The Latest Chapter

 The familiar adage always has been, "You can't go home."  I never understood what this meant.  Most importantly if you go back to your childhood family, then this family only knows you as a child.  Consequently if you return as an adult, I am not sure your parents ever are able to accept you as an adult.  The rearing process, those formative years that require soul, are too strong.  They are a part of you.  "You can't teach an old dog new tricks."  I am not sure if this is true either.  It would seem most people adhere to this advice.  I didn't make a conscious decision to return home, but my mother needed help with my father.  After his stroke never was he the same.  We weren't wise enough then to understand this process, but at times it was a living hell for my mother.  Incontinence.  Losing is memory.  Finally she found a place for him, and it was nominal.  She had to go everyday to ensure he got the proper care.  After he died in 2017 my mother and I were in the house together for the first time.  I am proud to say she was able to stay at home until the ripe age of ninety.  Mostly it was inconsequential, but she began to have small accidents that presented challenges.  She broke her wrist falling over a gutter pipe.  She fractured her shoulder falling on the hard brick patio.  Ultimately the vertebra in her back began to give way.  I had to find things to do at home that were meaningful other than cooking for her.  I became a handy man.  Most importantly it was necessary to find shared experiences.  I took her life long interests in gardening, sewing, and cooking and developed my own skills.  I transformed our yard into a blissful garden.  I potted plants, planted a vegetable garden, and maintained the property.  The focus of my life changed, but because it was my childhood home it was not unfamiliar.  It seemed appropriate.  We forged a life together, and for me music was a small part of it.  Now that she necessarily has moved into assisted living, I am faced with forging yet a new life at the age of sixty-one.  For the first year I just continued with our pattern.  I planted another garden and I cleaned the yard.  The second year I became ill, and suddenly working in the yard began to make me sick.  I had allergic reactions to either pollen, bacteria, or fungi in the environment.  I never had this problem before.  Always I used to play in the woods as a child, and even up to this time I maintained the woods behind our house as motorcycle trails.  The emergence of poison in the woods seemed to coincide with overall strife.  Never had there been poison anywhere in these woods, but Climate Change, high humidity, and hurricanes brought about a change in the foliage.  All three kinds of poison emerged and became a menace.  I got it a few times.  Eventually I stopped working in the woods and focused on our own yard, which incidentally is one of the largest in the neighborhood.  This past winter when the oak leaves began to fall, I began my ritual blowing process.  I have a heavy duty expensive Stihl backpack blower, and it is the only possible way to gather the amount of leaves that fall over three months.  A blower.  Then you have to scoop the leaves in cans so the city will empty them.  Often it is ten or more large cans of dead oak leaves.  I have learned to enjoy this task and use it as exercise.  This year it made me ill.  Never have I felt such pain in my arm and shoulder with an angry accompanying rash.  My back hurts.  I have a bladder infection.  I get arthritis.  It is and was a world of hurt.  I had to figure out why the outdoor environment was contributing to his scenario.  Multiple doctors later, who never really tried to figure it out, I was able to piece together the diagnosis.  Bits and pieces of information from the CT scans, consultations, and lab work.  Eventually after seeing an oral surgeon and hearing his comments on my remaining wisdom tooth, it came together.  The disease is Actinomycosis, an anaerobic bacteria that behaves like a fungus.  It must be triggered by another bacteria.  All of pieces fell together, and each definition of the characteristics of the pathogen perfectly described my series of events.  It is serious, complicated, and can be deadly.  Instinctively I knew if I didn't figure it out, I would end up in the hospital without insurance.  What would follow was not acceptable.  I found insurance and partly it helped me figure it out.  Previously I talked about loss.  Suddenly I am faced with the prospect of never being able to work in the woods or yard again.  I think Covid has something to do with it.  (as the Boeing C-17A Globemaster lll glides over our house)  My mother is being evaluated for Hospice care.  Suddenly I cannot maintain our yard.  Music is difficult because of the constant low frequency rumble from low flying aircraft.  The need to relocated is emerging.  All of the things you were doing previously no longer seems possible.  Your life must change, again.  Luckily we have prepared, but living in limbo is not fun.  If a man is what he fights for (or what he does), what if he no longer can do the things he did? 

Different Chapters

 I have experienced loss before.  It came early, and I was not prepared for it.  I tell myself I am prepared for it now one, from experience, two from maturity, and three because of financial support.  Money or lack of it didn't have much to do with it.  The depression that results from loss is the challenge, because loss is tangible, real, and undeniable.  I feel most often loss is a result of people.  We are capable of losing a job, a friend, or a pet, but losing a loved one is the most challenging.  It is the most challenging not because of the loss of emotional fulfillment, but because your life in most cases revolves around the other person.  Certainly in a marriage this is true, but perhaps not as much as in the past.  Today I see examples of much looser marriages, and with the rise of the LGBT movement bisexuality has become common.  I have couples in close proximity to me who feign a marriage, although one or both members of the marriage is gay.  The phrase, "His wife is his beard" was new to me.  Gay men married to women to satisfy the requirements of society.  Leonard Bernstein was an example of such a situation as was Cole Porter.  I believe it is possible to love more than one person, but deception is not healthy in any situation.  It is devastating.  I can't support such a choice, because it is untruthful.  Conversely if the marriage is the heart of the existence, then the loss of either partner will be challenging.  My wisdom tells me a more liberal concept of relationship functions better.  I have met couples who "Swing," allowing sex with outside partners.  It takes a particular kind of maturity to engage in this practice, and not everyone can do it.  My loss was an acute combination of several things.  It was like "falling from grace."  I had a run of notoriety, when I was a Graduate Teaching Associate in South Carolina.  My band was a semi-finalist in the Hennessy Cognac Jazz Search, and we got to travel to Los Angeles to compete.  While this accomplishment was important as an entry in your VITAE file, it in actuality was the beginning of the end for me.  I always wanted to have good fusion band, but that was not the focus of my musical study.  I have an education degree, and teaching was what was important to me then.  I got three years of college teaching experience while working on the Master of Music.  When the Coordinator of Jazz Studies died of a brain tumor shortly before the fall semester, they hired me as an adjunct to cover his duties for a year while they did a national search.  Somehow, and it was easy and not my fault, I began to believe I may get the full time professorship.  Of course a fresh Masters degree isn't enough academic criteria to obtain this kind of position.  I began to believe it anyway.  I was crushed when it didn't happen.  What I didn't expect was the severing of this academic tie devastated my life.  Everything I had been doing was in the academic circle.  More importantly your entire social and personal life had become this group of people.  I was ejected from this fulfilling scenario, but I handled it.  For several years I made the best of this lack of employment and continued to play paying jazz gigs.  There were periods in my life, including living in Columbus, Ohio, where I earned a living as a jazz pianist and commercial keyboardist.  I studied the history of jazz through the recordings of Miles Davis, and this lasted two years.  At some particular time when the stars aligned reality hit.  I had lost my respectable academic job which came with respect, and now my career was a lowly bar band musician.  The disparity between academia, the smartest and most achieving people in the world, and real life was stark and bleak.  It smells like stale beer and second hand cigarette smoke.  It was brutal, because as a musician and a composer, your soul is in your music.  When it is taken from you, the void is substantial.  That is the way I feel now.  Society around me, this neighborhood, rejects music as a vocation.  More astutely, they are not educated enough to understand and appreciate the music that I do.  That is a bold and callous statement, but the example is the difference between black and white church.  If white people are not comfortable in a Pentecostal or praise worship environment, there is a reason.  The depth of emotion expressed in this music is too much for some people.  They prefer a more conservative tone, like most white church.  Hymns and a message.  I'm not sure how our neighborhood ended up being square, but it may be because of the early toll of the bugler.  Military life is not about artistic spirituality, or at least it doesn't seem like it.  Instead they reject cumbersome emotional sensitivity for toughness.  They are taught to kill the enemy.  Everything I had and had achieved  was eliminated.  The "Jazz Life," which still is in existence in Columbia, South Carolina and of which I was a part in the late 1980's, isn't reality unless you are involved with academia.  Academia is the foundation of society.  It sets the examples, it nurtures the players, and it provides the opportunities.  The alternative for jazz smells like stale beer and second hand cigarette smoke.  Reflecting on that it seems amazing to me.  It is called the "College Town."  It is Athens, Georgia.  Once it was Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  It has become Asheville, North Carolina.  These college towns are unto themselves  rife with hipness, creativity, and opportunity.  I learned quickly this is not the other American reality.  The other American reality is what we have now.  It is a mud slinging contest trying to get Donald Trump reelected.   A sitting President who incited a riot and led a gang of domestic terrorists to attack the United States Capital?  Even if he did hand corporate America a thirteen percent tax cut, withdraw from the Iran Nuclear Deal, and allow a pandemic, anyone that votes for Donald Trump is condoning criminal and communistic behavior.  We are all ready there, because SCOTUS and his other appointed judges confirmed what we feared.  They threw the sovereignty of the American people into the trash can proving the highest court in the land can be bought.  It has become good against evil, and that is why the tension is high in our everyday lives.  It will remain that way until the Presidential election in November.  It is embarrassing to know that North Carolina has become evil.  Because of the gerrymandered voting districts favoring Republicans, Donald Trump will probably win North Carolina.  It is distasteful and infuriating.  The problem is, the Republican-led corporate machine largely controls everything.  If you dissent or disagree with their money-making industry, they can make your life hell.  The military must be included, because they are a large part of the economy.  Think about it.  The war machine, which practices and prepares for war, easily can intimidate us, the American people.  Why does their presence not make us feel secure and protected?  The reason why the NRA demands guns in America, is because they feel at some point the people my be actually fighting our own military.  This is not absurd.  It is common in other countries.  Do we trust the leadership of our military?  The Commander in Chief is the United States President.  My loss and depression today is a combination of many things hitting at one time, and this scenario of uncertainty isn't helping.  Big Pharma and illicit drug manufacturers are not trying to cure us or provide pleasure.  They have been trying to kill us stunting America from within.  The population that is left are poor uneducated immigrants.  We don't know what an American looks like today.  Is this healthy?  Irish American?  German American?  When immigrants migrated here they were happy to begin a new life.  Now foreign cultures are trying to invade, and it has been for the worse.  If we can't rear healthy children and educate them well as the future new leaders of America, we should put down the baton.  We are all ready in the toilet.  

Soap Box Shouting

 The incessant shallow consumerism which accosts me ebbs and flows.  The offers on our home were not unreasonable.  They were above the county's tax assessment, and someone in dire straits may be tempted to accept one of their "cash" offers.  Would they come through?  Would they actually do as Mark Spain says and pay you cash for your home with no realtor's fee or closing costs?  Would one of these companies actually follow through on their offer and come up with the money?  If it sounds too good to be true, usually it is.  I have no qualms with these firms who call wanting to purchase your home.  It is up to the homeowner to know the value of his property and make decisions accordingly.  Most won't.  The approach they are using which is similar to television infomercials suggests these companies have authority.  A bank that holds the mortgage to your home does have authority, but second party vendors do not.  They feign authority, and this approach now is common in many scams.  Spectrum is insistent on trying to garner me as a customer, but I have no interest in their products.  We were Spectrum consumers, both with Roadrunner internet and cable television, but their profit supplanted their product.  Their price continued to rise, and the quality of their cable television  declined.  This was for various reasons spanning the scope of visual media.  One was the competition of and conversion to streaming services via the internet.  Currently visual media is a mishmash of services, and it is a headache.  I prefer the original television product with three major networks, a quality competitive nightly line up of shows, and a handful of public informative networks.  It was easier.  Turn the big dial to switch channels.  There was wisdom in AM radio, and it audio rendering was stimulating and easy to hear.  The acoustics of the world have been sacrificed, but that is another blog entry.  Even with five hundred channels I only watched five.  Usually they were movie channels for which you had to pay extra.  The consumer can choose if the product is worth its price, and television no longer is.  Instead it is continual propaganda.  I have over-the-air digital television, and in off peak hours there is some quality entertainment.  The continual infomercial with dialog over trite music is noise, and in many depictions of the future huge screens blast this propaganda at citizens 24/7.  It is wrong.  It is mind-numbing brain washing, and the FCC needs to regulate its content.  Government deregulation as a whole was a mistake, because quickly corporate America oversteps its bounds.  I have realized the influence of television in America's daily lives, and once it was important.  Escapism or seeing far away places with beautiful music, and scripted plots with talented actors provides a backdrop for our lives that no longer exists.  This was the original magic of television when it had integrity.  Like so many other tenets of the American economy, television has sold out.  On "Free TV" ninety-five percent of what I hear is false, and it should be monitored and regulated by a robust and active ratings system.  The spaghetti network of video media is out of control, and it is hurting American solidarity.  I had no intention of criticizing television, but my distaste for what it has become will not tempt be back to Spectrum.  The chasm created from lack of cable television is vast and subtle.  We use it as a backdrop for out lives, but that has become too great a temptation.  Now it is being manipulated to manipulate our thinking.  The cinematic examples of a future dystopian society are plentiful and depressing.  It is imperative America figures herself out quickly, because without a conceptual vision of our future, authoritarianism is imminent.  Donald Trump would like be become our new dictator. 

An Inside Attack

There are many disparate political, economic, and social issues to assauge.  North Carolina is Red.  It is a swing state.  The margin between Republican and Democrat is miniscule.  Like Georgia it is possible for North Carolina to flip blue.  The political volatility of the state is rife, aggressive, and unsettling.  It is a cat fight.  The anxiety and paranoia created by North Carolina flipping blue is tangible.  This neurosis does not come from Democrats.  They only want what is best for the citizenry.  This angst, fear, and trepidation is originating in the far right Republican ranks of the state legislature. Recently they chose to ignore forever chemicals in the Cape Fear River Basin.  These harmful toxins have been proven to cause illness and death.  Under the leadership of Phil Berger and Tim Moore, (who was going to resign because of sexual impropriety) the committee in the State Legislature punted on its responsibility to try to clean up North Carolina's watershed.  Instead of following the federal EPA's suggestions, they asked them to remove four chemicals from the list of dangerous pollutants.  They hedged on a vote and delayed discussion to a later date.   (They must be lawyers!)  Let me reiterate the gravity of this scenario.  The North Carolina State Legislature, instead of voting to try to clean the tainted water, ignored it.  They sided with industries and state utilities to do nothing.  They chose to keep polluted water.  A vote for their Republican Party and Donald Trump is a vote to poison North Carolina's population.  The effort needed to cover their tracks is what creates tension and anxiety.  Until November the state will suffer from this struggle.  It is good against evil, and good is losing with the help of the United States Supreme Court.  The replacement of Joe Biden with Kamala Harris was surprisingly strategic for the Democratic Party.  It is clear who is the most capable of performing the duties of the United States President.  A vote for Donald Trump is not an honest vote for President.  It is a vote to diminish democracy and undermine truth in government.  It is difficult to know the difference between evil and Corporate America.  Democracy representing and protecting the people has been diminished.  The desires of the people were discarded long ago; the processes necessary to support democracy, like the involvement of the people, have been sidetracked.  We have forgotten how to fight, because we were blindsided with an antagonistic, covert, terrorist offensive.  America has been attacked from within, and only now are we discovering it.  

Lies, Deception, and Delusions

 The Bachelor of Music Education from Chapel Hill was the most difficult accomplishment in my life.  On graduation day I looked in the program to see if my name was there.  I have some insight into public education.  I learned the difference between schooling and education.  Schooling is teaching a set of rules to ensure success.  Education is trial and error, and your failures are a necessary part of your learning.  Life is education, and schooling now is scarce.  We don't know what to believe from whom.  Academia sold out for patent revenue, so this once solid foundation of scholarly knowledge has become sketchy.  The internet began as a network of scholarly data bases, but it cannot substitute for the centuries old institution of education.  What will Donald Trump do to make America great again?  Few politicians are in the ballpark.  Building a wall to keep Latin Americans out will not make America great again.  Mr. Trump has not laid out any tangible plan.  Instead he stole and sold classified government documents to terrorists in the Middle East, so they could attack Israel.  The Trump organization would colonize the Gaza Strip and reap great monetary reward from this new real estate.  This man does not care about Americans, and he has proven it with his actions.  You must pay attention to understand.  Simply you cannot  listen to his empty rhetoric.  It is gratifying to know that media coverage of the Republican National Convention largely has been realistic.  Climate Change is the most important issue.  Unlike it has been painted, it is a tangible ramification of unregulated heavy industry.  Rail, aviation, chemical, petroleum, and other industry have free reign to pollute air and water with no thought to the health of Americans.  Rail and aviation, with newly implemented phased array microwave wireless communications have become the worst polluters.  The combination of radiation, carbon emissions, heat, magnetism, noise, and vibration infringes upon the lives of everyone in this country.  It has hobbled the human race.  Their emissions alone have stunted America.  Aircraft emissions in Fayetteville are a metaphor.  One only has to look up at the sky.  The smog is rife and dangerous, and Covid has become a part of it. This pathogen is being promulgated in the tainted air.  Covid.  HIV.  AIDS.  It was engineered and manufactured in a laboratory.  Covid has revealed itself to be of a similar origin of HIV.  It is an autoimmune disorder, and it effects the central nervous system.  Long Covid means the molecules stay in your body and are triggered later by other means.  The massive pollution of corporate America is not helping.  Instead of active spores like some bacteria and fungus, there are endospores which can last thousands of years.  Without the proper antidote it is a miracle the human race will survive such a devious and deadly man made pathogen.  Those responsible for manufacturing Covid are the metaphor of evil, but perhaps our generation has been spared the strife of other Americans.  The Great Depression.  War.  Civil Rights.  Jim Crow.  Covid is our albatross, and now we know how it feels.  It has forced me to find in myself a reason to survive with no external support.  God only can provide so much comfort, so it is incumbent upon us to make our own way.  We must come up with something to make our lives worthwhile.  Bluegrass music provided this for one cross section of America.  Blues did also.  Music making is a cornerstone of survival of humanity, and much of it has been taken from us by the aforementioned culprits.  What do I mean?  Sound largely is responsible for the production and dissemination of music.  Sound needs and relies upon a clean, clear, ample canvas of quiet air to make its point.  This sound has been hijacked by rail and aviation.  The sheer amount of infra and ultrasound produced by both of these industries has quashed music in America.  Instead it has transformed air into an invasive and dangerous antagonist, thwarting the therapeutic and healing powers of audible music.  Our lives have diminished into little handheld devices reducing the once mighty human being into a minute cyborg.  Literally we have become nothing.  Our ability and power to effect life is mute, and we have been brainwashed to concur.  It is easier to submit and relinquish the fight.  This is what Donald Trump wants us to do.  Take the money.  America was not built and certainly was not made great by this methodology.  It was earned by citizens acting in their own interests because of lack of support of sociopolitical circles.  Americans defied the robber barons and survived in spite of their achieved wealth and prosperity.  Donald Trump is a robber baron, and he does not care about us.  For him to mention Almighty God was propaganda, because until now those words never crossed his lips.  To be President one must have ideas, policies, and qualifications to lead.  Spouting lies doesn't cut it.  

The Trump Machine in Full Motion

 In American politics in the news media there are continual volleys.  Lately the Trump Machine has been in motion because of the Republican National Convention.  It is surreal, because we are watching the Trump organization's apparatus.  This organization is not just the Trump family business.  It more has become the supporting players who are pushing for his second presidency.  It is easy to discern who they are, although trying to win a second term they have diversified their message to reach other potential voters.  Personally I do not believe America would elect him a second term.  Since we lived through the Coronavirus outbreak, no matter what is said the lives impacted by this reality can not disguise Trump's true colors.  Popularity championed by a smooth voice is not enough to lead America, because who is president has real consequences.  Perhaps we are not in the best shape as a nation, but not being led by a convicted felon and a liar shored up by a now corrupt Supreme Court is more important.  Joe stumbles  with his words and no longer has a smooth communicative discourse, but he is more honest.  Also he has the bulk of experience as an elected leader.  To watch the spin machine in real time consume an opportunity such as an attempted assassination is surreal.  The example they have chosen, a defiant and empowered Donald Trump, is not the appropriate leader for the world's once exemplary democracy.  Why would America change course, because of one man's desires?  We have seen it before time and time again in many other countries.  Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini.  Believing such incendiary rhetoric amplified by the American news media is wrong, and as some are saying this media largely has become responsible for the division in America.  How could we be that different?  We all need good jobs, security, and peace of mind.  I do not believe Americans want to be conscripted into another world war.  We would rather enjoy the freedoms imbued upon us by America's Constitutional ideals.  It may not be bubble gum, Coca Cola, and Hollywood movies, but the amenities America has offered her people are unique and humane.  Compared to other nations we are ahead of the happiness curve.  It should not be surprising the attempted assassination.  Contrary to what Marjorie Taylor Greene has said, the shooter was a registered republican.  There was no conspiracy by the democrats to kill Trump.  His action was a natural extension of the inciting and violent rhetoric championed by Donald Trump since his election in 2016.  If and when the reality surfaces to him, and he realizes easily he could have been extinguished from this earth, any normal person would react with a human conscience.  It would effect his soul and not trigger a dictatorial response.  "Fight!"  The Trump Machine is in full operation as it was planned.  There is no doubt now the scruples of Clarence Thomas.  We thought he was evil, and now we know.  Only it has taken this long for his true colors to emerge.  It is disappointing and disconcerting the dismissal of the stolen documents case and the partial immunity decision by SCOTUS.  The ducks are in a row, but it is not over yet.  The more important matter is if the nation can rally behind an aging Joe Biden, and whether a younger more able democrat could clasp the ticket and win the election.  Time is running short, but at least the imposters have been eliminated from the stew. 

Sometimes It's Better to LIve in the Trenches

 In many ways I am a country boy.  My mother grew up on the dairy farm.  Once I prided myself on musical intellect, but as I have grown older I am learning that pride is a sin?  I don't agree with that.  The values of farm living are rich in lessons, and America would evolve if these values were embraced.  We have lost much of our past.  TV's depiction of American life is superficial.  The substance of humanity and its survival is in the church, the stories in the Bible about the life of Jesus, and in art.  William Shakespeare's literature depicts the reality of human conflict.  Not everything in life must be melodramatic, but life is no joke.  It has gotten more real for me, as I have grown old and have become a caregiver.  Its depth and gravity is overwhelming if  you confront it head on.  A bit of dodging is needed, shucking and jiving, and moving out of the way of the challenge.  Often it is better to live in the trenches, and to keep your soul, ideals, dreams, and fantasies to yourself.  What the enemy knows about you is his strength.  If you deprive him of his fuel, he may not sustain.  There are times when we must let the cards fall where they will fall.  Should we let America fail?  Evil is strong and conniving.  It has attempted to demonize every aspect of human existence.  It is a tough pill to swallow understanding the yard once in which I prided myself is capable of killing me.  I blew the leaves in my driveway yesterday, and today I am sick.  Was it an allergic reaction, and was it long Covid?  What gives my life meaning and purpose is music.  I have been a musician all of my life.  It is my identity, and it is a lifestyle.  Music has become a nemesis to me.  It is superfluous, antagonistic, and burdensome.  In truth it is the light.  It is none of those things.  It is being cast as those things by evil.  The majority of the surrounding community does not understand or embrace the healing powers of music.  They are self centered and proud.  They find its inclusion cumbersome.  Silence is their desire.  Quiet servitude is their goal.  Say nothing, be nothing, and make no waves.  Exist.  This is the Trump philosophy, and it is not human.  This is not America.  Ignoring music and its messages and its healing powers is not American.  America will not become great again without music, because music built America.  Music is and was the voice of the people.  I have studied a lot of music.  First it was jazz, and then it was classical.  I have attended three different universities studying music.  In all of this study never was I exposed to the breadth of American music.  Jazz often is called America's true art form, but there are more.  This definition needs to be amended.  Jazz music was not the beginning of American music, because it only covers one century and specific cities.  Old Timey music is a term now being used to champion earlier American music.  We know about the origins of country music from Ken Burns video series.  Bluegrass has become well known and qualifies as an American art form.  Blues in particular mixed with black church music may be the most potent of early American music.  I have listed five types of music:  Music of the Black Church, Blues, Old Timey, Country, and Bluegrass.  It is common to believe Bluegrass did not come to fruition until the mid twentieth century with the addition of Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs to Bill Monroe's Bluegrass Boys.  Bill played mandolin, Cedric Rainwater played bass, and Chubby Wise played fiddle.  The addition of Earl Scruggs' "clawhammer" banjo defined their sound, although the roots of Bluegrass are earlier.  I have not even mentioned another important genre of American music, and it was military music of all kinds.  Marching music in particular is extremely important in American music history including fife and drum.  The music of the Civil War was characterized by all different types of brass instruments tailored for marching in the ranks.  All of this history is lost in America today.  I ask you to ask yourself what is going to make America great again, if we don't recognize, study, and honor these purely American traditions?  The diverse geography of North America and the music that developed out of it are the roots of America and what made her great.  There is not one thing Donald Trump is offering in his empty rhetoric that personifies American struggle, triumph, and perseverance.  It would seem again the nation is at a juncture, and a second Civil War is imminent.  Little did I know in the last chapters of my life I may become a Doomsday Prepper. 

The Odds are Against Us

 Talking Points:

Musicians are not average people.  At heart they are performers.  Being sensitive to  low frequency sound and having tinnitus in your ears makes you more aware of pollution in your environment. 

Living in close proximity to the world's largest military base is not average.  It gives you insight and knowledge to which others are not privy. 

Domestic surveillance by any means, military or civilian, creates neurosis in the population.  The military should not use the civilian population as guinea pigs when they train.  

The heat that is Global Warming is man made.  

Much of the heat that is warming the oceans is created by over-sized cruise ships.  

 

If and when I feel like a persecuted Jew or African-American slave, it is because I am being surveilled.  I was not sure that the word surveil could be a verb.  Surveillance.  Surveillance has risen to prominence in our current age of technology, and this technology, when compared to America's lineage of technological development, is nothing more than legal microwaves.   The technology that built America, fostered the Industrial Revolution,  created automated manufacturing, and put men on the moon is more steadfast and hard-earned than remote controlled drones delivering pizza, Distributed Power in freight locomotives, unmanned aerial vehicles, and any other video-game like manifestation that seeks to entertain weak minds.  The concept of remote control using microwaves from satellites and auxiliary intermediary aircraft is sloth.  Things don't mean nearly as much if you don't work for them.  How did another acronym of IRS rise to such prominence in the military and private sectors?  Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance has become the dominant force of the military.  Simply it is another Cold War.  Who has the biggest stick, Iron Dome, synthetic aperture radar, or  phased array antenna?  This trend in national defense has set the world back decades, while over-anxious soldiers play video games and follow orders.  When it strikes, whatever it is, and all of that wireless communication stops in the blink of an eye, immediately we will revert to pre-technological tradition.  (and that is technology of our definition, which only is cell phones and Blue Tooth)  It is kid stuff.  That the Ukrainian Army uses Starlink Satellites for logistical support is ludicrous.  Surveillance is nothing more than intimidation.  It is a form of non-lethal weapon.  The genius is it easily disguises itself within its own construct.  We know electromagnetic radiation causes cancer, but under the auspices of national defense widely and readily we use it blurring the lines between antagonism and protection.  I am surveilled almost 24/7.  How I know is provided by the musician in me.  As a vocation and profession I am sensitive to sound.  My entire life and area of study has been devoted to the manipulation of sound, mostly in the field of music.  Often I forget this, because being a composer is not common in Fayetteville, North Carolina.  I should remind myself that I completed all of the course work for a doctorate in music composition at The Ohio State University.  What does that mean?  It means at one time in my life I was adept at representing sound in graphic form on paper.  Music notation.  Music theory.  Harmony.  This study of music no longer is important to America.  As such I changed my musical focus to aural traditions, music that is preserved over time by ear and memory.  This is much of American music.  How many contemporary/classical American composers can you name?  Aaron Copland?  Charles Ives?  William Grant Still?  What is interesting about this American music from folk origins (and I mean from the folks, not just Folk Music as a genre), is that largely it is defined by geography.  My interest in the Blues has been that I have the blues.  That the Blues originated from a very specific American lifestyle in a specific geographical region is telling.  In America today we have lost our roots.  We have lost everything that accurately defines us, and gives us insight into our current lives and potential future.  The DNA of America, our hereditary threads that give our lives meaning and purpose, have all but been eradicated by the onslaught of foreign influence.  The connection with our land and its own life that nourishes us is being exploited.  That exploitation is coming from two sources.  I am hesitant to spell this out in words, because when I do I am attacked.  The nature of these entities, like microwave surveillance, is the perfect vehicle.  Easily it skates between legitimate commerce and illegal domestic terrorism.  We can't tell the difference.  Only when you live in close proximity to the world's largest military base will you begin to see some of these oversteps.  Privatization in government further has made it more difficult to tell the difference.  This privatization was not a good idea like the deregulation of corporate America.  Policing one's self is a tall order, and because of human weakness most of us will fail.  If one wanted access to America through her infrastructure, what would one choose?  Ironically one of these choices traditionally was a cornerstone of American growth in commerce and culture.  Our modern times have forsaken America.  One only has to look at Venice, Italy and the entirety of the Mediterranean Sea to see what is in store for America.  It is an industrial wasteland, exploited and left to rot.  The exploitation of our own geography and natural resources without conservation will be the end of us.  They stripped the Alaskan territories to the bone over fishing and over hunting until nothing was left.  On what will man live, soylent green?  It is difficult to tell if the egregious overstepping of corporate America is purposeful or consequential.  Is it simply greed, or as the Trump philosophy boldly outlined an overt attempt to rid the system of burden?  If your president openly says its okay to kill old people, immigrants, and criminals then you'd better believe him.  The extremism of the Republican party has not waned, and they are the drivers.  They are the CEO's, the management, and the work force.  If a campaign is launched there is no better place of origin.  The military is a logical choice, but it still operates under the auspices of democracy.  Fully I believe they are a part of this attack on America, but innocent enlistees are being exploited as well.  Dangle perks in front of their eyes, nice homes, food allowances, and privileges, and it would be difficult for young people to resist.  Why is it so important for Fayetteville, North Carolina to have a red eye flight to Charlotte at five o'clock in the morning?  It is because of the manic pace and immediacy of the internet.  The national power grid is a sacrificial lamb for cyber currency mining.  Washington has failed in its responsibility to monitor and regulate business.  The full court press of the corporate lobby paints every harmful business proposal as the next Vegas jackpot.  The rail and aviation industries should be paying an oxygen tax, not a carbon tax.  It is our air they burn and replace with toxins.  Why should they get this for free?  My example of corporate exploitation is Piedmont Airlines.  Piedmont was well known in the 1970's and 1980's as a budget airline.  Often they were the punch line of Johnny Carson's jokes on the Tonight Show.  "They just open the cabin door and let you jump out."  With their new resurrection they set up shop in Charlotte, and direct to Charlotte flights emerged from Fayetteville all through the day.  Previously it only was two, Delta and United.  I know because I flew to my cruise ship destinations often.  When I took my first direct-to-Charlotte flight it was an improvement.  The Charlotte airport is nicer than Atlanta, but I had to get up at three in the morning to make the flight at five a.m.  Fayetteville had cleaner air before these flights.  The more telling issue is Piedmont does not adhere to any traditional concept of flight path.  At will and with abandon they fly wherever they want, whatever best suits them with no thought for those below.  They blanket the city of Fayetteville with black soot.  What kind of corporate decision is this?  There are so many planes in the sky over Fayetteville, both military and civilian, and many of them are civil service, we are hard pressed to discern who the bad buy is.  Widely it was reported many of the planes operated under shell companies were of Russian origin.  It to me is indisputable that when military air traffic is rife, and Fayetteville air quality is poor, people become ill.  I know this from first hand experience.  My day to a large extent is determined by nature, not nurture.  I go outside and breathe in, and that sets the boundaries of my days challenges.  I have done everything in my power to clean up my end, but micro-particles that easily permeate walls roofs, bricks, and wood are no match for airborne allergens and disease.  The people that created Covid 19 in a lab know this. 

 

Bill Clinton's Pandora's Box

Since the Pandemic the previous normalcy of everyday life is gone.  Covid was more than a physical killer.  It dealt a stark blow to every aspect of American life, and we don't realize it.  It was a huge smoke screen for corporate America to continue to breach our civil and Constitutional rights.  It was misdirection like used in magic.  It is impossible for me to shake the severity of what is happening in America; it all seems to be true.  What was predicted in the Bible is happening now, and it is related to the end of the World.  That is a large pill to swallow everyday when you get up.  Perhaps it is God's way of saying, "Come to Me."  There isn't much else, so your spiritual life is going to grow to fill the void.  I don't have an active say in what happens in my spiritual life.  It tells me what to do.  The sheer amount of evil that surrounds me everyday has become overwhelming, so I guess I need some Jesus to ward it off.  What has changed because of Covid?  Big Brother has marched in and captured much of our freedom, and control of the media is his methodology.  While America has gotten wise to the exploitation of the internet, media in general has not recovered.  The majority of what is in the news is propaganda.  In comparison to the historical traditions of news as truth, what we have does not qualify.  It is opinion, and it is manipulated for a purpose.  The devolution of reporting the news could be the metaphor for the devolution of America as a nation.  The decline of the public schools is similar.  The devastation of the environment is similar.  There is no way a country can excel, when its infrastructure is weak.  All institutions must have a strong foundation, and Covid kicked out the bricks.  In 2016 I decided to give  Donald Trump a chance.  I had no choice.  I said to myself, "Let's see how our quality of changes with him as president."  What did we get?  We got the Pandemic, something never seen in our lifetimes.  On the surface things appeared moderate.  Gas was reasonable.  The economy was functioning.  It was behind the scenes in  Washington the damage was being done attempting to dismantle American democracy.  Like the businessman Trump was, it  was about profit.  The Trump Administration, instead of embracing American ideals and the Constitution, tried to change the principals of our founding fathers.  In many ways the Trump philosophy was the opposite, and now the ill effects of deregulation have hobbled the lower and middle classes.  Only the rich are benefiting.  Ethnic cleansing has begun.  It is both startling and upsetting to watch your community regress into a ghetto.  I am preaching to the choir.  Anytime I voice my opinion, those who respond seem to have it worse.  I am going to use a nearby shopping area in Fayetteville, North Carolina as an example.  It is close to our house, so it is a part of our family history and current daily routine.  Perhaps it is not uncommon what is happening, and it isn't just gentrification.  Urban decay it a part of it.  For a while it was the opposite, and businesses came and went.  Since Covid and the decline of the economy, the dollars are not there to support these brick and mortar entities.  First the native buildings in this area, the historical businesses with unique footprints that gave the area character and identity, have been razed.  The florist on the corner, the steak house, and the garage all have been sacrificed.  Urban sprawl has ensued, and haphazard growth has made it ugly.  There are tightly spaced microwave towers that suggest industry rather than commerce.  Not long ago the placement of these towers would have been illegal.  There are two rows of telephone poles with miscellaneous wiring that make it uglier.  The former fabric store, KFC, and bank now have a portable chain link fence around them, and it looks like a war zone.  The overt defining characteristic of this once viable retail district is air pollution.  When BRAC brought Ground Forces Command to Fort Bragg, Fayetteville was the sacrificial lamb.  There are many reasons why this change has not been positive for the surrounding community, but air pollution is the most destructive.  While they chose not to keep certain aircraft at Pope Field, it doesn't matter.  Smog now is common, and that the commercial airlines have chosen to change their traditional flight paths and spray most of Fayetteville with soot is uncanny.  How can any community thrive when they are used as a sewer?  I am going to be specific.  Let me begin by saying once again I am listening to the "Hum."  The "Hum" was a sound heard and felt near Taos, New Mexico.  It drove people crazy, because they could not figure out whence it came.  It took me six months in front of a computer at OSU to track the  source of this noise.  Who was the culprit?  General Electric.  GE.  It was a conveyor belt they built underground to carry ore from a molybdenum mine to the refinery.    It used low frequency AC drives that turn slowly and are controlled by a microprocessor and power inverter.  It is the same technology that controls alternating current diesel electric locomotives.  The same great minds who decided to tunnel beneath the ground and install the fifteen mile long conveyor belt must be the same as those at Fort Liberty who decided to put a section of the Cape Fear Railways underneath Rock Merritt Avenue.  Once Reilly Road the mainline from the Honeycutt Marshalling Yard follows the same route and was obstructive to on post vehicular traffic.  Idling trains under the ground in any situation is bad, especially if they hum.  Norfolk/Southern sold their trackage to RJ Corman not long ago, and a new railroad was born from Raleigh to Fayetteville.  They prize the war horse SD-40-2, and it hums like a mother.  While N/S used heavy haul road locomotives for small potato switching in downtown Fayetteville, now we get to listen to the hum again.  To be concise GE is now Wabtec, and they are doing the same things.  There was smoke and mirrors and buying and selling (Progress Rail, Caterpillar, etc.), but eventually the GE incumbents landed back at home.  It doesn't make sense the amount of wireless communication on a GE designed locomotive.  Ask a Webtec executive about Distributed Power.  They have turned fire breathing dragons into toy trains.  When the EPA tried to test the communications on a GE locomotive, there was so much electromagnetic energy from so many different sources, they could not proceed.  It was a stew of high voltage radiation.  Why does a freight train need this?  Why does a passenger jet need this?  The military champions this technology, and their whole battlefield operation is based on wireless communications.  Perhaps if Elon Musk had not launched thousands of Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit, Russia would not have needed Kosmos 2553.  Until Washington definitively acknowledges the source of the Havana Syndrome, a pulsed microwave non-lethal weapon used for surveillance purposes, human health and cancer specifically will not improve.  The ready availability of microwaves to the highest bidder was Bill Clinton's most grievous mistake as President.  He opened this box, and it should be on his conscious.  P.S.  The microdust that is being blown into my eyes sitting inside comes from a Piedmont Embraer ERJ-145.  It just took off.  

The Terrorist Wing of Corporate America

 When one tries to rationalize the iniquities of evil men, what has become America's "Deep State," concrete metaphors for their malfeasance clearly become evident in our everyday lives.  On the hottest day of 2024, Friday July 5th, Southwest Airlines chooses Fayetteville, North Carolina, home to the world's largest military base and largest creator of heat, to host a holding pattern for its flight from Washington, DC to Atlanta.  Of all the places available why would a commercial airline choose an all ready hot spot?  In the mission statement of the United States military, clearly it states they use heat to disguise electromagnetic activity.  Heat is a component of military activity, and with blanket protection of the war department, why not just hide?  The innocent citizens below struggling to pay their all ready inflated energy bills do not need less oxygen and more pollution on the year's hottest day.  This is the perfect metaphor for America's loss of democracy and freedom.  Never has it changed.  Always it has been allowing the haves free reign to do what they please to remain wealthy and empowered.  That is all North Carolina wants.  Let things be.  "What's wrong with the way things are and have been?"  Spray raw feces and urine on neighborhoods adjacent to fields?  Pollute the Cape Fear River Basin with forever chemicals?  Irradiate citizens with harmful microwaves from every conceivable source, when previously these transmissions were deemed dangerous and rendered illegal by the FCC?  Introduce Sports Book Betting to North Carolinians, and in one fell swoop reap five hundred million dollars from impoverished citizens?  Gerrymander voting districts and enact legislation to make it more difficult for people of color to vote?  Pollute the air with micro-particles from every conceivable source?  Release a pathogen on the population that weaponizes all ready dangerous disease?  Controlling the population (and Joe Biden) is all they want, and they are winning.  The people are losing, and now the Democratic Party is losing its candidate four months ahead of the 2024 presidential election.  Trump shenanigans are inundating every aspect of our lives, and he is not even an elected official.  He is a disgraced felon.  Why would the people of America and North Carolina deserve this?  We don't.  You can call it a bloodless revolution, but the American people will not roll over for this.  We  all ready are on the cusp of desperation.  Donald Trump, no Joe Biden, needs to exit the building; there is no gain from destroying America.  The heat stems from from Fort Liberty, and Fayetteville, North Carolina is the modern Camp Lejeune.  Is training soldiers more important than the quality of lives of Americans?  The Deep State weaponization of corporate America for political gain is the reason.  It is a clever ruse, but we are getting wise.  

Deep State Carolina

Finally I have discovered the majority of America's problems are being caused by the attempted reelection of Donald Trump.  That which effects our daily lives concretely or abstractly is being manipulated by the "Deep State."  To many, Joe Biden and the Democrats are the enemy; the Biden family are insiders.  Joe Biden is a career politician, and it is reasonable to doubt the honesty and integrity of government.  Sans personality and popularity, things a junior high school student body uses to elect a president, it is necessary to know more.  Because of misinformation, gas lighting, and spin it is important that Americans know more.  It is Trump's policy to furnish anodynes to his constituency.  He pedals to the lowest common denominator actively manipulating his dupes with smiles, happy talk, and promises.  (Propaganda)  What his followers don't understand is  he is leading them to the abyss.  His doctrine is a studied and adopted campaign upending most tenets of American democracy and freedom.  He admires Communist dictators, speaks fascism, and aspires to be America's next autocrat.  Those who follow him and choose to vote for him again are ascribing to these ideals.  It is our bounden duty to understand Trump groupies will become our enemies.  They are, but without his leadership their allegiance is malleable.  In the important swing red state of North Carolina, all aspects of daily life are inundated with trying to reelect Donald Trump.  The Republican gerrymandering of voting districts.  Mark Robinson running for Governor.  His minions in the state house, Phil Berger and Tim Moore, silently and diligently are trying to keep North Carolina red.  Donald Trump has proven he is a traitor, a felon, and incapable of being President, but that doesn't matter.  He is being run by others, and the others are the extreme right Republican party which has emerged.  He would be President as a figure head.  The faction running him are Communists.  I am reluctant to use the word communism, but it is accurate.  The fight between democracy and communism never has waned.  Only has it been disguised or diluted.  Rule by government and corporate America has taken root in attempts to privatize government.  The recent decisions of SCOTUS reinforce this bias.  Their limitations of government oversight and the strengthening of the president's supreme authority over the law are  Communist.  This is where America is headed.  Four years of the Trump Presidency covertly put into place seeds of autocracy.  The appointing of judges  sympathetic with the extreme right was the beginning.  Trump's ultimate plan to find vindication from the Supreme Court sadly has come to fruition.  Their misguided, destructive, and criminal decisions are hammering nails in the coffin of America.  This attempted overthrow of democracy by reelecting Donald Trump is the goal.  It permeats every aspect of our daily lives by oppression.  A campaign of fear and intimidation has been simmering, and it is the plausible way to manipulate the voter electorate.  If people don't think clearly, then they will not vote with their minds.  If the American populace is reduced to animal survival, then easily we are manipulated from desperation.  We are depressed and dejected, and most convenient anodynes will sway our opinions.  It takes little cognitive reflection to place Donald Trump.  The Republican force seeking to overthrow American democracy is a clever manipulator of the law.  The recent decisions by SCOTUS ascribe official acts of the office of Presidency immunity from later prosecution.  What they are lobbing in Jack Smith's court is discerning the difference between personal and official behavior.  The Republicans make this difficult disguising one for the other, and it is based upon criminal behavior.  Donald Trump is a keen and avid gangster, and those manipulative tools continue to serve him.  The force behind him, foreign-sanctioned organized crime, is strong and ruthless.  As Americans we are being attacked by fellow patriots and foreign agents.  The plight we face having survived Covid 19 is not unlike American slavery, but it has been covert.  It was a covert assault, and  it is best to become aware of it.  Democratic government is not the source of this antagonism.  Those who believe in democracy also believe in God, and the principals of Christianity are just, fair, and human.  The privatization of government is anti-democratic, because as SCOTUS has proven, the appointing of life long incumbents hinders free and democratic thinking.  If you do not have to jockey or vie for your sustenance, your decision making will support yourself.  Empathy and democracy require effort as does marriage.  It should be no surprise both are failing.  The patterns of communism in America are corporate domination.  It has been Big Pharma.  The American medical community was overrun with evil, and its quest for monetary profit.  Our military is being run by the defense industry, and the arms race is their primary goal.  War is their desire, and it is for profit.  Controlling our food supply and our environment completes the circle.  America has devolved from providing quality for Americans  to degrading their health.  Unhappy unhealthy people are easy dupes and easy of which to dispose.  

Student Body President is Not the President

Last night's debate was an exercise in "gas lighting" by former President and convicted felon Donald Trump.  It was watching a mob boss tell you how he was going to protect your turf if you paid him off.  "Everybody will be happy."  There is some truth to his approach.  The most startling realization inferred from his comments was that if and when he was President Hamas would not attack.  Clearly the connection was made that Hamas simply is a terrorist cell of the Trump Organization.  We know this.  We know he is smitten with Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un, communist dictators with shades of fascist behavior.  Openly and repeatedly Donald Trump said he wanted to eliminate burdens on America's government entitlements killing our seniors, immigrants, and poverty-stricken.  This was his plan.  Murder.  Covid 19.  Stolen confidential national security documents sat at Mar-a-lago about which also he bragged.  Not long later Hamas, a terror cell controlling Gaza, brutally breached the border of Israel and raped, pillaged, murdered and took hostage innocent citizens.  It was clear Donald Trump's connection to Hamas, and he told you.  The rest of what he said was untruth.  "Biden ruined Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.  The troops hate Biden and loved him.  (Suckers and losers)  He said he never had sex with Stormy Daniels.  What is necessary in this election is to think.  Electing the American President has superseded personality.  No longer is it important if the President looks presidential.  A figure head is not what we need.  What is important it to understand what these mean believe and stand for.  Donald Trump seemed more literate, but only because his verbal ability was more fluid than Joe Biden.  That is what he is and has been.  Donald Trump is a smooth-talking, persuasive, charismatic salesman with love of himself.  He does not care about you.  That everything he said on national television was a lie is an atrocity.  Joe Biden repeatedly said it.  "You don't know what you are talking about," and he was right.  To trust the leadership of the free world to a deranged, semi-homocidal, delusional narcissist will be fatal to American democracy.  President Biden did not present well.  His speech was forced and sometimes awkward, but he spoke truths.  Truth is what America needs, not coercion.  Perhaps Biden is rough, but the soft-bellied hand job is not enough to save America. 

The Tet

 Several disparate topics are floating around in my brain, and I may try to touch on all of them.  Firstly a musician is unlikely to develop  true authenticity unless he learns swing music first.  Why?  The reason is you can feign to be a musician in this day and age, because real American popular music is dead.  What suffices today, computer-generated tracks, posing, and attitude do not make a true musician.  The building blocks to becoming a musician have not changed, although America has.  The change in America has not been for the better.  We are living in the delusion of the smartphone, which does most things for us.  The entire process and experience of having to indulge in something to learn it is being lost.  You can shoot a movie on a smartphone.  You can control your health (so they say).  You can check your sugar level.  You can file an insurance claim.  You can do most anything including having sex in cyberspace.  The tech industry wants this, because they make money fulfilling your needs.  Once in America people and brick and mortar businesses had to satisfy your needs.  It took more leg work.  This applies to our educational system, which has been stunted.  The educational system used to be the place where we cut our teeth.  It could be hard knocks, but you learned from it because you had to work at it.  The ease, convenience, and portability of a smartphone has stunted the cognitive and physical ability of the human race.  There is no such shortcut training to be a musician.  A smartphone is a useful digital music player, and more so if you exploit its true audio capabilities by using WAV or aiff files.   Play the recorded music through a hi fidelity audio system and you could experience the true nature of the music.  Most don't do this.  To be a musician you must be able to actualize time.  Music requires an understanding of time, the articulation of time, and the feeling of time.  You must be able to count and keep time at a variety of differing tempos.  There is no substitute for this requirement.  If you can't keep and feel a steady time pulse, then you are not a true musician.  Likewise it helps to possess talent.  Some people work on this their entire lives.  Establishing the building blocks of good musicianship are a good place to start.  Talent can come later with knowledge, experience, and listening.  How does one learn time?  The easiest method is to understand that a feeling can be created, a feeling different than what is bouncing around in the world.  With steady time at a chosen tempo and a specific rhythmic feel articulated by specific metric patterns, feelings can be achieved.  This is a highly controversial statement, and many may disagree with it.  Stravinsky and many others have said that the ascribing of feelings to music is pointless.  Coming from such a intellectual mind, this is shocking and discounts almost in its entirety why much music exists.  It is to voice the soul of the human being, and usually that is laden with burdensome emotion.  Why else would we be inclined to indulge in music?  To learn time there is no better way than to learn to articulate quarter notes.  This could be Beethoven.  This could be in a march, or this could be in the swing style of music.  As I have been studying the Blues, it became apparent that many musician who feel the blues and play the blues are not successful expressing their blues.  It is because they are not playing in good time.  It is easy to fake it.  Only a steady pulse of quarter notes can actualize an authentic human feeling.  Many forms of American popular music don't do this.  The main vocal artist my possess this feeling of time, but often the accompanying recorded tracks are nothing but fodder laid down to a click track.  Some rock bands such as AC/DC feign angst, anger, and aggression while performing, but upon closer scrutiny their instrumental tracks lack rhythmic vitality and groove.  It takes training and skill to play in time, but you can learn.  Teaching your muscles and body to articulate time is a major component of musical training.  As veteran bassist musician Carol Kaye often states, playing in the big bands is crucial training for this express reason.  It readily is evident in Blues performances, when the performers can feel the pulse.  Unfortunately the recent Bob Dylan concert was not an example.  If there is no discernible pulse, then really there is no music.  It could be a pleasant experience, but it will fail to transcend anything.  Secondly the dire consequences of our democracy are are not being understood.  Like music democracy must be supported.  It will fail to actualize unless it is understood, practiced, and reinforced.  Four years of a Trump Presidency has unseated our democracy on many levels, but no one seems to understand.  Corporate malfeasance is the methodology.  Without a capable government to express and reinforce the ideals of our Constitution, our freedoms will be lost.  In so many ways the freedoms of Americans upon have been encroached.  The majority of America have become livestock grazing in the field.  There interest in their own freedom is the same as a cow's.  They don't care, as long as there is hay in the field.  After the Covid subsidies stopped and our spending bubble popped, reality should set in.  There has never been another time in American history (or at least in our lifetimes) that corporate America ruled the roost.  Whether it is telecom, television, streaming, or social media, we are not in control of our own lives.  Big Brother has emerged, and he is all of this.  Corporate America has grown so quickly in the vacuum of post Covid and after four years of Donald Trump's handouts, it will be a miracle if American democracy survives.  They are telling use we will be happy with the new system of communism.  Perhaps the man will own all of our housing and food supply, but we will be provided for.  Believe this!  It is a lie.  Covid is the evidence.  On the contrary they are trying to kill us and thin out the population.  The Big Lie isn't just that Trump won.  It is that anyone cares about the well being of the American people.  The medical establishment has been bought and sold out by Big Pharma, and a handful of elite rich own most everything else.  Certainly they don't need a bunch of refugees roaming the earth.  It is far easier to kill us with a heat dome, famine, plague, or war.  When we realize this we will have a better chance of surviving.  This assault on humanity feels inhuman.  Because the value of human life has changed to cyberspace, it is like an alien species has invaded Earth.  Our familiar former human values and habits are extinct and seem frivolous.  Music?  Art?  Romance?  It is like the Tet is in control. 

When Your Own Property Can Kill You

"Remembering Our Lost Friends" is a Facebook group.  It focuses on Fayetteville, North Carolina residents who die too early, specifically many who attended Fayetteville Terry Sanford High School and the Fayetteville Academy.  I have had friends on this list.  Abstractly we  have known the challenges of Cumberland County.  Because there is substance abuse, and I feel this abuse directly correlates with the challenges of happiness living here, people are reluctant to speak out on the these ills.  Not that long ago a notable family who lived in historic Hamount succumbed to these forces.  The father filled his family and then himself.  He was martyred at his funeral as a pinnacle of the community, and yet he killed his children and his wife in cold blood for no apparent reason.  There is no such thing.  Always there is a reason, and the powers at be choose to sweep it under the rug.  Drug distribution has escalated with the emergence of tobacco/vape shops, and many of these rogue stores are run by outsiders.  The indigenous population of Fayetteville has been infiltrated with foreigners, and there is reason for concern.  It was not until Donald Trump became President that a negative impact began to surface.  He sought to separate America and instigate warring among native tribes.  Foreign operatives have become the henchmen in Trump's scenario.  Always I have been open and fair minded about American immigration until now.  Always have sought to trust my friends and neighbors until now. When you realize these people have begun attacking you and are trying to push you out, it becomes a different story.  You must fight.  Neighbors are one thing, but the forces greater than the individual are more difficult to mitigate.  The most daunting would be the United States military, because they can use the ruse of normal training to do whatever they please including transporting illegal narcotics.  There is a defense mechanism connected to this activity, and hence there is paranoia.  Fentanyl is not a good drug, and it has killed hundreds of thousands of American.  We must understand that is its purpose.  It is not being distributed to make life easier for Americans.  It means to kill us.  Why else could or would anyone need a drug so much more powerful than tradition narcotics?  American industry must be transporting Fentanyl, and containers were found on CSX freight trains.  Deregulation has caused this problem.  If anyone would take the time to remember two decades ago,  commercial airlines were how lower Saudi royalty attacked the World Trade Center twin towers.  These were friends of the George Bush clan, and it concerned petroleum.  Osama Bin Laden offered his assistance to Saudi Arabia, and they refused him as an infidel.  He became angered, and began his campaign against the United States.  If the Bush's had made peace with this man, we would not have had this problem with Middle Eastern terrorism.  George W. Bush created ISIS by leaving American military equipment in Iraq.  There has not been a President with integrity in my lifetime.  Only John F. Kennedy, and they murdered him and his brother.  They murdered Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.  No matter how much we would try as a nation to forget, racism has been rampant.   It is best to remember it clearly.  I have spent much of my life as an adult abroad.  I have lived in Columbia, South Carolina (which was racist) and Columbus, Ohio (which was surprisingly liberal and fair minded).  I spent ten years in the cruise industry traveling all over the world being exposed to different cultures.  Most of them were more advanced then current America, but most would agree America has regressed in recent years.  Perhaps my sensitivity to historical world strife has been augmented by my own personal health struggles as a result of Covid 19.  It may not have happened without the Covid molecule, because it was engineered to do what it does.  It finds your smallest weaknesses and exaggerates them into full blown disease.  It has a nerve agent, and it stays in your body a long time.  My journey of ill health was a long and rocky one.  Before Covid I blew out my lowest disc lifting a heavy oak trunk.  I heard it pop, but I didn't know what it was.  I had a back ache for two years, and eventually my lowest vertebra fused to my pelvis.  I found this out a few years later reading the radiologist's report from a CT scan.  All of my discs had diminished by this time, and that was a result of another pathogen instigated by the emergence of Covid.  Pelvic infections are common, but a blown disc becomes a weak spot for future infection.  Unfortunately it is difficult to diagnose, and ultimately surgery to debride an abscess in the spine is when they harvest a deep culture and find the culprit.  Various antibiotics were tried and did keep me alive and active, but the referred arthritis never stopped.  It became painful to walk.  Secondly working in the yard in the same place, I developed a tooth ache.  I had a resorbtion cavity in a back molar caused by an impacted incoming horizontal wisdom tooth.  It destroyed the molar from the inside out, and for months I was swallowing this bad bacteria.  The first time I had this happen on the ship, it caused H. pylori in my gut.  Two weeks of the appropriate antibiotics, Amoxicillin plus one other, treated that for the most part.  An oral surgeon extracted the molar and the impacted wisdom tooth with no problems, but shortly thereafter an abscess appeared on my shoulder.  I thought it was from an Orb Weaver's bite, because they spun huge webs in our back yard, and often I would walk right through them going to turn off the pump.  There was no pain, which was an indicator of actinomycosis.  Over time unbeknownst to me on my back below the abscess, a hive-like area appeared on my skin with black spots that began to itch.  I was gardening at the time, had fungus on my feet from the ship, poison sumac on my legs, and open wounds on my fingertips from chopping garlic.  Open wounds of any kind are easy access for more bacteria or fungus, and digging in the dirt, planting, and spreading cow manure were the wrong things for me to be doing.  Also I dug a new garden patch and acutely remember breathing in a huge waft of foul soil.  That was the beginning of a lung infection that lasted several years.  My skin became pallid, my contact lenses became infected, and I developed a fiery rash on my forearm that spread to my first two fingers and joint in my thumb.  Inadvertently this got spread to the penis, up the urethra, and to my right kidney.  This bacteria was Enterococcus faecalis, and it comes from your poo.  It also not surprisingly lives in the soil.  Thus began peripheral neuropathy on my right side, that began behind my right eye and ear and ran the length of my right side.  My feet became infected, and each night I had to peel the rotting skin off my my little toes caused by its exotoxins.  Psoriasis developed consequently, and these plaques began to crawl up my shins.  When I had been at the dentist, the hygienist commented on the condition of the roof of my mouth.  After several years of piecing together gratuitous health care with no insurance, and later receiving Medicaid with Obama's expansion money, I was able to take the disparate words of the test results and comments of the various providers and formulate a diagnosis with the help of GOOGLE.  The facts were very specific and fit my symptoms to a tee.  A bacteria that does not effect the bladder but only the kidney.  Recurring sinus infections.  Systemic skin infection.  Referred arthritis.  Raw wounds on the feet.  Difficult to culture.  Existing  as commensal and faculative.  Needing another bacteria as a trigger.  Recurring pelvic infection.  Actinomycosis was the culprit, a bacteria that masquerades as a fungus and lives in the oral cavity.  It needs another bacteria to activate it.  The operative lessons learned are, our world has become infinitely more dirty.  Spewing micro-dust (blacks soot) from low flying commercial jets allows bacteria and fungus  to create a biofilm  often that can become fatal.  This soot is the medium to which the pathogens attach.  This exact phenomenon happened at the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC.  Its shiny stone dome became black and slimy covered with a dangerous biofilm created by low flying commercial jets.  They spent millions on laser treatments.  What is the homeowner supposed to do?  We retreat indoors.  

A Probable Armageddon?

Not only is the United States under the auspices of a "Heat Dome," also we are in a vacuum of accurate, factual, relevant information.  No one says it, and the media is almost in complete denial of reality because of corporate pressure, but the causes of most of America's problems (and the world) are simple.  They are being spun, hidden, ignored, and brandished for greed and global power.  The "outbreak" of Covid 19 was the same.  It was manufactured in the Wuhan Lab in China with United States government subsidized money hidden by the shell entities of the Center for Disease Control, National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Disease, and the Army's Combat Capabilities Development Command Chemical Biological Center.  Luckily Rand Paul's Royalty Transparancy Act of 2024 unanimously passed in the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committees.  The severity of the Covid outbreak was effective masking more dire and consequential problems in global health and life.  All indicator's seem to be pointing to a "Logan's Run" scenario, where humanity almost destroys the earth and chooses to live in a self-created biodome.  Elon Musk wants to desert Earth for Mars.  We have been growing food in artificial greenhouses for years.  Only pure evil could champion such a concept, destroying the Earth or rather attempting to eradicate the human population, so Greek God's will have full reign to frolic in God's paradise.  A Heat Dome is caused by an absence of oxygen, causing us to try to live in a vacuum.  It is an effective weapon of destruction, since life on Earth cannot subsist without oxygen.  Progress continues to raze much needed forestry, rain forest, and local foliage.  The illness of the Earth is what promulgated Covid, and this illness is being disguised on a massive scale.  Media, in sickening displays of sycophantic obedience (to Trump in his puppeteers), report the weather directly from the sources of its industrial disruption.  A "Heat Dome" has a tangible cause, and often it is the United States military.  America's military is nothing more than another shell entity being instructed by the same evil that is controlling the rest of the world.  Its' members simply are indoctrinated to conform, be silent, and take their pay.  If they are lucky they get a "shelter at home" order, before hell breaks loose in their local environment.  So many things are contributing to this assault on the Earth's health, it is difficult to discern their roots.  Private and publicly traded companies are to blame, and share holders are pacified with dividend checks.  This assault on the world is as complex as Hamas' attack on Israel in October.  The Washington Post printed an excellent and telling front page article explaining the depth of this attack.  It was several years in the making and relied upon confidential and secretive national security information that sat in Donald Trump's bathroom at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.  Openly to guests he bragged about their value (stolen documents), and his dire financial recession necessitated their sale to the highest bidder.  The attack on Israel by Hamas was a convenient diversion from Trump's legal matters, and the case charging him with possession of these stolen documents has been stalled by his newly appointed minions in the courts.  That Environmentalism would be the salvation of the world seems silly.  "Save the whales!  Save the rain forests!  We need clean water!  We need clean air."  The proponents of these issues, often people with earthy, Hippie, native cultural perspectives easily of are made sport.  They have been an easy dupe for the Evil.  A simple campaign of misinformation and gas lighting has sufficed, but it began with the deconstruction of religion, public education, and and the polluting of media with propaganda.  This VACUUM is the world's most dire, threatening, and extreme antagonist.  Eradicate oxygen and fill the atmosphere with toxins including electromagnetic radiation, biofilms of algae, bacterial, and fungus, then try to breathe a breath of life.  Add a deadly man-made pathogen to the mix, and you have a formula for mass annihilation.  Anthony's Fauci's response was counter-intuitive to the majority of the established medical community.  Someone, probably Big Pharma, created their crisis and would offer a partial solution for their own gain.  The DuPont and Sackler families have been killing Americans for years, and no living human being on this earth does not have forever chemicals in their blood.  That American government never has been able to eradicate this threat shows the power of these family units that control the world.  DuPont chooses to litigate murder and disease on a case by case basis, and PFAS still is in the American watershed.  They change the name of the chemical, and stunted and underfunded Washington agencies struggle to keep up.  Only recently has North Carolinian Michael S Regan, as Administrator of the EPA, been able to change the status of C8 to a carcinogen.  I would rather not have had to fight these battles in my last chapters of life, but other generations of Americans have had it worse.  Slavery it would seem, no matter how much you ignore Critical Race Theory, is the soul of America.  With its far reaching negative connotations for all  Americans, the effects and results of the human struggle to survive this heinous ill bred spirituality, invention, innovation, culture, and art.  These are the will of the human being to survive and be human, and grievous odds were overcome.  If Facebook has a groups page called "Remembering Our Lost Friends" specifically devoted to residents of Fayetteville, North Carolina, then there are tangible reasons why people die more often here.  These reasons escalated with the Covid outbreak, and now the underlying assault on our and the Earth's health is being disguised for corporate and military greed.  To build a new historically black high school beside a rail yard at Fort Liberty, so the base can get federal dollars from the Pentagon is the most callow, selfish, irresponsible misstep a local government could make.  It would be the metaphor for the Evil that has attempted to overtake the world.  About who are we thinking?  Our children?  The future leaders of the world?  We are thinking of none of this, because the Earth and the human race now is seen as expendable.  It is prophesied in the Bible that Jesus will return to the Earth a second time, and those who are saved with be transported to a new planet of His making.  Those who refuse the salvation of God and His Son will be left in Armageddon to perish in hell flames as fire rains down from the sky and up from the oceans.  Is this to what we have to look forward in our lifetimes? 

The Probable Last Chapter of Reinvention

 Reinventing myself musically is new to me.  Openly I have grown bored with my traditional musical pursuits, especially the piano.  I am not tired of the piano, but having been a professional pianist on ships for a decade, having to approach music from the note specifics of the piano is not rewarding.  It is a job.  Learn and play the exact notes.  I decided to let that go when I left the ship industry in 2014.  I began a partnership with a local musician, and only did it make sense to try new things.  Easily we could have adhered to my historical repertoire of gig material.  It was much more fun and rewarding to just chuck all of that protocol and start from scratch.  No arrangements.  No set list.  No nothing.  We just let the creativity flow, and flow it did.  In the throes of trying to rediscover my musical soul again, I am remembering how successful this partnership became.  We have produced at least six, full length, all original CD's of music.  The music we have created and produced is more sonorous and satisfying than most American commercial music being made today.  The reason is because both of us are seasoned professional musicians with years of listening and playing experience.  We play a variety of instruments, and we have open minds.  Making music is facile to us, and with a bit of logistical guidance from my audio recording days at The Ohio State University, we were able to create an intimate recording environment that produced good sound.  This is key.  We had a small space, and we filled this space with live music, which we recorded.  We did not produce tracks.  We did not exchange projects.  We created live music like a band and recorded it for posterity's sake.  Quality live sound was our goal, and it was accomplished with a vintage drum kit and live amplifiers.  The keyboards were mixed through Ross Typhoon 18" three way PA cabinets, which also were recorded live through microphones.  Overdubs were recorded direct into the computer, but only after we have a live rhythm section sound that breathed like a real band.  This concept of recording was the same as most successful studios in American popular music history.  They were Motown (three live tracks in a dirt-floored garage), Muscle Shoals, and STAX Records.  The Wrecking Crew in LA cranked out most of America's commercial hits, but there was a lot or production in that studio.  When you band can play, sounds good, and has a nice little room, a competent engineer can make hits.  My own personal music projects, about a dozen CD's worth of material (mostly original), we accomplished with a MIDI studio.  Live sound was not the goal or the apparatus.  I used keyboard bass from a variety of sources and drum sounds from a variety of drum machines and tone modules.  My goal was to make them listenable and to groove.  As such I find myself at a juncture.  After five years of this live collaboration with Edmond Truman in his Man Cave recording studio, and after my mother's move to assisted living, I am trying to find my musical center again.  What I have realized is that live sound really is a product of a band, not an individual.  Bass and drums is the foundation of American popular music, and if and when you have that you have the foundation for musical creativity.  Playing with a drum machine is something unto itself, and I am wrestling with this limitation.  I know how to program drums and create a good groove and feel, but it is not fun like playing in a live rhythm section.  Also it does not sound the same.  I get close playing Fender bass with a good drum pattern, and I know how to record electric bass into Digital Performer.  My set up for this though has been in constant flux.  Recently after refurbishing our garage, I began reassembling a multi-keyboard set up to play live.  I don't know if I ever will use or play it commercially again in my lifetime, but I wanted to design it for my own satisfaction and intellectual prowess.  This set up has expanded into three planes, and for the first time I have keyboards on three sides of a square.  Finally I have developed a sound concept, and most of them are in a respectable place to offer their own unique sonic pallet.  (It took a while to decided whether the Rhodes or the acoustic piano would go on the right or left)  As it turns out my stumbling block was a transition of drum sounds.  My EMU Procussion module became noisy because of a leaky  power supply, so I decided to move own.  Into the trash bin it went.  I kept my Yamaha RX-17 drum machines, and they still suffice for Latin Percussion in the studio.  I even bought a dedicated Latin Percussion sound card for the Yamaha S90 digital piano.  It's sounds are realistic, but you have to set up a multi performance for every sound you will use it with.  I chose rather to use the great quality keyboard sounds of the piano itself, rather than sacrificing it for drums.  The choice of transitioning to a Roland Boss DR-880 drum machine was the right choice, but it meant learning a new machine.  I wanted a stand alone drum machine that you can program individual patterns and change their tempo on the fly for a live gig.  No studio set up.  No MIDI merge.  No outboard mixer for the drums.  The DR-880 hands down is the right choice, and only now am I finally inching toward a new musical goal.  I have been programming it slowly in my lap with headphones late at night.  It has been decades since I have had to program patterns into a machine.  Usually I just play the drum parts with my fingers on a MIDI keyboard into the sequencer.  Tonight I was able to figure out how to take an existing pattern in the DR-880, augment it, overdub additional parts, mix the kit, and create an interesting playing experience with which to play live on the new rig in the garage.  I know how to do this, but it has been a long time.  I created a four bar pattern, copied it five times, and overdubbed different percussion instruments for each pattern changing the flavor sightly for each sequence.  You then can switch them on the fly as you play live.  The result was a Jerry Goldsmith cue for his film, "The Russian House."  A percussion groove is the key, but it took sheer willpower to push it out. 

Nature Versus Nurture

 It could be easy to succumb to your immediate environment.  If we were reduced to survival mode living moment to moment fraught with ADD, neurosis, and anxiety, finding the concentration to overcome these odds could be difficult.  Over stimulation is a core component of American life.  It was conceived and implemented just like false healthcare.  When the human body needs solace, sleep, and proper health care, Americans now are antagonized.  Never would I have believed it, but it is ethnic cleansing and genocide on a grand scale.  My instincts told me when Donald Trump became President, we would be subject to some grievous heinous ill not unlike the Holocaust.  I was correct.  Perhaps it was Covid 19, or perhaps it was 2012 ten years later.  If many disparate cultures all predicted an apocalyptic event in one particular year, then there is credence in that intuition.  We have lived it, and one only has to pay attention.  Follow the money.  In the first few weeks of newly legalized sports betting in North Carolina, naive citizens lost half a billion dollars.  Five hundred million dollars was stolen from average North Carolinians, because we are not smart enough not to fall for their ploy.  We are being entertained by losing our money.  We deserve a better entertainment product than Kevin Hart making TV commercials.  We should get more from our gamble.  Instead of gambling we could be investing in tools, infrastructure, or personnel.  It is a visceral, underhanded, despicable addiction offering fake solace rather than support.  America has become an evil empire, and they all are after the tax payers money.  Now it is easier to scoop it out of Washington, DC than to earn it honestly with a product or service.  It's kind of like a dividend check.  Whether it is kick backs from foreign aid, lucrative government contracts, or embezzlement, American tax payers are being raped and pillaged.  Taxes, fees, and utilities, things controlled by the government are escalating.  This is a problem.  Washington is a swamp, and it is bogged down with evil.  The most stark and disturbing reminder of this modern American Holocaust is the new "Covid Wealth."  Americans won't notice when the all-ready billionaires' wealth pushes toward a trillion dollars.  What we will notice is the new wealth that is emerging post-Covid.  Huge hedge funds have begun to buy up housing, because they have the deep pockets and thus the new housing monopoly.  They are the only ones who have this capability, because the rest of America has gotten poorer in the midst of Covid.  The disparity between the extremely rich and the poor continues to grow, and the poor now have been targeted for extermination.  Not only do they want to take your money, they want to kill you first.  The sacrifice of America's health care system is evidence of this overt attempt to kill Americans.  I have experienced this personally in the last few years, and it is a difficult pill to swallow.  When you discover your doctor is a fascist, who has no interested in helping you, it is a shock.  When you discover his real goal is to kill you and take your money, then I understand that my instincts were right.  We have endured a covert war in America, and that war was meant to kill us.  It is not the first time.  Why would America send its young soldiers around the world to fight Communism in Viet Nam for the French?  A virus that appears out of nowhere and targets intravenous drug users and homosexuals was no accident.  It was created by the same evil that created Covid 19 in a lab.  It becomes more understandable why survivalists insist on owning AR-15 assault rifles.  A well-armed militia is the last line of defense against an advancing turned-fascist nation.  What is difficult is discerning the enemy, because they are embedded in our everyday ordinary lives.  They are in the government and in our military.  There are traitors, spies, and assassins, and they are no joke.  It would be wise to hold those accountable for the emergence of Covid 19, and to isolate its presence.  If it still is around, it is not magically appearing in the mist.  It is much more likely in historical context to be being expelled from rail tank cars or airborne strato tankers.  I never will see a C-130 Super Hercules the same way.  There is just too much leeway in the vast red tape of the military to rule out foul play.  When your Secretary of Defense is suffering from prostate cancer, he is not providing enough oversight to a vast network of probable illicit drug trafficking, weapons distribution, and imperialism. The attack on Israel by Hamas was made possible by Trump's stolen documents.  Openly he bragged about them.  The Washington Post published a front page article detailing the complex planning and intelligence needed to launch this attack on Israel.  It came at a convenient time to divert America's attention from Trump's woes, and Trump's son candidly said how his family wanted the Gaza beach front property.  All you have to do is listen.  Thus far the court system has hedged keeping this information from coming to light.  The lawsuit purposely has been stalled protecting traitor Number One, and insultingly he continues to run for the Presidency of the United States.  It is easier to stomach when you know the depth of the stench.