful solidarity.  Instead we are wallowing in confusion, anger, resulting violence, and eventually revolution.  The problem is the revolution is for Communism.  The faction active in America today are Communists.  Until we recognize, understand, and respond to this threat America's democracy will not survive.  

Ruminations and Reindeer Games

 Lester righted himself.  On the national news night before last, Lester Holt opened his broadcast with the statement, "Gas prices are the highest they have been in seven years."  (not thirty like he said previously)  Since Facebook news reporting has devolved.  The intimacy and immediacy of the internet has usurped television, radio, and to an extent film.  Without realizing, but with Roger Ailes' Fox News as a model, social media posts have become our news.  This has posed a serious threat to broadcast news.  (not that it has been all that popular anyway)  How many Americans watch the television news at six?  The millennial generation was reared with social media, and streaming has become the communication of choice.  Wireless internet technology has pushed this trend.  Wireless communications are America's overt economy.  It is sad.  Traditional American habits slowly have been dismantled by an unregulated, antagonist, power seeking rogue.  Facebook wants to rebrand it "Meta."  Time/Warner successfully rebranded itself "Spectrum," and a few years later we have forgotten who Time/Warner is.  Our traditional news sources have failed to keep us informed, or rather they don't have the revenue to do their jobs.  Television and radio stations are expensive, and once it was advertising that paid the bills.  Now Google is paying the bills, and FB signed on selling online advertising in an unregulated forum.  January 6th could be the amalgam of these disparate tenets of modern American society congealing in a civil protest gone wrong.  Unfortunately the internet must be regulated like television and radio, but deregulation has become the American way.  We have allowed the internet her adolescence, and she has proven to be a more pleasing and easy way to shop.  Shopping from home on the internet is almost immediate gratification, and brick and mortar stores cannot keep up.  They cannot keep up, because what has become a communist/socialist methodology has proven its value.  Without a crystal clear mission statement, ideology, and philosophy American Capitalism is untenable.  Without people and freedom, it is not possible.  Someone is trying to kill the people, but unlike science fiction plot lines I don't think A.I. is going to evolve and take the place of man.  It may be fun to speculate, but it won't happen.  All of this aside I want to talk about music.  Music no longer is much to America, because people and freedom also are necessary.  Our opportunity to create rich, pleasing, humanistic music has been quelled by a proliferation of environmental pollution.  Our addiction to the second box, the PC, has sealed this fate.  The lure of digital music has proven too strong for youth with empty pockets.  The flaw of this product is far reaching.  Digital music necessarily only is a shadow of its original counterpart.  Human produced musical sound, whether from a recording studio or a garage is democratic, human, and liberating.  It is a metaphor for the American way.  Digital music is a shallow icon.  Digital music does not represent these necessary components.  Imagine sounds coming from a minute hard disc as compared with sounds coming from an organic, feeling, living, and thinking organism.  Algorithms can try to model human life, but they will fail.  When we begin to realize the beauty and integrity of a wooden handcrafted violin as opposed to a plastic comb, we will understand.  Digital music is a vague and inhuman representation of our souls.  As such was have lost touch with them.  Science is indispensable explaining human life, and yet quackery is the new normal.  When Capitalism fails braced with Christianity, thieves and beggars thrive spewing outright lies.  There are tangible reasons why the human vessel is powerful, but when you deny its attributes in favor of quackery all will perish.  It is easy to summarize this fall, and I can do it with a selfish metaphor.  If you live in the internet on a wireless device, you do not have to battle these demons.  It is easier.  To hold onto human reality we must fight.  America is at war, and each day we rise from sleep we must hit the ring fighting.  Simply I only want to make human music in my garage.  I won't use a PC.  I won't use the internet.  I won't use wireless technology.  I will use electricity, mechanics, and acoustics.  For these processes I need air, wire, wood, and metal.  For most of humanity these things have sufficed.  They will continue to suffice when we realize the limitations of the cyber realm.  The "Meta" realm.  It may be fun to speculate in science fiction, but it will not serve the human race.  What has served the human race since her inception by God will continue to serve the human race.  How has quackery infringed upon my freedoms?  I am in my garage, and I am restoring a vintage instrument.  It is made of wood, metal, and other organic compounds.  For it to operate in all of its beauty, simply it needs to resonate.  It needs to vibrate openly and freely, unfettered from the constrictions of man.  Yet this process severely is impeded.  This simple premise of unfettered resonance has become the ultimate challenge of today.  Quackery seeks to quash our ability to resonate.  It wants to oppress our spirit, our ideas, and our feelings.  It would rather us seek substitute anodynes in the internet.  It infinitely is more challenging to live in this world than in a PC, because the earth needs tending.  It is dependent on man for its upkeep.  If man were to cease to exist, could and would the Earth sustain?  I think the answer is yes, except when fire rains down from the heavens and rises from the depths of the oceans.  This is what is prophesied in the Bible with the second coming of Jesus Christ.  Those who accept Christ will be saved, and the rest will be left to fight in this fiery inferno until the end of the world.  I want my Rhodes piano to resonate.  I want its tine and tone bars to vibrate freely with the energy of the universe and transform my soul with its great healing power.  Instead this vibration is tamped down each day by the shallow processes of quackery.  My spiritual freedom, my right to resonate freely within my own precepts is infringed upon by corporate America and the military industrial complex.  The fighting machine has chosen to use the tenets of humanity to arm itself.  It sits ominously lurking on the battlefield, listening and waiting to strike.  To escape its blow I must be quiet.  I cannot invigorate my soul with human resonance, because this resonance now is targeted as the enemy.  We have become so desperate and so lazy, we would rather watch the fight on closed circuit television.  We police with cameras on poles, sensors in the field, and satellites in the sky.  We are too lazy to extemporize the fight in humanity.  We are so shallow sons-of-bitches.  

The New National News Propaganda Train

We, like the rest of what really is fake news, are supposed to stomach the now churning machine of Big Brother.  It makes me sick to my stomach, the lies that are showing up on the national television news.  Gas prices have risen fifty percent.  Lie.  The Cold War with Russia is heating up.  Lie.  Sure, Putin shoots down a satellite and spreads a debris field all through space endangering the lives of all ensconced in the International Space Station.  Not smart, but that satellite must have been significant, significant enough to risk the lives of two Russians.  Putin is not very smart.  During the George W. Bush presidency, a mere pawn of his family's oil cartel, gas prices if anyone cares to remember approached $4.50 a gallon.  Gas prices have not risen 50%.  The New Cold War, of course of which we need to keep defense companies rich, is Russia.  As soon as the twenty year Second Cold War ends in Afghanistan, let's turn up the heat on Russia.  The threat is from China, and we all know it.  I don't want to see images of more new cutting edge multi-billion dollar aircraft to suck the life blood from the American people and promulgate the war economy.  We don't know how to do anything else it would seem.  Manufacturing no longer is important to America.  We shipped most of it to Asia.  Furniture.  Agriculture.  Appliances.  Products which appeal to human beings living on the level can't rival the predictions, the futures, the science fiction of speculation for Wall Street.  It is fantasy.  We will never get to Mars, because we will destroy the human race and the planet first.  They will keep pedaling that fiction, because it generates revenu.  It is far more difficult to live in reality growing food, providing shelter, and caring for sick people.  Instead we in the great science fiction must create a deadly pathogen and then peddle our pills to miraculously cure it.  It is sickening the current Conditions of America.  It is embarrassing.  I guess Anthony Bourdain decided the same thing, and he moved on.  We can only wish his greener pastures were in heaven.  God does not smile on suicide.  When faced with this social and economic landscape, it is understandable why the majority live in a cyber dream.  Reality is too bleak.  

Trains in the Membrane

Time for a bit of clarification.   The mission statement of the rail industry, namely CSX-T (before its CEO changed the name to CSX) was to put the trucking industry out of business.  Their propaganda of green was that rail burns exponentially less fuel to haul the same amount of freight.  They pitched this fervently, and with it came the predictable bubble of stock.  Money today is all about futures, venture capital, or speculation to drive up stock prices.  None of it anymore is based on actual revenue.  Wall Street has been moving money around for two decades, while no products get made in the United States.  CSX has made a mint under the tutelage of its inventor, John Snow.  He sold the company, was Secretary of the Treasury for a bit, and then passed on.  CSX has continued to be lucrative paying dividends to its shareholders.  In the news today the skinny was America needs 80,000 more truck drivers, and truck drivers are tired of carrying America on their back.  My question is simple.  What are the railroads hauling?  We know coal is a major commodity, and although burning coal is a menace to the environment until we can tool a better model it will stay.  Joe Manchin says so.  Nuclear energy was the best and most efficient provider of energy, but man was not responsible enough to manage it.  Human error caused the Three Mile Island incident and Chernobyl.  Hydro-electric power was an effective provider of energy as proven by the Tennessee Valley Authority.  Corporate conglomerates control the world, and they are proven not to be ethical.  With this backlog of cargo sitting on ships in the ocean, and with truck driver whining about employment, the question again must be asked.  What is rail hauling?  Another answer is mail and packages.  The industry is anything but transparent.  We no little of what they do, and they are unregulated.  They do whatever they want.  My purpose with this blog entry was to explain their widespread and far reaching pollution.  It is massive, and quietly again I will say the majority of the problems manifesting themselves in the world today are from the rail industry.  Choo Choo!  How can the sentimental Iron Horse be such a nemesis?  It is because the rail industry no longer is what it once was.  The era of steam is long gone, and it has been replaced with a kind of energy most don't understand.  We fiercely want to think rail is still the liberator of man carrying hobo's across the country while they sing the blues.  The Iron Horse, or more specifically the steam engine, was and still is an American icon.  Rail today is something completely different.  It is not sentimental.  It is not friendly to the public, and it is there to earn as much revenue as possible.  It does not care about America or her people.  It wishes only to make money any way it can.  With that mission statement, and the goal of annihilating the trucking industry rail has made a comeback and now dictates the dynamic of the planet.  We live our lives around diesel freight trains, not the other way around.  DC traction was the traditional fare for railroads, but GE and GM both introduced a new thing around 1990.  Elon Musk has built a large part of his wealth using the exact same technology.  This breakthrough has proven lucrative, and that is why no one will say it could be detrimental to the planet and to humanity.  It is, and more specifically it is the AC component of AC Traction that is causing problems.  The populace today doesn't care what an electromagnetic wave is.  They only care if their 5G signal is reaching their phones.  The ramifications of the misuse of electromagnetic waves is far reaching.  It is very simple if anyone wanted to understand.  Vibration, magnetism, heat, and electricity are not a good combination for man.  These four things when combined can cause human cells to break down and mutate into cancer.  We have known this for decades, since the inception of radio.  It only was recently that Bill Clinton chose to play God and deny physics.  He made the decision openly to auction dangerous frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum.  No one batted and eye, and now we are addicted to smart phones.  No human being should be in a vehicle without both hands free and on the steering wheel.  America allows her youth to text, surf, and post while driving in the most irresponsible oversight of public health in recent history.  It should be a felony offense, when you are driving a four thousand pound metal projectile at fifty miles an hour.  The potential for fatality is great, and yet America lets this happen.  It is no surprise we won't understand that the rail industry is responsible for the majority of the world's problems, and it is from electric and acoustic radiation.  "Standing" electromagnetic waves are the most offensive.  Today in the middle of the afternoon, a miscellaneous jet flew over our house fifteen seconds after I walked outside.  When I came back inside the cable boxes were resetting, and the thermostat for our HVAC system was blank.  This nefarious plane zapped our house with its radiation either purposefully or as a byproduct of its pollution.  There is no question in my mind, and I have been complaining about these jets since Trump became president.  There is too much conspiracy to voice.  It is overwhelming.  The predictions are coming to fruition.  This electronic age is killing us and the earth.  Watch a standing electromagnetic wave or just low frequency alternating current manifest itself in your home, on the power grid, or in your devices.  Listen to infrasound muddy your music and make you irritable.  Try to understand why cancer has escalated.  Above all try to understand the violence prevalent in America.  Why are ordinary people driven to murder and suicide?  It is because we are being infected with electrical radiation.  Vibration, magnetism, electricity, and heat are no partner for the human organism, and until we understand that humans must run this planet instead of locomotives, we will continue to devolve into chaos.  

Vigilante and Jim Crow Jr. on Trial

 The confusion in our country is great.  I will call it confusion, because no one is thinking straight.  How could we, and isn't that convenient?  A worldwide onslaught of mass disease that fell from the sky, and not Vanilla Sky.  Two years of chaos, no school, and fear of death, and who could get their ducks in a row to understand who is the good guy and who is the bad guy? Who is wearing the white hat, and who is wearing the black hat?  Who is the cowboy, and who are the Indians?  (like Indians are the enemy anyway)  We took this country from Native Americans, and we called them Indians.  We. in the shadow of Donald Trump, have become tribal.  That is a new one for America.  Not so much for the Middle East and Africa, but America, rich with Irish, Scottish, Greek, Asian, and other bloodlines, don't exist in tribes per say.  "Mick.  Spick.  Kike.  Whop.  Nigger."  These are just words, and often those enduring such labels are strong enough to ignore them.  They are just words.  Tribal is something more primitive, and evidently America as a nation has regressed to this level temporarily.  It is the plan.  It has been planned.  Trump has been calculating his plan almost his whole life.  It has been clever and clandestine.  It's been on the down low.  "You can't blame me."  How can you blame a sitting American president when he calls for a preened supporting faction to overthrow an election result?  We didn't see what was happening.  It's all smoke and mirrors, and is everything and anything to keep us distracted, confused, and complacent.  It is time to wake up!  Kenosha never should have happened, because a minor should not have been allowed to openly parade a loaded assault rifle in public.  The right to bear arms is a fundamental premise of our Constitution, but assault weapons should be illegal.  Congress let this legislation expire, and it is Congress's fault Kyle Rittenhouse was able to roam freely with such a weapon.  Period.  What kind of civilized country allows such a thing?  What kind of country doesn't enforce their laws?  What kind of country would even consider de-funding the police?  Lack of a proper police presence and enforcement of the law is why violence has escalated.  It has been very sly, Donald Trump's plan.  In Fayetteville, what could be considered the testing ground of America (not Columbus like so many think), the police were not dispatched, and protesters ravaged our downtown and Market House.  It is the major point of contention in local politics.  Was this appropriate, and why did not the Fayetteville police protect the merchants?  "Property can be replaced, and many have insurance."  I happen to agree with Mitch Colvin on this point.  If the police had been dispatched to downtown Fayetteville, lives would have been lost.  There would have been carnage.  He made a diplomatic decision, and feel it was the right one.  Now it is time to fill the police vacancies by increasing their salaries and reestablish order.  Having "Black Lives Matter" painted on the street around the Market House is racist.  All lives matter, and it is  ironic.  Mr. Colvin had the words removed, and there was fallout.  A day later the words were back paid for by a private interest.  The Market House is the icon of Fayetteville, not a symbol of wretchedness.  Maybe slaves once were sold here, but not any more.  We are not living in the past, or are we?  If we let our current sensibilities regress to a lecherous past, how will we survive?  The human race is capable of growth and evolution.  Most of us would like to believe we have evolved since slavery.  It would seem after the Trump presidency, we are headed back in that direction.  Is this what we want, Jim Crow Jr.?  I think not.  Kyle Rittenhouse never should have had an AR-15, and certainly he should not have driven over state lines and shot three people killing two.  He is a murderer, and he is misguided.  We have to try to understand how and why he did such a thing.  The modern day lynching of Mr. Arbory is clear.  Three men cannot hunt down and murder in cold blood another citizen no matter what the circumstances.  It was a lynching, and those three men are guilty.  It is Trump who is responsible for this misguidance, and he has become the worst President in American history. 

Life on Bruno Mars

How is the United States to move on if we are unable to understand our own past?  Some want to deny slavery, and some want to reinstate it.  We have moved toward slavery for some time.  "The cost of living increases."  Rates, prices, and tuition continue to rise, and wages remain stagnant at almost slave levels.  Families have not been solvent on one income since the 1980's.  Remember "Soccer Moms?"  This was the sound byte that earmarked the year families no longer could live on one salary.  Moms had to go to work, and certainly that was not a bad thing.  It seems wages paid to women, as seen through the sexist lens, should be less than wages paid to men.  America still is attempting to mitigate this inequality.  The ramifications of two working parents is a diluting of effective child rearing.  In some cases more independence for children could be emboldening if they posses the intellectual and emotional stamina to succeed.  For children lacking these skills their prospects as self sustaining adults are lessened.  Children must learn from something.  Take a look around.  Look at what's on television.  Observe the World Wide Web.  "Social Media," or rather "Big Brother" is the new status quo.  Two years with no schooling, massive environmental pollution, and a war of infection have stunted our youth.  What has been teaching them?  As a nation we have been sheltered in place, stuck inside only with social media, and it has become a debacle.  Why has violent crime risen to unparalleled levels?  Ask yourself what model do our children have.  The answer is violence.  Turn on the TV, and you will see violence.  We have become immune to its conscious effects.  When a child is denied instruction of any kind, and they default to what they have seen or experienced, it is no wonder mass shootings are common.  This is what they see every day on the internet and on television.  It has been going on for a long time.  Shooter games subliminally teach kids it is okay to mass murder.  They practice it each time they play one of these violent games.  Pundits will say regulating content inhibits free commerce, but someone or some thing must predicate morality.  Once this was accomplished in church, and religion provided this moral compass.  God spoke his rules and instilled in us through our emotions a moral conscience.  Our emotions ideally are supposed to regulate our behavior.  The problem has become this canvas, the canvas of the human psyche has been overrun by pollution.  We no longer as a people or nation recognize that human existence is based upon the human organism.  What we think and feel once were what governed human behavior.  That no longer is true.  We no longer know what we think or feel.  One only has to take one look at the emerging LGBT community to see our confusion.  We don't know what is up or down.  The question is why?  The answer is our environment and all of its invaders now are the dominant force in our lives.  This influence is subliminal, but it is strong.  It is so strong that our unconscious minds no longer have the liberty of synthesizing life.  The all necessary sleep has become so rare, all of our systems including the immune system are overwrought with fatigue.  Our minds, our bodies, and our hearts are slow with laden with fatigue.  This is Big Brother, and this is how he wants it.  We have discarded our children, and no matter how incomprehensible it seems Satan diligently is hard at work trying to destroy the earth and the human race.  The Bible predicts the second coming of Jesus Christ, and those who have accepted Him will be transported to a new Earth.  Evidently the destruction of Earth is in the plan.  It would be nice if it happened at a later date.  I still have things to accomplish, and I can't achieve them sitting on a rocket ship to Mars.  

The Trumpian Dystopia

I used to teach university level jazz piano.  It was a long time ago, and I unpleasantly remember how desperately I wanted to improve as a jazz pianist.  Never had I taken a lesson except a few meetings with Dr. John Emche at the University of South Carolina.  College lessons are mostly, "Learn this tune for next time."  There is not much discussion on style, improvisation, harmony or the rest.  I did have one lesson with Hank Marr at Ohio State, and it was the same thing.  "Learn this tune."  Trying to learn jazz from a teacher is reserved for the top jazz schools in America which include North Texas, Berkely, Manhattan, Eastman, and Julliard.  The New School has entered the picture.  When I was looking for a doctoral program in jazz decades ago there only were about ten schools that offered such a thing.  It is because jazz piano is a hidden art form.  Often it is an aural skill only, and some jazz pianists like Erroll Garner don't read music.  I resigned myself to teaching myself, and that is what I have done.  The bulk of knowledge of jazz piano comes from recordings.  You must be a trained pianist first with technique, a knowledge of music theory, and an inclination to want to swing and improvise.  I studied most of this under the tutelage of my good friend George William Knowles.  I sought out his friendship, because I knew he was the absolute jazz scholar of the American South.  For two years we listened to the recordings, and I studied jazz history.  It was not until years later at OSU my love for jazz finally solidified.  You have to love it.  That love is what gives you the feeling of swing.  We try to swing as youths, but the feelings of jazz and swing are a mature subject.  They are equal to the substance of Western orchestral and chamber music, but the format is looser.  No symphony hall is needed, only small jazz clubs, churches, or dance venues.  It also thrives in the home.  I stopped trying to become a better jazz pianist, because I finally reached a professional level.  I worked as a professional jazz pianist for many years including dance and commercial music work.  Ten years of this was on cruise ships, and I was prepared musically.  Unfortunately the jazz skill was moot, and it was more intimidating than anything.  They don't appreciate jazz on ships, and the bands play mostly Broadway, classics, and Motown.  I was able to hold my own, because I was a skilled jazz pianist with a working knowledge of the styles of jazz including the avant-garde.  The reality was my intellectual study of music composition at the doctoral level was what allowed me to survive.  I had to analyze music and produce a suitable product.  Without the analysis you would struggle to play the gig.  Many do.  They are hired, fail, and get fired.  There is politics involved in ship work, and it is more important than music.  I stopped my study of jazz piano a long time ago, because I have developed a great understanding of the idiom.  My listening now is as a consumer, and I don't try to analyze the music.  I can discern many different jazz musicians, and often I can name the artists on a particular track.  I don't think to myself, Dave Brubeck is playing block chords.  Gene Harris is playing the blues.  Ray Bryant uses a gospel approach when he plays jazz and accompanied Aretha Franklin.  Styles do resonate in my mind but not theoretically.  Purposefully I have abandoned the music theory in the history of jazz, because I spent countless years learning it.  I know music theory on the doctoral level, so nothing much is a threat.  Recently my interest in jazz piano has resurfaced, because America is in the dark ages.  The styles of jazz piano are relevant, and they help define America.  The art form of jazz is so deep and diverse, it presents itself as salvation in the face of ignorant, fascist, white supremacist propaganda.  These people are so afraid of the achievement of the black man in America, that jazz will never have a fair chance of recognition.  That an African-American could invent and produce artistic music blows their mind.  It also blows their self confidence.  When we discard fake news, the Big Lie, and the spin America will return to the merit system.  Those who achieve in the humanities whether it is art or science are the ones worthy of reward and respect.  The rest are just snake oil salesmen peddling cheap tonics.  Trump's time will come to an end, because art will win.  

The Egregious Far Right Jim Crow Jr.

It is possible there are as many Western keyboard styles as American jazz.  It would be more enlightening to classify the music by style rather than composer.  Most everyone is familiar with Robert Schumann.  He has forged an immutable presence in Western music by volume, but most could not describe his piano style.  First we must clarify the misuse of the term "Classical."  Classical has become a catch phrase for all Western orchestral or chamber music.  By Western I mean Europe and the Soviet Union.  The "New World" eventually developed its own orchestral and chamber music, but it took a while.  William Grant Still may be the most well known American orchestral composers.  The term "Classical" like jazz erroneously is used to categorize all orchestral and chamber music.  In reality "Classical" is only one style period in the evolution of Western music.  The High Classic Period is 1770-1780.  Prior to the Classic Period is the Baroque, and after it is Romanticism.   There is Medieval and Renaissance music, and there is Expressionist.  None of these style periods developed in America, because the "New World" was not yet  imperialized by the West.  It had its indigenous population and their music, but we no little of this cultural history.  We displaced it with our own sensibilities which later evolved into Country, Bluegrass, and Jazz, which like the term "Classical" has come to describe lots of American popular music over the years including Ragtime.  The strength of American popular music usurped interest in concert music from the West, because it represented home.  Music for court, society, the military accurately did not portray the American struggle and her people.  If early American music had to be characterized it would be with the banjo. That is a stark and probable rude realization.  Characterize America with the banjo?  Isn't the banjo an African instrument?  Where were America's operas and symphonies?  Some came later, but the folks were the source of American music.  There were a handful of transplanted European influenced academics, but the heart and soul of America was in her people.  This tradition has continued and flourished during the 20th Century.  The 21st Century has dealt a blow to the evolution of American popular music.  Since Grunge in the 1990's and Hip Hop, nothing new has emerged to summarize America's sentiment.  That is because it is difficult.  John Coltrane sought Eastern culture as a necessary influence in his later music, and it is prudent to consider this overlooked aesthetic.  Middle Eastern ideals have permeated America through terrorism but not music.  If we were to find a suitable metaphor for modern America, it would have to encompass Asian influences.  A newly burgeoning White Supremacy is making it difficult for America to thrive.  America is an immigrant nation, and while those south of the Mason Dixon line would like to commandeer her for their own, it is mixed ethnic blood which built and occupy most of our nation.  This is where the struggle lies, in territory.  It is not new.  Bill Clinton's most notable success was masterminding the Dayton Accords resolving Bosnian Serbian civil unrest.  It divided these countries into tribal regions notably divvying up the land.  Slobadon Milosevic landed at the International War Tribunal at the Hague, was tried, imprisoned, and died in prison.  The solution to this conflict remains effective and peaceful.  It is possible.  One rogue contingency has wreaked havoc on America, and most of it can be attributed to the false leadership of Donald Trump.  Until he is cancelled from the American equation and it is balanced with science, civil or revolutionary war will ensue.  It is because ignorant people can think of nothing more productive to do. 

Taylor Eigsti

 Jazz is a nebulous thing.  If we were to believe the younger generation, jazz could be anything.  Somehow Jazz, the musical title originally spelled Jass, has become the melting pot.  Jazz is a specific style of improvised, swing-based, American popular music.  This style of music evolved from the early 1900's, like Western orchestral music from the Middle Ages.  European and Soviet style periods have become well known, but he style periods of American jazz are not so defined.  Because America is an immigrant nation, jazz is an immigrant music.  It chose America as its place of synthesis, because Communism would not allow its fruition.  The freedom found in America with its capitalist market enabled the birth of jazz.  Jazz is rife with worldly influences, but the most recognized styles are Bebop, Cool Jazz, and Big Band Swing.  Trumpeter Miles Davis created three including Modal Jazz and Fusion.  While taking the General Exams required for the DMA degree in music composition at Ohio State University, Dr. Ted McDaniel asked me a perplexing question.  He asked if the evolution of jazz over a century was a consistent seeking of freedom.  Did the improviser and his melodic ideas seek freedom from the accompanying rhythmic/harmonic framework?  In other words were your solo improvised lines, melodies, or phrases based upon the chords?  Did you strictly have to adhere to these harmonies, chords, or changes to spin your solo?  Was the evolution of jazz simply a freeing of the solo from the chord structure of the song?  Modal jazz achieves this substituting a mode or scale for complex chord changes.  The "Blues" musically are a mode or scale similar to its ancient Greek Dorian counterpart.  They create a mood.  Gregorian Chant has a specific mood which is contemplative, pensive, and reverent concerning Christ.  Add human suffering and sorrow to this equation and you may get the "Blues."  There are more piano styles found in American jazz than Western music.   Ragtime was first and Stride a close second.  Bebop, Gospel, and Latin all have contributed to the jazz piano vocabulary.  They are well studied and documented in professional and academic circles.  Evidently there is one style that has been missed, and it is the style of pianist and composer Taylor Eigsti.  On Friday evening I attended a "Friends of Music" program at Methodist University and heard Taylor play jazz piano.  I left with no feeling of jazz, and yet this was how the concert was billed.  Mr. Eigsti played some jazz compositions by Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, and Dave Brubeck, but none of them were played in a rhythmic style that was related to the lineage jazz piano.  Duke Ellington's "Caravan" was his finale, and while fast and virtuosic didn't feel like Ellington.  It didn't  acknowledge Duke Ellington or his musical aesthetic.  Feeling "like Ellington" is an important concept in jazz, because feel is a foundation.  Jazz cannot be played authentically without the appropriate feeling.  Feeling in jazz music mostly is of African-American origin.  Boldly it stems from the oppression of slavery.  White musicians have contributed to the stew, but the vocabulary of American jazz is different from its Western roots.  French Impressionism may be the most similar, but jazz provides the soul and identity of America.  Academics were looking for America's next great composer, and it was George Gershwin, but blacks provided the vocabulary, expression, and artistry of jazz.  I listened intently to Tayor Eigsti's musical content and did my best to understand it.  There were themes in his pieces, but they were disguised by his chosen rhythmic approach on the piano.  He devised a style of his own reminiscent of Pop.  It didn't swing.  There was no clave.  There was the underlying feeling of Aram Khachaturian and the driving rhythms of his piano composition "Toccata."  I heard licks from this piece and several others leading me to believe Mr. Eigsti may be a competent classical pianist, although this concert was billed as jazz piano.  It was not, and calling his program "Jazz Piano" was erroneous and misleading.  He played jazz chords.  He played jazz compositions.  Nowhere in the program was a connection with the history of jazz piano except his choice of songs.  The acoustics in the new Worship Center at Methodist University are cavernous like the Botanical Garden.  Its ceiling is high and vaulted wood.  While they did purchase a wonderful Yamaha C7 piano for this concert space, the echoing acoustics don't do it justice.  Carpet or rugs could be installed to remedy this ailment.  His piano thundered most of the time.  There are Western piano styles that thunder as well.  I see no point in exploiting only one pole of the piano/forte compliment.  That Christofori's unique and groundbreaking mechanical action improving on the limitations of the harpsichord and clavichord emerged in a large modern keyboard instrument gave advent to the ability to play both piano and forte.  Mr Eigsti did settle down later in his program and played more intimately.  Thus the audience was able to absorb his intent with less audible effort.  The storm that ensued mostly was indiscernible.