F.

Here's my synopsis.  Any entity, institution, or individual who suggests America's educational systems should not teach in the Autumn quarter, semester, or school year simply is attempting to deny students their right to education.  Since George W. Bush American government fueled by the corporate lobby have tried to suppress education in America.  No Child Left Behind did more harm than good, and the level of public education today is a fraction of what it once was.  Kids are stupid, and it is our fault.  To be blunt and conspiratorial F. is a Nazi.  I can see Adolph sitting behind him smiling.  The sadistic general punishing America, deluded and narcissistic cackling into his toasty oats, injecting methamphetamine, and scratching his itchy genitals.  Subject America, this America to a round of vaccinations instituted by Big Brother?  Instead of ethnic cleansing with a manipulated SARS virus deployed from low flying aircraft, lets inject everyone Jim Jones style, pile them in a mass grave, and celebrate at Mar a Lago.  F. should disappear. 

Communist America

What would most Americans consider freedom?  I have a renewed perspective of freedom in America, and ironically it consists of breaking the norms which have been cemented in our family.  Family upbringing is a necessary and integral part of who you become, but also it can be an albatross.  If success was a part of your family tree, then family can provide invaluable opportunities in American society.  I was fortunate enough to have had this privilege.  (I would like to mention also the snooping aircraft that now is flying outside my home)  A new U.S. Army defense contract provides our fleet of expensive and high tech helicopters at Simmons Army Air Base with a new surveillance package.  It includes infrared surveillance, cell phone monitoring, and acoustical targeting.  Evidently Uncle Sam seems to think my Covid 19 response is exemplary, because he keeps watching and listening.  I also will take this time to say hello to the Ravensberg family, who recently moved back to town.  He is an army intelligence, and from his peculiar behavior I think he may think I am quite intelligent, although I have not been able to get my summer garden planted.  He watches me frequently, and because he seems not to be going to work has a lot of time on his hands.  It seems to be a not gender specific family.  At times it is annoying, having someone in your personal space.  It works both way.  Does his scrutiny infringe upon my personal freedom?  I think not, because when I choose to cook dinner I can shed the norms of society and fix whatever I please.  Most nights it is appreciably better than restaurant food.  Anything freshly bought and cooked is more nutritious and more free of viral infestation.  It is possible to contract severe illness from purchased food, as America has experienced with romaine lettuce.  All kinds of bacteria lurk in the ground in soil, on foliage, and the hands of transporters.  If normal precautions are taken food born illness can be prevented.  Illness spewed from a low flying Cessna aircraft or carried across thousands of miles from low frequency sound waves is a more recent concern.  We have been diligent following the guidelines of our state.  I wear a mask and gloves when shopping and am careful to distance myself from others.  This feels like a breech of my freedom as does a curfew, the lack of availability of certain groceries, and the incessant and repetitive drone of Coronavirus newspeak.  With my renewed perspective of American freedom has come a new perspective of myself.  To work a job one must yield.  Your behavior is determined by your profession and its requirements.  Rarely is one able to be themselves  on the job.  We all are actors, and the more successful actors excel and climb the social ladder.  I didn't learn this until later in life, which battle to choose and which battles to let settle into the ground.  We have a fair amount of freedom in America.  It has been proven by the lax enforcement of Covid protocols.  Where I live you can get away with most anything except propositioning a prostitute on a street corner.  For some reason conservative leadership round these here parts seems to think this is a primordial sin, when in fact it could be considered the oldest profession.  I see nothing wrong with prostitution, only how it implemented, mishandled, and corrupted.  In other nations it is legal, regulated, and monitored.  In America the ruling faction wants all of the pie, therefore we cannot allow prostitution.  The government wants a piece of everything, and this has become the norm during the Trump presidency.  I never have experienced it before.  Empty cabinet positions, non functioning agencies and departments, and the conscious abandonment of oversight.  For three years America has run amuck, and the results are tangible.  It is frightening.  While the  pandemic has been a challenge, it seems par for the course during this particular presidency.  Only was I trying to discern which party was responsible for the premise.  At first I thought it was the democrats, until I saw President Trump's television commercial during the nightly national news.  It was startling.  Before the Covid 19 crisis has been resolved, our president is touting his administration's success with its handling like it had been preplanned.  Two specific sound bytes were troubling.  They were two different governors thanking the president for his response.  They were spliced together in a way that may have misrepresented their true meaning.  The commercial was more like a film trailer, which had been prepared months ago.  During this outbreak of disease it became apparent to me that no one is at the wheel of this country.  We seem to have a delusional and out of touch president who is enamored with the communist rule of Kim Jong-un.  I could only ask myself who would vote for such a man, unless they want a communist regime in place in America?  The Cold War is alive and well again, and America's eternal battle against the Commies or the Reds is at play again.  In this case the parties in play are disguised, misrepresented, and covert.  Communism already has found its way into American government, and unless voting citizens feel strongly enough about America's freedom it will take hold and grow.  What will happen in the coming months will be a taste of that new life. 

Missing the Capitalist Boat

The one thing I fear most is being thought a square.  The definition of square recently has changed.  It means emotionally compromised, a lack of security and self esteem, and possible homosexuality.  The latter is not that important.  A square is someone who is incapable of enjoying themselves, or rather someone who chooses not to do so for various reasons.  Either their family upbringing was wrought with abuse, dysfunction, and frustration, or they have such emotional pain from loss they choose not to indulge in happiness.  I don't see any disadvantage to being square other than you may be lonely.  You will have no fans.  Being thought of as square also means you aren't hip.  You are not in the know.  You don't know how to be cool or how to be relaxed and well adjusted.  The one thing I fear most is being thought a square.  Being square is ignorance and inexperience.   There are educated people who are not hip.  I call these people conservatives.  This is what it is like where I live.  These people would rather you not ride a bicycle on the sidewalk, because you may endanger other pedestrians, namely themselves.  They are afraid and want to feel in control.   This is the reason why people are control freaks.  They have such insecurities and an inability to groove, they need to control their environments to feel safe.  These are the republicans who control America.  America no longer swings.  America lost her swagger, when she forgot how to dance.  This occurred when pop music annihilated Hip Hop on the Billboard music charts.   Overnight a pinnacle of American pop culture, MTV, VH-1, and BET stopped play music videos.  Music video had reached an apex that was insurmountable.  Watch any Slim Shady video produced by Dr. Dre, and you will see an artistic achievement in American pop culture, whether you appreciate it or not.  These music video shorts did for American music what the American popular song did for European classical music.  They condensed an experience via a form into a shorter and more palatable version.  A string quartet may last fifteen minutes like a classical symphony.  An American popular songs lasts three minutes.  The European musical experience was modernized, distilled, and commercialized.  This transition was a huge economic boon to America.  The owners of the music video networks professed, that reality TV had become more profitable than music television.  I disagree.  Reality television pales in comparison to historical American television.  It is not in the same category.  Comparing a Norman Lear produced television show to "Naked and Afraid" is like comparing Picasso to Garfield.  That is a bad analogy.  It is like comparing Barak Obama to Donald Trump.  The Golden Age of American Television is art, and millennials never have experienced it.  It is not their fault. There was a specific, chosen, and planned line of demarcation between America's current youth and America's past youth.  America chose to exploit our millennial generation with tuition increases, with ignorance by lack of support of public education, and by isolation from knowledge and enlightenment.  With a generation at play in America, it would be easy for a regime such as Donald Trump's to control them.  His supporters are too stupid to know the depth of his disruption.  Trump only has one thing in mind, and it is the same thing his faction seeks.  They are communists.  They are the same enemy America has fought for decades in an expensive, extensive, and time consuming Cold War.  These communists sneaked into corporate America through the deregulation of business promoted by George W. Bush.  Once America felt obliged to break up the Bell telephone system, because it grew too large and became a corporate monopoly.  Likewise Washington sought to do the same to Microsoft, because Bill Gates demanded that Internet Explorer be bundled with Windows edging Netscape Navigator out of the browser market.  Evidently someone at Netscape had enough influence to make this happen.  The Justice Department sued and broke up Microsoft.  These are examples of things which millennials do not know or understand.  They have not been taught enough to understand anything involved in American government or politics.  They have been coerced into addiction by Tim Cooke, the Sackler family, and by American railroads.  Our life existence in America has grown so painful and unbalanced, we need something to keep up sane.  What does any of this have to do with being a square?  The example may be a pot calling the kettle black.  Recently I heard a republican doctor called Bernie Sanders a communist.  It was all I could do not to laugh out loud.  Bernie calls himself a democratic socialist, whatever that is.  He is not a communist.  This was an example of the stupidity of which I speak.  Socialism only is a publicly owned means of production, ideally for which everyone is provided.  Unfortunately the human species is not capable of adhering to this socioeconomic system.  Instead a small group of eager, narcissistic, imperial movers and shakers take control.  They then oppress the populace with a military presence.  Donald Trump idolizes this type of government, and he has said it many times.  How his followers agree with this view is unbeknownst to me.  The only answer is they agree with his view also making them communists.  The reality is Donald Trump and his passe are communists, and they are the enemy of the democratic republic of North America.  If people believe I am square because I know this, because I don't own a trophy wife who is my beard, because I don't have children that reap me a heightened housing allowance at Fort Bragg, and because I am straight, then I guess it is true.  The entirety of my iniquities in life are having been selfish in my heterosexual relationships, having been relentless in my pursuit of musical excellence, and having never learned how to brown nose those influential people capable of choosing my own financial success and security.  I missed the boat, really. 

Coup De Tat

Bill Maher truly is worried about Trump not stepping down from office if he is defeated by the democratic candidate.  It would be difficult to step down by defeat from the republican party, because no one has the balls to run against him.  That should tell you something.  I should say no one has the money, because that is the real truth.  The Ukrainian Mob is real, and there job is to intimidate politicians who see through Trump's charade.  It is frightening, because I now realize that ALL of the politicians are in it together.  Bill Maher is on point when he says Trump's people may re-elect him.  I don't think it is possible, but only twice in American history did presidents not receiving the popular vote win the presidency.  There is something fishy about it, and Trump's camp bribed the electoral college.  We are in no better shape now, because nothing has been done.  It is possible Trump could win again.  The pandemic was a plan devised and implemented by the Democratic National Party securing the presidency for Joe Biden.  James Carville I believe is the mastermind.  I asked a customer in a food store the other day how any Trump supporter could vote for him again seeing as this is the worst national tragedy we have had since 9/11.  Bluntly she said he didn't bring it here.  He is not responsible.  She believed it was biological warfare.  I told here there was credence to her story, but it most likely was Americans who carried the disease across the ocean.  Trump slapping on trade sanctions with China was a real enough reason for them to retaliate.  His presidency all ready is a mockery of America, but his followers are so bull headed and ignorant and don't keep up anyway, he just continues to tread water in his own created flood.  Would you vote for an incumbent president with this on his watch?  Who could?  Who in their right mind would vote for Donald Trump again?  While Joe Biden is not my first choice for the democratic nominee, he is okay.  He has had a plethora of political experience, and he is sane.  Does he have bouts of dementia?  I think the answer is yes, but in the high pressure world of politics he is doing okay.  He won't be running the country anyway.  Never does the president run the country.  Always it is Hank Paulson, Henry Kissinger, or Carl Rove.  There is someone behind the scenes pulling the strings.  What I am convinced of now is that there is no hope for America and American leadership.  They all are crooks, and the Corona Virus is just another feeble but successful attempt to empty the till of the American people.  Two trillion dollars?  Washington couldn't find money for universal healthcare, but they can find two trillion dollars to bribe Americans?  It could go either way like politics does, but I don't see how Trump could benefit in the November election.  He has to lose, or else the fate of America is sealed.  We are screwed as a nation.  Trump's people as Bill Maher is quick to point out are the military, the police, and the rest of the government employees.  It is such ridiculous hypocrisy that socialism will be the demise of America.  America all ready is run by and bought and paid for by communists, and they are Donald Trump and his posse.  These are the people that continue to suck on the teat of the American pocketbook, the retired military, the government contractors, and law enforcement.  These are the people about which Americans should be afraid.  I have said it before.  When asked to follow a corrupt Commander and Chief and go against the American populace, what will the military do?  Are they smart enough to have a conscience?  Do they know the difference, or will they continue to think only about themselves.  I am convinced it is the latter.  All of them.  The more I see it, the more I see this contingency in power, corrupt, and immoral the more I see what is coming.  A well armed militia is the last line of defense against a tyrannous government, and as such we must continue to bear arms.  Only the American people, those who have lost jobs from free enterprise, from small business, and from the voracious appetite of of a man made pandemic, are capable of saving America.  The rest, Trump's camp, are just another communist party looking for an overthrow.  They are in power now, and if Carville's concoction is not effective, they will remain in power.  It will not be long until America will be embroiled in another civil or revolutionary war.  When I shopped at the ABC store a few days ago, and there were lines and arrows on the floor telling me where to walk and stand, I professed that this would be the last time I stand in line at a liquor store.  We are not a communist nation, and standing in line for bread, toilet paper, or cheese is a blow to American freedom.  We are a joke of a country.  We are a mockery of ourselves, and it is our uneducated millennial generation largely driving this trend. 

An Altered Reality

Perhaps I grew up in an era, the 70's and 80's when America was determined to excel.  We had just  pulled out of a nasty baby killing war in Viet Nam, a country on the other side of the world.  Why were we there?  Another Afghanistan.  Why are we there?  War, continual and brutal expensive war.  A war economy.  We don't know how to do anything else.  Those things which were paramount to Americans seeking peace, popular music, communion, and free love are deemed silly.  An industry which fueled the economy in America for decades, the music industry, which usurped the film industry in revenue was castrated by the internet.  It was a communal result championed by Steve Jobs and his iTunes program, Napster, and the laptop computer in general.  Being able to stream music and share it undercut America's ability to be able to sell music for an equitable price.  Consequently America's music today has no value.  A commodity with no value certainly does not make the quality improve.  Instead like all things including television, the value continues to decline.  Music, a once potent force in America capable of shaping our culture, now is a meager byproduct of internet content.  If you can't make a living performing and creating music, it can't sustain.  There were many great artists who died paupers.  Jazz musicians lived and died in lives of despair.  Mozart died penniless, but that music which was created still aspired to the highest artistic ideals.  We don't even know what that is anymore, musical excellence.  Certainly the film industry archives musical excellence, but we are seeing fewer and fewer quality productions.  Music also has suffered in this industry for monetary reasons.  The money once that was reserved and spent on great art, film, music, and television now sits in overseas banks.  America is being starved on purpose, just like a viral pandemic is a constructed vehicle for human oppression.  Wake up and smell the coffee. 

Random Thoughts

Usually I thought UTI's might infect other parts of the body.  That is pretty flawed thinking.  I have been on meds on and off for a while.  Whether it's fungal or bacterial my yard work makes it difficult to discern.  I got bit by something cutting a dead limb off of one of our ash trees.  The bites don't hurt at all, but they cause an allergic reaction on my skin that looks pretty severe.  I got bit by a spider on the should that got infected and stayed around for over three weeks.  I popped it regularly, and white puss would ejaculate onto my bathroom mirror.  It was gross, but after that tedium of squeezing it day after day, finally it went away.  Puss is your body's way of dealing with an infection.  My UTI just came out of nowhere while I was taking other meds.  No usual.  Then I realized that it was the other way around.  The UTI came from a bacterial rash on my hands.  Whence it came I don't know, but it was angry and spreading.  Antibiotic cream quelled it in a few weeks, but evidently I gave it to my groin in the daily routine of practicing hygiene.  Cipro it is, and it seems to be working.  It was pretty serious with flank pain, or rather kidney pain.  It hurt all over.  I haven't been drinking.  That's a double whammy.  The train activity has been off the chart, because now the Aberdeen and Rockfish are assembling trains behind Berean Church.  Their shortline tracks run parallel to Robeson Street, cross Village Drive, cross Raeford Road, and head out Cliffdale.  I never knew they were using this area to assemble DAK trains.  They make polyester resin products like plastic bottles.  Certainly we need more of those in a worldwide pandemic.  If I complain about the railroad activity, it gets worse.  They punish me.  Perhaps they think using this area mostly hidden from the public somehow condones diesel freight activity in your back yards.  It sucks.  So now they are shunting cars from the Russell Street yard shared by CSX and N/S to this little yard near Cross Creek Mall.  Glory.  What a timely and wonderful activity.  Those two stroke turbo charged soap box derby engines are dinosaurs and they are really invasive.  What are the odds that shortline railroad tracks traverse your neighborhood?  I mean there is no where to hide.  Back and forth and back and forth.  So the pellets from DAK now are going to Southern Pines.  The Aberdeen and Rockfish have the contract for the moving of their finished product.  Interesting.  I know CSX shuttles in the raw materials right down Russell Street.  All of this side of town thanks the Aberdeen and Rockfish for their two stroke turbo charged diesel electric engines that just sit and sit and sit in our neighborhoods.  Thanks so much.  So on another note Team Pain builds a lot of skateparks.  They got the job done here in 'Nam, but I discovered one thing in this building process.  The new school of skateboarding is different than its predecessors.  I would think that the Z Boys and the Bones Brigade still would be involved in modern skate aesthetic, but that is not the case.  All of the parks Team Pain are building are of a different school of thought.  What is it?  What could be so different?  All of todays' tricks are variations of flip tricks.  Alan Gelfand created the Ollie, and now the ollie is everything.  They are flip tricks.  The big deal is the difference in transitions and their purpose.  Today transitions are meant as propulsion.  They are not to be carved.  Rarely do you see a Bert today on a transition.  The transitions or slopes or grades are there solely do launch you into a run to do flip tricks.  That's why dropping is is the new thing.  This thing about hanging over the lip and then dropping your nose to get going.  That is what it is.  Instant momentum.  It is not from Animal Chin where you had to use your own momentum to get to the top.  I think it is a bit of a shortcut.  It used to be called an elevator drop, but I don't think I've ever seen vintage footage that shows one of the Bones Brigade dropping in on a pool.  They didn't do it.  When I look at the Team Pain parks this is how they are designed, with flip tricks in mind.  They are not really the same train of thought as the parks from the 70's.  It is a whole complete different school of skating.  Instant momentum.  It doesn't appeal to me, because I am looking to draw lines through the parks like you are riding the perfectly tapered asphault waves of Bellagio Elementary School.  You have to pump your board.  You don't drop in to get speed, like "Whoosh."  So those kinds of lines are not really there, and I can't ride the bowls.  This generation of skaters are using gorilla form kind of hunched over and lanky, while the Z Boys and Bones Bridage had a very defined and athletic from based upon surfing.  I can't do it.  And now the park is closed because of disease.  It's a shite state of affairs. 

Trumpean Dynasty

I must take a moment to write, because I cannot continue work on my current project.  Although my eyes are dry and burning, and my contacts are foggy I muster the energy to force my eyes into focus.  Usually it is only at two o'clock in the wee small hours of the morning that my contacts inexplicably dry out and fog up.  Like a light switch that flips my left ear rings and my eyes dry up.  These are familiar occurrences. I am used to them, but I am not used not being able to work on a musical project.  I stand corrected.  I have all but stopped recording music in my upstairs studio.  It has been too frustrating to mix.  If you can't monitor accurately then you cannot produce music.  Recording studios go to great lengths to normalize their mixing rooms.  They have a noise generator and a spectrum analyzer.  They play white noise (or is it pink?) through their studio monitor speakers and then analyze the  peaks and valleys of frequency response.  They then use a graphic EQ to level out the response of the room so that when they mix recorded music what they hear is an accurate portrayal of the content.  Content.  What is this millennial word.  Content.  Content is crap found in a web page.  Graphics.  Images.  Sound bytes.  Music.  Content.  (So my left ear begins to ring, the air in my bedroom begins to undulate, and my FM radio reception falters.  Par for the course.  This is what we have.  It is either diesel electric locomotives from many sources, helicopters from many sources, aircraft, or activity from a Fort Bragg range.  The frustrating thing now is I am trying to restore a vintage keyboard instrument using my garage as a workshop.  Good luck.  I can't complete the work, because this particular phenomenon is invasive to this kind of work.  Perhaps it is not to ordinary life.  Perhaps it does not effect or bother others, but it interrupts my work.  I discovered yesterday that the Aberdeen and Rockfish Railroad has a "yard" behind Berean Baptist Church.  What?  How could this be possible?  Berean Baptist Church is on Glensford at the corner of Cliffdale Road.  Always Fayetteville has know that the A&R tracks connect downtown Fayetteville with Southern Pines.  It is a historic business this short line railroad who sneaked over to Fayetteville in the middle of the night and built a crossover across the mainline railroad tracks so they could access the downtown yard.  No one stopped them.  Normally they assemble their trains in the Norfolk Southern yard off Russell Street which is shared with CSX.  They are there most days assembling trains which go back to Aberdeen.  Yesterday I spotted A&R engines 300 and 400 assembling a long train behind Berean Baptist Church off Glensford.  What the f?  Who knew there was a siding here that allows them to shunt cars from downtown and assemble trains?  Evidently it has been happening for a while, because it used to be one train a day.  10:45 a.m. and 1:45 p.m.  I would hear the train horn and that would be it.  A few hours a day.  Now their trains are manic beginning at six a.m. and not leaving until five in the afternoon.  What is all of this hub bub?  My left ear is still ringing and my eyes are burning with pumped pollen.  I wanted to know what they were carrying.  What was this long line of cars in the Aberdeen and Rockfish train.  It didn't take much to pinpoint the source.  It is DAK Americas.  CSX shuttles out the raw materials for this plant on Cedar Creek Road every day after four, and evidently now the final product is tendered by the A&R.  Pellets I think.  PET resin is their product.  Perhaps the pellets which are processed and make plastic bottles are being transported by the Aberdeen and Rockfish.  I reckon it was a good idea that they laid those tracks so many decades ago creeping out of the Raeford pine forests and making their way to Fayettenam.  It was good for them, wasn't it?  Commerce.  Business.  Money, for them.  My question always has been whence does this arrangement come, this right of way to shunt freight all hours of the day and night on tracks which inundate our neighborhoods?  Especially how does a business which is headquartered in another city have access to contracts elsewhere?  They make their money in another city, and yet exist in Aberdeen?   Fayetteville evidently is their whore, except she doesn't get paid.  She is exploited on a massive scale.  My FM radio reception, WCPE specifically whose transmitter is on Bragg Blvd, is shit.  May I reiterate?  WCPE has a transmitter a few miles from our house, and yet the reception constantly and continually is interupted.  There is static, noise, or a complete drop out of their FM signal which is plenty strong.  Likewise the same source which causes this interuption is what is halting my work on this vintage electric piano.  I have been struggling with it for weeks.  It is both aural and electrical, meaning it is both acoustical and radio frequency.  That is a double whammy.  Not only do you have low frequency air pressure assaulting your tactile sensory responses and affecting your things, you have electromagnetic energy that is causing electrical interference.  The static electricity in my bedroom is tangible.  Static electricity is something that seems from a different era, and yet it still is just as relavent today as it was then.  I cannot "voice" this Rhodes piano, because its mechanism for producing sound is a vibrating tine and tone bar.  This vibration is captured by an electromagnetic pick up consisting of a copper wire wrapped magnet, a makeshift magneto.  The efficienty of this apparatus is great, and the "harp" of the Rhodes piano, a series of 73 or 88 pick ups, produces up to a volt of electricity.  Not millivolts, but an entire volt.  This mechanism is prone to bouth acoustical and electrical interference.  Never have I had problems until now.  While the instrument upon which I am working is fifty years old, it should not matter.  The vibration of the metal tines and tone bars is being quashed, and when a hammer strikes them instead of vibrating freely they are muted.  You can hear the interference in the production of the tone.  The lower frequency harmonic fades in after the upper tone, and there often is a disturbing modulation that sound like it could be caused by a magnetic field.  It is angry and undulating.  I am suspending my work, because it is too frustrating.  It makes me feel incompetant.  It is like trusting a president who cares not about your well being. 

Do You Feel Safe?

As I sit listening to Bobby "Blue" Bland and lament that my civil liberties are encroached upon each and every day...  What could I mean?  With a pandemic infectious disease outbreak in America and all of its faux limitations resembling a communist enforced social doctrine, why are my civil liberties important?  It is simple.  Either your immediate environment will pick you up an carry you through adversity, or your immediate environment will bury you in its ground.  While it easily is understood that the Lost Colony was not helped by their environment, I would think Americans have learned to be prudent about their surroundings.  Don't build in flood plains.  Don't build in tornado alley.  Find geographical locations which are conducive to human life.  Fresh water.  Clean air. No diesel electric locomotives to destroy mental health.  They beat on you constantly with their low frequency undulations.  It is like living in a pressure cooker, a nuclear reactor, or Fayettenam.  Decompression is a valid term for human health.  What does it mean?  It means when you get up every day and step into the world, the odds are not stacked against you.  You are able to live in a nominal state, and I mean an average state.  Nothing is working against you.  Allergies.  The flu.  Gen X in your air and water.  Violence.  Crime.  Shouldn't we be able to rise everyday to a level playing field rather than digging ourselves out of a hole?  We in America are doing a lot of digging.  I spend most of my time trying to sidestep the B.S.  Most days it seems overwhelming.  My brain just shuts down and enters survival mode.  I am not relaxed.  I do not feel healthy.  I am not at liberty to engage my brain at its upper level.  This is the America that America built?  Were we ever great?  How are we going to be great again?  Joe Biden made a simple observation, and asked why president Trump was criticizing the governors.  Why has he engaged in a pissing contest when the country apparently needs saving?  (Bobby's voice is distorted in this recording, overdrive on the microphone)  All I feel Americans want is to feel that our elected officials have our best interests at heart.  They are not trying to kill us or take our money.  We would like to know the American medical establishment is trying to help us and not take our money.   I can't say that it is true.  I do not feel safe at all.  Do you? 

Human Intellect

As I sit in front of an age old TV, a Sony Trinitron from the mid 1990's, watching David Byrne sing in his film "Stop Making Sense," I had a fleeting thought.  Why am I concerned with the well being of America?  Why do I care about childrens' education?  Why do the neighborhood kids seem important to me?  Perhaps it is because I myself missed this boat.  No children for me.  No wife.  No immediate family, and yet I am not unhappy.  Why?  I was fortunate enough to have experienced love at an early age.  I was privileged to have reaped the fruit of physical love at age fifteen.  It lasted seven years, long enough to learn about relationships.  I don't miss not being married, although with the current pandemic life has become challenging.  I have learned to be self sufficient, but people cannot live alone, can they?  My fleeting thought, which was comforting, was I spent four years at the University of North Carolina studying to become a school teacher.  I am certified to teach K-12 music in the state of North Carolina.  Let me say that again.  I studied at the collegiate level to be a school teacher, and school teachers' major responsibility is ensuring the proper education of America's youth.  It is logical that I would care about children, and yet I have none of my own.  That is comforting knowing that homosexual pedofiles are abundant.  It seems they can be traced back to ancient Greece.  I have no interest in the exploits of Jerry Sandusky, Michael Jackson, or Reed Lallier.  I do for some reason care about neighborhood children.  Perhaps it is because with no children of my own, I vicariously can absorb some of the essence, beauty, and inspiration of youth.  It is quite different than adulthood.  There is very much appealing about naive innocence.  It is not jaded.  It does not hate men.  It is not selfish.  It still has the capacity of altruistic love.  My experience is most of these things are absent from our immediate society.  Fayetteville is full of man hating lesbians.  It is full of white hating African Americans.  Most places I go I elicit a strong and antagonistic response from people, probably because I have been off the sauce for about a month.  When there is no alcohol for diversion, your inclinations become condensed.  I am not much for B.S.  If you are to become a successful musical artist, composer, or jazz improviser it takes serious commitment.  I will admit that in recent years, as I have assumed the responsibility of caring for my aging mother, my musical priorities have changed.  My life priorities have changed as well.  It is a different ball of wax.  I still strive for excellence, but instead of seeking it in composition I seek it in keyboard instruments.  They give me an immediate and gratifying reward for my due diligence, like a good wife.  For me they are necessary.  Maybe it is unusual substituting musical instruments for human flesh.  Musical instruments don't criticize.  They don't sass.  They don't abandon you.  No human being over the age of fifty deserves to be abandoned.  By this age you all ready know yourself, your strengths and weaknesses, and your capabilities.  You must to survive life's often cruel journey.  Your self worth is not based upon someone else's opinion.  Screw them.  We are all we have.  Ourselves.  This is not to say were are narcissistic like our president.  It just means we must look out for number one.  Caring about local children and their future makes me feel good.  It helps me transcend my own meager and seemingly meaningless musical existence.  While I strive to create musical beauty and excellence, I realize I myself am living in an extreme vacuum.  The world around me is deteriorating.  The things that inspire me, move my feelings, and give me spiritual fulfillment not readily are recognized by America as a whole.  I am an anachronism.  I assume there are millions of others in the same boat.  The priorities of America have changed drastically, and this pandemic is calling our bluff.  Money can't save humanity, only human intellect can. 

America's Plight

Always it has been a bit of a mystery to me why the other half refuses to acknowledge that art has tangible boundaries.  Great art cannot be produced in a vacuum, although inspiration and natural talent are real.  Music, in all of its nebulousness, still is a genie's bottle.  Try to have a meaningful discussion about the tangents of music composition, style, or form and you are in for frustration.  Most people don't know anything about music.  Certainly because the arts have lost favor in American public education, jazz in particular remains a melting pot.  It is not.  Jazz, as one of America's truest art forms, easily is definable.  Ken Burns did an exemplary job explaining it in his video series.  I learned much from his documentary, and still I am learning.  What interests me the most is the authenticity of jazz music.  Its roots are the roots of America, and while these roots also were personified in country music, jazz embraces the African American experience and slavery.  Other than colonizing Europeans' ruthless rape and pillage of Native Americans to claim America for their own, what could be more representative of the triumph of the human spirit than the escape from slavery?  Even after Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves with his Emancipation Proclamation, and hundreds of thousands of Americans needlessly were killed in the Civil War, the South continued a reign of oppression and racism against blacks for sixty years.  They continued to wage war even after the war had ended.  New Orleans attempted to succeed from the union, and the federal army sailed up the Mississippi River and bombed this cultural mecca into submission.  Soon after they left, the South implemented their own system of racial segregation.  Murderous lynchings set the example for white rule in the American South.  This is difficult to fathom, people of America purposely and deliberately persecuting another race for their own gain.  Whether there was compassion and intelligence involved does not matter.  The South proclaimed the white race superior to any other, and evidently they enjoyed parading around in white sheets and pointy hats killing niggers.  You have to do something.  There is no explanation for this behavior except ignorance.  If a people are capable of such behavior, then we all can recognize the value of education and its ensuing wisdom.  Without it man regresses to level of the animal kingdom.  It was not that long ago.  It was not that long ago that Nazi Germany gassed millions of Jews in the name of ethnic cleansing.  While youthful Americans want to close this chapter of history and move on, unfortunately it is necessary to remind ourselves what is possible in a nation.  That is the worth of monuments of our Civil War, to remind ourselves what is possible.  It is important to memorialize the hundreds of thousands of Americans who died fighting for their own cause.  America was not able to achieve solidarity without the loss of many lives.  Still after this grievous conflict, racial oppression continues.  Jazz music is an aural and spiritual representation of this journey pitted with stones and thorns.  Possibly it is in the worst of times that the greatest art is produced.  It is like that now.  Again we are faced with such monumental conflict, a pandemic, a corrupt government, and an incapable leader.  On the up side in spite of threatening, ominous, and frightening news America seems to have found roots.  If being quarantined at home is the solution, being forced to go cold turkey from what America has become, then it appears to have transpired.  When faced with ensuing death it would seem human priorities become clear.  What is interesting is that our nemesis, other than racist Americans, is a tangible entity.  We are learning first hand that American government cannot regress into television.  Donald Trump has tried this, and it has failed on a massive level.  American life, human life, is not television life.  It is not artificial, scripted, and biased for entertainment purposes.  Our challenges for survival are real, and we are experiencing that with this outbreak of the corona virus.  Disease is and always has been real.  When the medical profession sells out to greed with the aid of the pharmaceutical companies, the reality of disease will present itself.  It has.  Likewise the predicted "Electronic Age" is wreaking havoc on humanity and our planet.  Electromagnetic energy, dangerous invisible  radiation has become rampant.  Its defense is not unlike the defense of jazz music by ignorant men.  It is nothing.  It is everything.  You can't define it.  It just is, so let it be.  And so ends the planet as predicted in the Bible's Book of Revelations.  Fire will rain down from the heavens and up from the sea.  Those who have accepted God will be transported or resurrected to a new planet, and the rest will be left to suffer on the scorched earth.  That is not a pleasant scenario, and yet Republicans seem not to be concerned.  I think they may be more at home in hell. 

Man, It's Too Hot

As the corona onslaught continues, and March Madness proves its authenticity common Americans should ask themselves, "What is the source of this pandemic?"  Roughly we know its origins were in China, the product of bat droppings.  Quickly it spread to Europe.  I remember SARS.  I remember the bird flu.  I remember ebola.  The question is, who or what is responsible for the news?  News.  I don't mean fake news.  Once there were news bureaus, and they were high and mighty, not in the sense of pretentiousness but in the sense that they were staunch, respectable, and honest litmus tests for American society.  News reporting, as in the Washington Post's expose of the Watergate scandal, is what keeps America and hence the swamp honest.  With the slate of recent legislation which frees corporate America of any governmental oversight, and the repeal of specific legislation requiring news agencies fairly to report both sides of a story, our news "media" has become a monopoly.  I am not going to take the time to research again who owns the three major television networks, ABC, NBC, and CBS.  We all know they are a distant shadow of their former selves.  Les Moonves was a part of it as is the Murdoch clan.  Rupert quickly is aging, but his family will inherit his kingdom.  From down under Rupert came and like Ted Turner swallowed every media guppy in eye shot.  Our question should be, "Who are the gods controlling their media?"  It is a small lot, because how else could such a consolidated and far reaching presentation be accomplished?  Each night my mother and I sit and the supper table and watch the evening news, once a source of unbiased honest reporting, we listen to Wes Hohenstein say, "We have broken another record."  This happened again a few days ago when Fayetteville almost broke the heat record in the month of March.  Like a bad B grade satire Wes's protocol now is trying not to break a smile when he announces we have broken yet another heat record.  This has been ongoing for several years.  I only can ask myself what is the source of his meteorological information.  His forecasts are about fifty percent accurate.  We are better to stick our heads out the door each morning and breathe in.  There is no explanation for why Fayetteville is so hot, and why it continues to break climate records.  There are simple answers and yet Thom Tillis and Richard Burr are not interested.  Neither is Donald Trump. Vladimir Putin desperately wants climate change, because the melting polar ice caps mean an open shipping lane for the USSR.  His ships all ready are traversing this now open channel.  Certainly energy companies benefit from global warming.  We must pay to stay cool.  If you live in a climate controlled pent house with your every need tended global warming might not be of interest to you.  For the rest of us global warming is wreaking havoc on our everyday lives.  How you may ask?  Ask our yard.  Truly it is confused by record breaking heat in February, when Fort Bragg holds one of its mass vigils of war preparedness.  Something like 650 vehicles assembled at the Normandy Drop Zone.  The heat in Fayetteville comes from military activity at Fort Bragg.  Also it comes from CSX and their constant freight rail activity servicing DAK Americas, Cargill, and military aircraft.  No one seems to care, because Fayetteville is a military town consisting mostly of military dependents.  When faced with a moral dilemma such as the choice between ensuring the health and longevity of the planet or  putting food in the mouths of your kids, it is understandable what they choose.  It is unfortunate that America has become so financially irresponsible so to no longer be able to ensure her own security.  Our investing and lending practices have become dubious, covert, and risky.  No longer do we vet risk.  We pool and trade private mortgages.  We behave like immature and self centered children.  The deep and substantive systems upon which America was built have been cast aside like aberrant step children.  Science, the arts, and other crucial humanities, parts of the core existence of the human species, have been cast out.  As such the economy of America, once infused with life, spirit, and hope through freedom of opportunity, now is an oligarchy.  There is no better example of this than an elected president who never understood the job or role of the American president.  He wanted the office for show to become popular.  Trump is the ultimate narcissist.  He has proven again and again that his administration has no clue about what they are doing.  Jobs?  Tasks?  Managing America?  Handling pandemics?  Balancing the budget?  Trade negotiations.  Bringing down the Berlin Wall.  Ending the Cold War.  Making peace with China.  Solving the Bosnian crisis with the Dayton Accords.  Freeing the Iranian hostages.  Trumps presidency will be documented in history as one of the most failed tenures of leadership.  Meanwhile, as Stephen Colbert would say, our yard is confused.  The azaleas, hydrangeas, and other flowering foliage don't know whether it is summer or winter, because our temperatures fluctuate dramatically.  Wes Hohenstein has the most difficult job, because he has to report the weather with a straight face. 

A Rigged Novemeber Election

We all should take a moment to reflect on the Coronavirus.  While the Fort Bragg air show has ceased for the most part with the exception of a flyby by their Compass Call Command jet, other industrial activity still flourishes...  In the true nature of American capitalism when humanity is challenged industry doubles down, not for the people but for themselves.  That is the example of Fayetteville, North Carolina.  The weekends in Cumberland county are not for R&R.  They are not peaceful, serene, relaxing days like God intended.  The sabbath is the day of rest.  In Fayetteville the military uses Sundays to monopolize a mostly inactive regional airport.  They practice "touch and goes."  Likewise isolated diesel locomotives wander the landscape like stray cats looking for a mate.  It is well known that most affluent citizens travel to the beach or to the mountains to enjoy their weekends.  Fayetteville recognizes it as a time to exploit.  It is a deserted wasteland and provides no rejuvenation for your soul or body.  The weekends
in Fayettenam are like war, and you are better off to understand this.  You sleep worse on the weekends.  You feel worse on the weekends.  Weekends, once meant for enjoyable outing at the Myrtle Beach Pavillion, the Wrightsville Beach fishing pier, or a meal at Calabash now are reserved for the preparation of the military.  North and South Carolina have become donors for the Pentagon.  Let's see.  Seymour Johnson Airforce Base.  Camp Lejune.  Cherry Point.  MOTSP.  Fort Bragg.  STRACNET.  The military action is churning all the time.  Even when there is a global pandemic Fort Bragg covertly continues its war economy.  What is it this time?  Why has there been a standing wave in my home for the last few weeks.  Why is my left ear ringing like a banshee?  That is because under the ruse or guise of a global pandemic manipulative wheels are churning to manipulate the American people.  What do I mean?  How easily we are distracted.  Interfere in the November election?  Ah yes, Bach.  "What if the pandemic still is causing problems in November."   The answer was absentee ballots.  Mail in ballots.  Manipulable ballots.  Ballots with no chance of being accurate.  They all ready are talking about new machines.  New software.  Let's all mail in our votes so that Trump can declare a hung election.  Too many dicrepancies.  Talk about manipulating the electorate.  How about falsifying the results in grand fashion with a bunch of white collar corruption so familiar to incumbent Republicans.  It is the modus operandi. 

The Once Beautiful Music of America

As I sit in my bedroom and listen to my own rendition of Henry Mancini's "Moon River," it dawned on me that not everyone may understand my beef with the railroads and the military industrial complex.  It is more probable that most people think I am a fanatic, an extremist, or more threateningly a socialist.  To rail against the military in a military town is unpopular.  To chastise an incumbent industry upon which the military relies also is risky.  I am surrounded by young, fit, exuberant fighting men.  To criticize their sustenance is picking a fight, and to criticize the "Iron Horse," that which built America, also could be considered  unpatriotic.  It also should be remembered that while the railroads did traverse our continent and pave the way to the west, they also took prisoners.  Any settlers that were in their way, by the use of Eminent Domain, were misplaced and lost their homesteads to the railroad's right of way.  Railroads became monopolies and eventually trusts which maintained lopsided power over American citizens.  Not much has changed.  Because the railroads built America there is not much place that is not replete with long existing trackage.  It is everywhere, in our towns, in our cities, and in our own backyards.  The railroads have made a resurgence in recent years and now have forged their way into the Fortune 500.  Warren Buffet owns the Burlington Northern Santa Fe in its entirety.  That should tell you something.  Every American knows that we are living in a time unlike ever before.  We are on unfamiliar ground and it is shaky.  Major aberrations have transpired in financial America which have put the nation at risk.  A newly elected President Trump has not helped.  Instead he rewarded corporate America with a twelve percent tax cut which unbeknownst to most tricked back to the middle class.  The rich continue to reap massive rewards for duping the American public.  The media has not helped.  Whenever God was removed from American consciousness and legislation was repealed which forced the media to present both sides of an issue, the stage was set for massive corruption.  The Huffington Post calls it the rise of white collar crime, again.  I could care less about Precision Railroading.  What I do care about is the infringement of my right to peace and well being.  These rights are blanketed under our federal government's Environmental Protection Agency, and it has taken a full frontal assault.  During the Trump presidency everything in place in America which protects citizens from unfair exploitation and abuse has been purposely dismantled.  Our environment, our natural resources, our civil rights, and our opportunities have been seriously neutered at the behest of Donald Trump and his administration.  It is undeniable.  It should be of no surprise that when he was inaugurated things instantly got worse for American civil rights.  Trump began a race war and reignited segregative sentiments which have torn the country apart.  Ranting about environmental pollution and noise would seem a pebble in a fast rushing stream of ensuing governmental corruption.  Scott Pruitt, a man who sued the EPA fourteen times on behalf of the fossil fuel industry, was tapped by Donald Trump to be its administrator.  In like fashion our current president has attempted to dismantle just about every American policy ever enacted for the good and protection of average working class people.  It has been a bold agenda, and not unlike Adolph Hitlers Nazi propaganda seduced and hooked many Americans.  Only when you are on a train headed for Auschwitz will you realize truly you have been railroaded.  Railroaded we have become.  When I criticize rail traffic the most common response I receive is how most folks wax philosophic about the wail of the distant train whistle.  A whole genre of popular music was created by the influence of the rhythmic undulation of chugging steam locomotives.  Certainly it has a place in America's heart and culture, but things have changed.  No longer do we live in a care free time when hobos traveled the rails living the vagabond life.  Railroading, more specifically "Precision Railroading," has penetrated America.  Our spaghetti bowl, a mish mash of meandering trackage, has become the target of high dollar exploitation.  European models of super efficient and quick rail transportation have put undo pressure on an antiquated and unstable network of trackage in America.  All ready we have seen the dire consequences of its exploitation.  Amtrack casualties have risen dramatically.  People are dying as a result of riding Amtrack passenger trains.  This is because what once was a federally funded company has become a for profit privately run business, and they share their corridors with major freight railroads.  Precision Railroading has created massive delays in Amtrack service, because shareholder dollars take precedence.  Amtrack passengers are left waiting on sidings until big business gets its nut.  This could be a metaphor for today's America.  Average citizens, the little guys, no longer are America's priority.  Since Donald Trump became president America has become a rich man's club.  In very deliberate, covert, and sinister methodology Americans are being ethnically cleanses.  If it is by the food industry and unhealthy and mislabeled groceries, with polluted drinking water, or coercive misleading healthcare Americans are being poisoned rather than healed.  Healing has become a favorite and lucrative business for the wealthy.  With all of this squarely in our faces I as a musician shout most loudly about one thing.  When I am listening to Henry Mancini's "Moon River" in the privacy of my own home, I am reflecting on the ridiculousness, absurdity, and unconstitutionality of how my musical craft is made more difficult.  It is simple.  Our home is full of invisible pollution.  We have done all that we can do to suppress ambient noise, but when I try to create music it is startling and infuriating to the degree that sound is mangled.  Rarely do I ever hear a pure, pristine, and beautiful sound no matter how skilled the source.  Instead I hear an undulating, modulated, demonic wash of sound that bears little resemblance to its true nature.  I have been trying to voice and tune several Fender Rhodes electric pianos, keyboard instruments which derive their sound from electromechanical means, and their tone generator, vibrating metal amplified by magnetic pick ups is raped and pillaged by aberrant, airborne, electrical and acoustic energy in the infrasonic range.  It is non stop.  Not only does electricity arc through the air, sound continuously moves from the modulation of this energy.  The Environmental Protection Agency was created to protect Americans from hazardous pollution of all kinds, but President Bill Clinton saw fit to ignore the long standing recommendations of the FCC and auction off unused microwave frequencies to telecommunication companies which have become the new American economy.  With microwave transmitters on every corner, the need for a portable entertainment device seems to outweigh the dire crisis of the excessive heating of our environment.  Does no one really put two and two together?  Microwaves produce heat and manufactured heat is killing the earth.  I struggle to produce beautiful, meaningful, and sonorous music, and yet I do it in spite of the military industrial complex and its supporting industries.  There are those who believe in and support a war economy.  Bombs bursting in air and the red glare of rockets are patriotic to some degree, but war is not the answer.  Any economy that is based on war and the probability of war will fail as man has proven time and time again.  Will we destroy ourselves in great and loud revelry, a bacchanal of military might, or will we find peace, joy, and serenity in the beautiful music of America? 

The Reality of the Military Industrial Complex

It dawned on me today, that perhaps I have not made it clear that Fayetteville, North Carolina, my home town, is a military town.  Not only is it a military town, now it is the host city for what has become the world's largest military base.  Perhaps we should call this metropolitan (if you can call it that) area Fort Bragg.  Fayetteville really is and probably always has been the commercial support system for the post.  They are changing that.  Since BRAC decided this was the place for Ground Forces Command, because a general wanted to be able to walk out of his office and see his charges, Fort Bragg has become a system of and for its self.  Like Mark Regensburger pointed out in his published refute to an opinion of mine that was published in the Fayetteville Observer, I never implied that Fort Bragg was an orange grove, a pine tree forest, or a sanctuary for the woodpecker, although two of those examples apply.  If you read the charter information about the formation of Fort Bragg, its geography was a major factor in it becoming a training ground for the United States Army.  Agrarian it is not, but once it was open to everyone.  This was before 9/11, before veteran army member Timothy McVey bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building with a huge rental truck filled with diesel fuel and fertilizer, and before cops began murdering African American men indiscriminately.  Fort Bragg was casual perhaps because the nation was tired of war.  We were at war for ten years in Viet Nam, and many people died for no reason.  American soldiers were labeled baby burners.  The country had a brief respite from the war machine until the Persian Gulf and Americas attempt to secure oil in the Middle East.  We haven't stopped this pillaging, and it is why America's fighting men are dying senselessly in Iraq and Afghanistan.  It is both oil and poppies, because large drug companies control both the prescription and illicit drug trades.  The rumor was the FBI flooded Hollywood with cocaine, because who else except well paid stars could afford recreational drugs?  In the flick American Made where Tom Cruise plays on of the first pilots who flew drugs into our country, I only could ask myself whence was the buy money coming?  Who had all of those millions in cash to be able to buy the drugs he was smuggling?  Good question I think.  The word was soldiers of all ranks were smuggling hard drugs into Fort Bragg in dead soldiers' coffins.  Now the base is buttoned up like a granny's gown, and DAK Americas, the former Roman Haas plant is owned by a Mexican conglomerate.  I am not making this stuff up.  I used to drive straight across the base to get to Pinehurst to play the piano in the hotel, right past the Special Operations facility.  When I drove back after midnight I would get strafed with attitude from low flying aircraft.  Sometimes I would see a night jump.  They were not concerned about a pianist.  We attended concerts at the stadium on July 4th, ate brunch at the Officer's Club, and otherwise had free reign of our taxpayers property.  Perhaps Professor Regensburger is not familiar with this era in Fayetteville history.  Certainly it was not agrarian, but it was not ominous and foreboding.  There were no attack helicopter ranges.  Pope Field was still Pope Air Force Base, and we would go to airshows right on the tarmac.  If is unarguable that Fort Bragg no longer is this way.  It also is unarguable that four returning veterans murdered their wives while stationed at Fort Bragg.  As much as the Pentagon, the DOD, or the Commander and Chief try, people want to get as far away from Fort Bragg as they can.  To me it is a bit like the Longaburger Basket company.  They want you to live on the compound.  Inhabitants of Fayetteville are familiar with the 82nd Airborne.  We are familiar with the Golden Knights.  We are familiar with an army that once was steeped in patriotism, pageantry, and good spirit.  Daniel Toven, in his brief stay at Fort Bragg, carried on this tradition with his Ground Forces Band.  We were privy to expertly performed music of all kinds in Festival Park all year long.  I really came to love this army band.  Now they have been dissolved and a small contingency merged with the already existent 82nd Airborne Band.  No longer do we have these concerts, and since the base is secure we are not free to frequent their performances for their own families.  We are accustomed to heavily loaded low flying C-130 transport planes filled with fighting machinery.  They are unmistakeable, because they fly in a que directly over Cross Creek Mall.  Today Fort Bragg is both covert and a covert.  They are loading munition trains underground.  People used to ask, "Where is all that dirt coming from?"  While Fort Bragg may not be NORAD, its proximity to Washington, DC is cherry.  Additionally the political process has relieved Charleston, South Carolina of its once naval responsibilities.  The hauling of heavy equipment via rail was one of the prerequisites mentioned when BRAC made their decision.  This burden was transferred from the Charleston Naval Station to Fort Bragg.  We live in a democratic republic, not a communist regime.  America's taxpayer dollars pay for the excess of Washington, DC, and as of late everyone who is an elected official seems to forget their job.  They are being paid to serve us.  The booty is so rich, so clandestine, and so tempting, they must take the fruit, and so they do.  Donald Trump is no different.  The deficit has escalated during his presidency.  No one in Washington seems to understand that each and every employee, elected official, or cabinet member has a job.  The entire charter of America, its government and systems, purposely has been discarded.  We are on a fast boat to communism.  The coronavirus merely is a tool to implement this vision.  "Stay in your homes!"  "Cancel cultural events!"  Control the masses.  I can't believe what I am seeing.  Our president wants to rule America like Kim governs North Korea, and everything he says or does leads to this philosophy.  Not unlike Adolph Hitler he has mesmerized and whitewashed his followers into submission.  The people you see at his rallies behind him at the podium are paid employees which travel with him on chartered buses.  I cannot look at him.  The change at Fort Bragg has come with this president.  A change in corporate America has come with this president.  How is it possible that CSX posted first quarter earnings of 834 million dollars in 2019?  That is in three months time.  Three months.  The answer is STRACNET, the Strategic Rail Corridor Network.  I am not going to take the time to research their protocol.  I know Hunter Harrison was hired as a ringer and then died.  His successor vowed to continue his rail policy, Precision Railroading.  I know CSX was found guilty of bullying their employees not to file for workers compensation.  It is a mafia.  Rudy disassembled the Italian mob and handed the reins over to a folks of his choice including himself.  So appropriate.  "We can't let those dago guineas control the rackets!"  The dapper Don died in jail and the new mob went to Ukraine with Rudy as their consigliere.  Trump is their Pope.  All of this politics aside and back to reality, or a semblence of sanity in American history, politics along with most other American aesthetics now are defunct.  America is a mass of addicted, self-aborbed, androgynous, androids staring blankly into the abyss of their iPhones.  The idea that one must become autonomous, self thinking, saavy, questioning, and plural is far beyond our current educational system.  It is marginal.  It is base line.  It is ineffective.  The current state of recent Americans is exactly what was desired by those in charge.  I have a lot to mourn,  the death of friends, family, and now the death of a nation and its heritage.  It is crumbling all around me.  We do not know what an artist is.  We do not know what politics is.  We do not know anything about what America is.  We are being transformed into nothingness only with the Greek gods pettily bickering over what's for dinner.  Once I enjoyed politics, because it gave you an identity.  You stood for something.  You had ideals.  You made decisions.  You disagreed.  Now we are fodder, and we are fodder so corporate America may do as they please.  Corporate regulation has been disassembed like the Office of Noise Abatement in the ERA, and arch enemies have taken control.  How can any Trump supporter not understand that it is the human race's responsibility to care for the earth?  Only childish trust accounts could be so foolish, a silver spoon in their mouths from birth.  It is time to wake up and become an adult. 

History, Heros, and a Home Town Feeling

I do not hate the town whence I came.  I do not feel any shame.  Although I was born in Mocksville, NC we transplanted to Fayetteville in the mid 1960's.  Starkly I remember the evening newscasts were wrought with Viet Nam violence.  Alexander Graham once was Fayetteville High School, and it sat downtown at the bottom of Haymount Hill off hay Street.  Margaret Willis once was called Belvedere Elementary School.  I was bussed across town to Ramsey Street and Washington Drive.  Friends of mine attended Horace Sisk which now has been absorbed by FTCC.  I graduated from Terry Sanford High School as a member of the Honor Society.  I graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a Bachelor of Music Education degree and have been licensed to teach K-12.  I still am.  I completed a masters degree from the University of South Carolina in jazz and commercial music, and I have completed all coursework for the completion of a DMA degree in music composition at The Ohio State University.  My memories of Fayetteville consist of musical excellence, intelligence, class, and artistry.  Now I am seeing a different picture outside looking in.  I do not hate the town whence I came.  I do not feel any shame, because although I do complain, and Fayettevillle has become a pain, I will remain.  (for the time being anyway)  Notable achievements in Fayetteville are the development of a world class symphony orchestra, a professional chorus, a new baseball stadium, an aviation museum, a skateboard park, and soon to come to frution, a sport complex and performing arts center.  I pleasantly was surprised to read Bill Bowman's opinion on this new city endeavor.  "Don't Railroad the Performing Arts Center!"  There is a rich musical community in Fayetteville, and whence it comes I am not sure.  My mother and I enjoy concerts of all kinds, and all of them are artistic and satisfying.  This is unusual and a fairly new occurrence in Cumberland Country.  What we don't have is jazz.  With all of this said, a city once which was heralded as possessing history, heros, and a home town feeling, now has become an industrial junkyard.  To name a few business closures:  Walmart on the Murch.  Auto Zone in front of it.  Many corner drugstores.  The ghosts of thriving businesses are beginning to haunt us as the trees disappear into the mist.  "We can't get to your store, because of the concrete medians."  There are a handful of things happening off the radar of the population, and they are kept there on purpose.  I would ask how single working parent military families can afford three hundred thousand dollar homes in Vanstory Hills?  The reason is because I feel they are being coerced into adopting such a lifestyle to ensure their military longevity.  Bill Clinton's major campaign promise was that every American should be able to own their own home.  Three decades later this concept almost destroyed the American economy.  Unvetted loans were shoveled out to everyone.  When the fine print was revealed and their payments escalated, foreclosures abounded.  It was a trap.  Everyone gets a house.  One housing crisis later, the economy of the United States has yet to return for the working class.  Instead those who got the money, those Wall Street brokers, kept the money and began implementing a system of oligarchy controlling the masses.  This was the beginning of a new governance system in America, and Donald Trump is the final chapter.  Bill Maher on his show has asked several guests including Amy Kloburchar the question, "What if Trump doesn't leave?"  I had to think about this for a few weeks.  What is he talking about?  He then clearly states that Trump's camp is the military, police, and the others who have caused trouble from the inception of his presidency.  What Bill is talking about is a revolutionary war.  I feel it is a combination of a civil and revolutionary war.  What he has yet to describe is a governmental/military takeover of North America.  Trump after all is the military's Commander in Chief.  Oficially they must do what he says.  Right there is one grift upon which I reflect.  If called upon to suppress the American people if they rallied against him, would they do it?  Would they obey the Commander in Chief of the United States, or would they commit mutiny?  Are they enlightened enough to know for whom they serve, or is their personal security more imporant than the good of the American people?  It is a tricky question.  Bill Maher is saying that the Trump administration would refuse to relinquish federal power with a lie.  They would fabricate a story that simply lies and disguises the true results.  It has been happening for four years.  It happens everyday.  Big Brother is here and Trump is it.  The problem is his supporters are not enlighened enough to see through him, even after he has hurt so many people.  Only the oligarchs are being looked after.  Imagine a coup in Ecuador.  Imagine Hugo Chavez.  Imagine bloddy civil wars all over South America and in the Middle East.  Imagine a militaristic dictatorship lead by Donald Trump and mindless Americans following him until they are shipped off to the gas chambers.  Sound familiar?  Adolph Hitler used infrasound as a tool of the Nazi Party.  They would inundate the crowds with massive low frequency noise to rile them up.  America is riled up now.  There are murders everyday, and the evening news is like satire.  The most brutal and ignorant crimes happen every day with no explanation.  Imagine armored vehicles thundering down your street enforcing a national curfew.  Imagine the Senate counting America's electoral votes.  Imagine the Senate, with Mitch McConnell as its leader, acquitting our president of treason.  It is time to be afraid. 

American Art

There are major junctures in history when previous artistic achievements abruptly stop, and a new period begins.  In Western music history over the course of twenty centuries since the birth of Christ and previously for ancient Greece, style periods emerged.  Commonly they are known as Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Modern or Twentieth Century.  I am learning their are sub categories of each of these stylistic periods.  That is the beauty of Western music history, of which millions have made their passion studying.  Phd's would be nought if these intricacies of musical expression were not abundant.  American music history has its own eccentricities, and because it is a young many of them have yet to be formed.  Jazz has done well to study and organize its music, although it more accurately could be named African American Classical Music.  It should be, suggests jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan.  The history of jazz music in America necessarily must embrace our nation's deepest scars.  Many of them are from slavery.  The practice of slavery and the evolution of its reaction, the Civil Rights Movement, both intricately are entwined in the formation of jazz music.  Jazz should be thought of this way.  There is much more going on than Americans see or hear.  The importance of America's personal cultural heritage, which is documented in jazz music, is threatened.  Fascism through a projection of communist rather than democratic ideals is growing.  Our traditional American Republic is under siege.  The suppression of art and more particularly personal opinion and expression threatens to create a stark, militaristic, oligarchical nation not unlike the rest of the world.  America always has been a torch of freedom for everyone, but this way of life now has become threatened.  The internet, technology, and the computer sector have aided in this fracture.  Traditional human behaviors and the art forms which represent their passions have been stymied.  While the internet has created new business models and now monumental wealth, also the internet has extinguished previously viable forms of business and artistic expression.  In particular American popular music, film, and television have suffered.  The juncture of which I speak in America is where traditional methodology has been replaced with internet and computer methodology.  All three pinnacles of American artistic achievement, music, film, and television have been crippled.  They have been crippled because each all ready has evolved to its highest form.  American history is short compared to Western history, and only in the future will we discover this truth.  We all ready have lived through the Golden Age of Television, the Golden Age of Motion Pictures, and a Golden Age of Popular Music.  These landmarks were achieved by pioneering, emboldened, and impassioned desires to make America better.  Often they were championed by the Jewish faith, and Jews who have been persecuted by Fascism.  It can be said that great art is a reaction against evil.  It can be said that great art is affirmation in the face of adversity.  Perhaps these things are true, but it is not difficult to understand whence came the great art of America.  We open our eyes in the morning everyday and stare into the void.  There is nothing left to do but create.  The internet has proven fruitful for human pleasure, but now it is beginning to destroy it.  Humans cannot live in cyberspace.  Our needs are physical, spiritual, and emotional.  While the iPhone cleverly can mimic human inclinations, it cannot provide them.  It is inevitable if the American way of life is to persevere, then its methodology must sustain.  Software cannot and should not replace brick, mortar, flesh, and blood.  It cannot create music played upon a stradivarius, sung by the human voice, or swung with human desire and faith.

Pray Now

Trump praises the  Carolinas and his rough and ready force to guard petroleum and poppies.  It could be a folk song, "Petroleum and Poppies," the theme song of the Trump presidency.  The reason why the country is doomed is because no legislators (if they can be called that) are intellectual enough to understand, conceptualize, solve, and implement laws to protect American citizens from the overzealous tyranny of rampant, unbridled, and fraudulent corporate dominance.  Since W. private corporations have tainted the American landscape with their diseased semen, spewing jism over the unknowing and uncaring lawns of iPhone addicted millennials.  Elected politicians are no better informed, because they are not demanded to provide a better of quality of life.  An example?  Fayetteville, North Carolina, an intersection of the defense industry, big business, and government.  Vegetable oil, polyester resin, rubber, and military might.  What is the task?  The task is to understand an industrial park nestled in the belly of a small southern town and keep it from killing its hosts.  Perhaps they would be more content if the surrounding inhabitants of Fayettenam were dead.  We are headed in that direction.  What is the task.  How does a governmental body regulate an out-of-control process?  Try this on for size.  First understand the environmental hazards of unbridled industrial pollution.  Everything that is emitted from a train is harmful to humans.  Leaking electricity from AC traction motors and power inverters.  Infrasound.  Microdust.  Heat.  AC traction locomotives are an environmental nightmare, and Congress doesn't care.  The United States Senate counts the electoral votes that pick the president.  The Senate just buried their heads in the sand and acquitted Donald Trump of treason.  There is no reason they will not commit fraud again and choose Donald Trump no matter what the American popular vote.  I expect it to happen.  They don't know how to do anything but watch Nascar and molest young boys.  The country is doomed, unless this body of man vaginas are sentenced to prison where they will be comfortable anyway.  (having their man asses pounded everyday)  Begin with the Rail Feasibility Study all ready paid for and published on the internet.  Read it, understand it, and develop guidelines for CONSERVATIVE rail activity not raping and pillaging their host geography.  Begin with a prime mover limitation per square mileage.  A quick look at the power axle rule of a single Class A railroad would be a beginning.  These rules are not followed or enforced.  Infractions occur all the time.  No one cares.  No one understand, thus no one enforces.  Only a finite number of 4000 HP diesel electric locomotives per square yardage. You can't have an orgy of rail providers, Norfolk Southern, Aberdeen and Rockfish, and CSX all fucking each other within the city's limits.  This happens now.  It is a happy incestuous herd of dotard engineers protecting their own families.  Cargill needs its raw materials as does DAK Americas.  Fort Bragg needs its jet fuel.  Pellets.  Resin.  Blah.  Blah.  Nothing is more important than vegetable oil, plastic drink bottles, and defending Middle Eastern oil and poppy plants.  The American military, bless their hearts, are getting their asses shot off for what?  Trump say, "Bring our military home," and deploys the 82nd Airborne a day after the anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ.  There is no greater Brutus then Mitch McConnell, and no greater satan than our president.  We couldn't be living in a darker time, and we may not recover. 

Chem Trails and Powdered Tails

Once upon a time and not so far away, Vanstory Hills Elementary School was an icon of privilege.  It was white.  Things changed within Cumberland Country Schools, and I began to see a familiar scenario evolve a few thousand feet from our home.  I experienced this scenario first hand at Margaret Willis School in the early 1970's.  Black specks began to emerge at the school.  How has Vanstory Hills Elementary School remained a pinnacle of quality education for children?  The school has become subject to the same inequities haunting other reputable Fayetteville neighborhoods, and it is not integration and bussing as a result of the redrawing of school district lines.  Low flying aircraft above the school and its surrounding neighborhood also is inevitable as a result of the manipulation of flight paths at the Fayetteville Airport.  Perhaps the identification of low flying aircraft could earn students extra credit.  Several years ago when a flasher was exposing himself, two Beechcraft King Air 350 surveillance planes flew concentric circles in the sky above the school.  Living in close proximity to the playground, we were subject to this annoyance.  Likewise if I threw my axe at a fallen tree in the woods behind the school, several seconds later an aircraft would appear over my head.  I discovered the Fayetteville Arms Room had been built on Executive Place.  This gated entity organizes and keeps track of all the weaponry used at Fort Bragg.  Adjacent to Harris Teeter was a large, gated, outdoor facility with massive communication satellite dishes.  They were owned by L3.  Eventually when the Arms Room relocated, this facility vanished.  Sierra Nevada, a defense contractor located near Grannis Field, manufactures surveillance arrays for these expensive twin engine aircraft.  The markings on the planes were Customs and Border Patrol and the Department of Homeland Security.  When the planes finally disappeared a muted Cessna took their place.  Replete with an aircraft muffler it circled the city continuously.  Recently several Cessna pilots and owners have crashed and died, one killing innocent people in a trailer by the airport.  The Army has a small plane at Signature Aviation.    During Fayetteville's purported agrarian Golden Age incumbent home owners were not subject to the nuisance of continuous low flying aircraft, especially directly above their homes.  Like most evolved communities flight paths are kept away from living areas.  Vanstory Elementary School has succumbed to the same ills as the rest of the city of Fayetteville.  Because old money's influence is dying out, and because our educational system purposely has been neglected to under educate young adults, Ground Forces Command does what it pleases.  The DOD changed the flight paths at Grannis Field, so aircraft can more expediently fly to the base.  I am mystified how commercial flights fly directly through what should be secure and guarded air space.  The day after Christmas in Cumberland County was the most extensive air show in our history, but without aircraft.  Criss-crossing chem trails littered the blue sky
in an insulting homage to the birth of Jesus.  There are things other than the military.  There are things that do not deal with killing the enemy, especially when tainted media obscure them.  Not all Americans want an economy of war as defined by Dwight D. Eisenhower.  Some of us want to live in peace and moderation, not wealth and imperialism.  The long term ramifications of low-flying air traffic is exacerbated by the felling of trees within the city limits.  Trees scrub carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and jet fuel creates it.  Our eyes burn most of the time from the stark decline of air quality in Fayetteville as a result of rail and air traffic.  The idea that a freight rail provider is "green" is propaganda.  The consequences of the military industrial complex are threefold.  They are air quality, infrasound, and electromagnetic radiation.  As a performing musician, composer, and artist these things are anathema.  In the "Electronic Age" which has been predicted, airborne electricity becomes the death of the planet.  The container in which the human race lives is tangible, fragile, and nourishing.  When it is destroyed the human entity has no options. Violence erupts.  When you create sound pressure and electricity in an all ready compromised atmosphere, where are we supposed to go?  Elon Musk has that answer, but planet Earth traditionally has been good enough for the common man.  

The BRAC Pack

When Fayettevillians first heard the acronym "B.R.A.C," a bubble was created to glamorize an event which has inflicted dire consequences upon a small southern town.  The bubble, created by the real estate community, civic leaders, and local merchants painted Base Realignment and Closure as an economic infusion for Fayetteville and Cumberland County.  The numbers are impressive, the daily dollar amount the expansion of Fort Bragg and its influx of new military personnel has brought to southeastern North Carolina.  North and South Carolina have become military states providing the infrastructure needed by the Department of Defense.  Private contractors and army soldiers comprise Fort Bragg which has grown into the world's largest military base.  The bubble for Fayetteville was the apparent need for more housing and more spendable dollars for local merchants.  Has BRAC been good for Fayetteville and Cumberland County?  Let's look at the big picture.  Fayetteville got I-295, an expansive outer loop bypass.  The function of this highway is to service Fort Bragg.  With her previous population it was not needed.  Increasing the number of active service personnel to fifty thousand demanded a more efficient method of moving bodies on and off Fort Bragg, hence I-295.  The road was for them.  Since 9/11 an obvious change in domestic security has taken place including the battening down of the base.  What once was a freely accessible geographical region became secure.  The military closed Bragg Boulevard to through traffic, a milestone in the history of Fort Bragg and Fayetteville.  The boulevard which connected GI's to Hay Street now is defunct as is the diversion downtown provided for them.  We became institutionalized in a few short years.  The grit and reality of the army became sanitized by big business.  Ground Forces Command is a subsidiary of the Pentagon in Washington, DC.  Fayetteville has yet to realize this change.  What has transpired is unmitigated urban sprawl, over development, and the over taxing of the city's infrastructure.  The North Carolina Department of Transportation has interjected their short term solutions to Fayetteville's traffic problems by building concrete medians dividing merchants on either side of an artificial line of demarcation.  The consequences of this traffic fix are substantial and negative.  Local merchants are less profitable.  They are not seeing those new BRAC dollars.  The real estate community used BRAC as a bubble to sanction and market new housing.  Former green spaces in the city of Fayetteville have been razed awaiting new urban development.  Alarmingly our trees are disappearing, and new homes are occupying the once iconic spare lots in local neighborhoods.  There are no woods left in which to play for local children, but our lifestyles no longer include this activity.  Our children are more sedentary, more addicted, and less motivated to be physically active.  Perhaps BRAC and its consequences on Cumberland Country reflect a national trend of institutionalization.  American has forgotten how to be rebellious against "the man" and its necessity for ensured freedom and happiness.  Donald Trump is the poster child for this new style of militaristic dictatorship patterning his ineffective governance and lack of American solidarity on the regimes of Russia, China, and North Korea.  These  are communist nations.  This should be alarming to all Americans.  In the past Fayetteville's liason with the post has been strong championed by local business icons, politicians, and military leadership.  Daniel Toven, a former bandmaster for the Ground Forces Band, worked tirelessly utilizing his accomplished musical ensemble as a motivating, inspirational, and entertaining patriotic vessel.  The bands at Fort Bragg were a necessary liason to the Fayetteville community reinforcing military ideals, needed community support, and American patriotism.  They worked in tandem to keep military activity transparent and supported by the local populace.  Today Fort Bragg seems more a sequestered, secretive, and sometimes threatening entity with very little public relation.  One can remember the thundering of army cannons at the conclusion of the 1812 Overture on a holiday concert at Festival Park.  Our current president systematically has appointed adversaries to most agency positions in Washington, disapproves of funding for the arts, and favors only big businesses which continually abuse the public and their trust.  It would seem the building of muscle at Fort Bragg is the perfect metaphor for newly emerging military dictatorship led by Donald Trump.  Luckily Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats have been able to see through the presidents facade and put into place measures to thwart such a politically incorrect, unAmerican, and fascist takeover.  Let's pray the entire Senate is not as mindlessly devoted, brainwashed, and corrupt as Mitch McConnell. 

This Christmas

My brain and body feel like Swiss cheese.  Even without the influence of alcohol, my head is swimming like a turtle in shallow water.  Why?  CSX take the opportunity to railroad during Christmas.  Other than churches Fayettenam doesn't have much Christmas.  It has a lot of poverty, crime, and unhappiness.  I have done my best to support local merchants, and it has been brutal.  Stock is low, the influence of Christmas is menial at best, and it feels like rape and pillage.  It shouldn't feel this way, should it?  I remember when Christmas in Fayetteville was good.  Cross Creek Mall was a pinnacle or artistic commerce.  It was decorated to the hilt, it was artistic, and it was uplifting.  Now the mention of the birth of Christ merits terrorist attacks.  This nation no longer is a people of God.  Christianity is a fluke.  The American population for the most part doesn't know what it is, much less how to abide by it.  Serve others?  Be good?  (By the way I am listening to Q.'s album "Smackwater Jack."  It is refreshing, real music.  Real sound.  Something real that is not impoverished.  CSX has been railroading all week.  Non stop.  Locals puttering around funking up the place.  My head spins at the same frequency of their locomotives' Integrated Gate Bipolar Transistors.  A low frequency standing wave is present in 'Nam most of the time, and with it comes the accompanying diesel knock.  It is brutal.  It is a brutal time.  It is fighting for Jesus.  There is very little return, and the spirit is absent. It has been for a long time, ever since Christianity was purged from America.