Taking a Hit!

The American people have taken a hit, and it wasn't marijuana.  When people say to me, "We should be happy to be walking around alive."  WTF?  So many people have died.  What happened to America?  People are fat, because they rely upon fast food.  Fast food has become poison.  Groceries we buy at the store seem not much better.  It is hit and miss.  Is this supply chain problems?  My gut tells me it is labor.  We took such a hit from Covid, sheltering in place, not attending school, and ordering meals online, we have lost track of the traditional work regime.  For America's labor force to return, things must change.  Labor cannot be the enemy.  It is.  Companies are downsizing, retooling to AI, and eliminating jobs.  People no longer are valued.  War is upon the people.  This is not America.  No longer are we America.  We are stunted step children of the super rich, and they forsook us.  The people were America.  Like Trump we no longer favor the people of America.  Too many foreigners.  Too many uneducated peasants.  The unfair white soul of America is no longer.  There are Mexicans.  There are Asians.  There are Arabs.  This disparity cannot create a mainstream or Main Street.  The exploitation of the internet, of television, and of radio, and their control by a few has stunted America.  Corporate monopolies seek to control everything.  Hedge Funds are buying homes.  I am watching a Pearl Jam video, and it is a glimpse into the extinct.  Hundreds of thousands of healthy, active, energetic American youth are engaged in fellowship.  Is it rebellion?  Whatever it is, it no longer exists, because America took a hit!  Too bad it was not the right kind.  

The Arduous Task of the Family Home

 The transition of a family home is not easy.  Perhaps the easiest method is the most common.  Children have moved on and established lives of their own often with a family.  They have no interest in the childhood home.  It was painful for me to watch the Thorp residence transition.  Because the home often is a metaphor for the family, the entire family, it may cause more grief than just the passing of one family member.  You abstractly are burying a family history, and this is difficult.  There is no way around it except to hide.  You can ignore the family bereavement, or you can acknowledge it.  The easiest way is to let others handle the transition of the estate no matter how large or how small.  Estate companies exist for this reason, because it is exceedingly difficult to sort through decades of personal belongings and attempt to give them adequate closure.  Family money is beneficial in most cases, and wealth is accrued through families.  There are a handful of families in the world that hold most of the wealth.  They know the benefits of estate planning and inheritance and how to avoid excessive taxation.  The GOP is an expert, and bounden duty of Republicans use every loophole in the book to amass and save their fortunes.  To discard a family home because of potential emotional strife is wasteful.  Real property or real estate is one of the most valuable commodities, and it should be respected.  The grift is the grief of the absence or passing of a family member.  The family home is a reminder, not a commemoration.  It is possible to transform the home into a healthy future living environment but not without considerable reflection, remembrance, bereavement, and toil.  I can't say there is any pleasure in the loss of a loved one.  There may be an inheritance, and down the road that should be an asset.  It is a scenario relying upon patience.  There is little immediate gratification, and often you may regress in mental adjustment.  You will experience more loss trying to resurrect a family home.  For this reason most families chose to move on.  They leave the difficult tasks to others, mainly an estate company who will bear the burden of finding and organizing family belongings.  I know from first hand experience I have learned more about my mother's life sorting through her belongings than having been reared by her.  Perhaps this is natural.  The parental relationship exists for a reason, and while children can be friends with their parents, the priority for parents is to rear healthy and productive children.  This means discipline, structure, and boundaries.  While I lived with my mother the last ten years, it was more difficult than my childhood.  An adult child living with an aging parent requires an extremely strong will.  My mother was more demanding than I remember, but looking back I saw it was her teaching methodology.  It forced me to excel in my decisions and finding solutions to problems.  It was easy enough, because her lack of knowledge and experience in certain areas made it easy for me to find successful remedies.  She challenged me with her shortcomings, and with thirty years of experience and knowledge I was able to solve most problems.  Now that is no longer is present in our home, it is a different ballgame.  Things have become much more difficult, because the senior voice is absent.  With its head strong will, holding of power, and authority gone, there is nothing against which to rebel.  Your mind becomes awash in doubt, uncertainty, and weakness.  You are on your own, and your neighbors are not your family.  They are not blood.  They are not kin.  You are competing with the Jones's.  There is ZERO support.  If you succumb to your emotions, then you will suffer.  You must use your mind.  The home by nature and design is intended to support you.  That could include a family.  Perhaps not.  How does and can a home support a human being?  It must provide the things one needs to survive.  Above that requirement if a home is to be happy and nurturing, it must do more.  It must do more today, because the concepts of community, fellowship, communion, and solidarity have come into question from a Trump presidency.  Donald Trump effectively divided the American people and cast them against each other for the first time since the Civil War.  A large faction of Hippies protested the War in Viet Nam, and the Civil Rights Movement recognized and fought against discrimination.  Domestic terrorism, mass public slaughter, and hate crimes were not the norm.  Radicalization has made life in America more difficult.  Your home is all you have, whether it is a trailer, a van, a tent, a bunk, or a luxury condominium.  You need for it to support your physical, mental, and emotional needs, because the minute you step outside into the urban battle field you will be tested.  The home with its support is meant to revive you from battle.  Uncluttering decades of family belongings may be the first step, because these things while sentimental, will not help you in your daily routine of survival.  Determining what can remain to remind you of your roots, and what must go because it has become a deterrent is an arduous task. 

Whining and Dhining (about Piedmont)

 By nature I am not a whiner.  Cumberland County is in the 80th percentile for not having access to appropriate medical care including primary care doctors.  Robeson County is higher.  North Carolina used to 50th for the highest teacher pay in the country.  Now we are about 47th.  You can bet on sports via "Sports Book," and loose your money over your smart phone.  You don't have to be present.  If I need to shop for groceries, I can frequent the local Harris Teeter and battle the Nazi lesbians who hate men.  (I think they must hate everyone except for their prey, some other lesbian who potentially may submit to be their lover)  It is a brutal shopping experience.  If you want to experience discrimination, try being a 60 year old single man in professional clothes.  Charlie Rose.  Harvey Weinstein.  Jeffrey Epstein and the rest of the sexual harassers who have ruined the reputation of most white men.  The White Devil.  "Kill de white mon."  This is what I utter under my breath when I shop, and it relieves the tension.  The most depressing thing is being surveilled, walking around my house and knowing the army is listening.  (Perhaps it is the NSA)  The only time I can sleep peacefully and restfully at night, is when there is a short lapse of an active freight train on the CSX tracks less than a mile from our neighborhood.  They run constantly 24/7, and they use sundown as a ruse to disguise their rampant activity.  Fayetteville is the only city that gets hotter after the sun goes down.  What could have been considered normal train activity now is radical like many things in the United States.  It begins at 5:00 a.m. every day.  Who goes to work at five o'clock in the morning?  They have to pay shareholders.  When the direct to Charlotte Red Eye flight offered by the new Piedmont flies over our neighborhood at 5:15 a.m., I am jarred from slumber.  The pilot does not climb to a traditional altitude to spare citizens below.  Because they think we are sleeping, and because they want to get to Charlotte as speedily as possible, they fly just above the treeline.  I wake up to a vacuum of absent air sucked into jet turbine engines replaced with heat, vibration, and toxic micro-particles that penetrate the walls of our homes.  It happened this morning.  I was sleeping peacefully in a cool temperature with a short lapse of traveling freight, and suddenly my body begins to ache.  First my shoulder and arm and then my hips and legs.  The air is sucked out of my bedroom, and I wake up in a vacuum of excessive heat and vibration.  The plane sucks the air out of my bedroom and replaces it with lethal pathogens.  Who needs a foreign terrorist when we have Piedmont?  Ask Johnny Carson. 

Sour Grapes/Strange Fruit

To continue to harp on the past ills of a nation seems futile, but without an astute understanding of those possible crimes against humanity, again we may be susceptible to such assaults.  It was suspect that a virus emerged that targeted a specific undesirable sub culture of American life.  Homosexuals and intravenous drug users?  Could nature be so specific to target a group and accelerates its evolution hundreds of thousands of years to attack only them?  With the concrete knowledge of biological and chemical warfare within national governments besides our own, it is logical viruses have emerged.  Whether they escaped or were released will be the seeming eternal question.  With the emergence of a Donald Trump presidency, illicit white collar crime has escalated.  It is easy to extrapolate that covert agencies, of which the FBI, CIA, and NSA are a part, easily could sanction and utilize such weapons.  Nefarious spy planes cloaked by a myriad of shell companies roam the American skies looking for terrorists.  The Patriot Act after 9/11 easily provided the means for such surveillance.  It has not changed, but the prevalence of domestic terrorism has shifted to overt public slaughter.  The availability of assault weapons to the general public has fueled this practice.  In an uncanny resistance to the desires of almost all American citizens, Washington continues to fuel anarchy in abstract ways under the guise of Capitalism.  These irresponsible decisions discarding common sense and favoring every tenable but questionable industry suggest that anarchy is a favorable for Capitalism.  Warfare is positive for the economy whether in blatant, violent, murderous attacks on civilians or more subtle pandemics disguised as natural occurrences.  Rather than shoring up America's traditional historical economy such as textiles, agriculture, and manufacturing, we have chosen to undermine these native middle class industries and outsource them to cheaper foreign markets.  We have forsaken the American people and sold them out creating a chasm between the elite rich and the poor.  We have become a Third World country, and with the continued insistence of Donald Trump may transition into an autocracy.  It would seems there is a large contingency of American citizens who no longer ascribe to the freedoms of the United States Constitution.  Government has become a place for these traitors to rally, and we have seen this with the January 6th insurrection and the stymieing of regulatory agencies.  With these overt and public assaults on Americans, it is not difficult to discern that foreign agents may have infiltrated our state and federal government.  Currently there are sitting members of Congress, many within the GOP, who continue to stone wall needed legislation to get America moving again.  If we are to become woke to something, it is the subversive activity of these individuals.  For a subcommittee to suggest the origins of Covid 19 are not important, further is to deny tangible and subversive white collar crime seeded in our government.  It becomes a game of, "He said, she said," to save face and cover ones accrued assets.  Who specifically prospered from Covid 19?  Who prospers from war?  Who continues to undermine more grassroots lifestyles and an economy favorable to something more than global dominance and warfare?  Harping against the rich could be cast as sour grapes, but when Billie Holiday sang about "Strange Fruit," it became necessary for America to confront her demons whether they were Yankee or Confederate.  Lynching freed slaves never was right, and pathological genocide whether against homosexuals, drug users, or everyone is a crime and a sin.  It will be left to God to judge, and He will.  

Surveillance and Public Health

 Trying to come to grips with the Military Industrial Complex being a major influence on your life has proven difficult.  I have no grudge against the military.  The military is a core part of the Fayetteville community, but with BRAC's induction of Ground Forces Command at what is now Fort Liberty, civilian life in Fayetteville has waned.  Most everything revolves around the military lifestyle, and civilians necessarily do not have to fall in, report for duty, or follow orders.  The disparity between the freedom of civilian life and the stringency of military life is substantial.  When I play quiet jazz on my piano at one o'clock in the morning in my garage, my playing is met with a barrage of artillery fire.  If I have carnal thoughts or desires, no matter how innocuous and contained, my immediate environment is inundated with surveillance.  Is it may imagination that the frame of our house pops from the immense pressure of infrasound?  My ears begin to ring with annoying tinnitus from the Frey Effect?  Fort Liberty trains soldiers, and a large part of their focus is ISR, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance.  Every method of surveillance is in use at Fort Liberty.  Cavalier gung-ho recruits push the envelope of respect for civilians in close proximity to their training areas.  It is easy to justify any training activity in the name of national security, but there is overreach.  For two years we listened to Department of Homeland Security surveillance planes circle above our neighborhood.  They were testing and training on Sierra Nevada produced sensor pods mounted on the planes, but the children at Vanstory Hills Elementary School did not benefit from that nuisance.  Surveillance relies upon electrical energy in many forms, and most of it is invasive to human anatomy.  The new Cold War is electronic warfare, and much of it is wireless.  We have dug ourselves into a hole with the mass proliferation of microwaves used in surveillance.  That the United States would allow a network of low altitude satellites to surround the Earth is unconscionable.  Once the internet was desirable, and now it has become exploited.  A "Stooge" government has proven to be the source.  Two faced foreign operatives feign American sentiment and integrity, but behind their public activity they are working against America.  Scott Pruitt was the prime example of this.  Donald Trump appointed a host of stooges who have no interest in representing the interests of the American people.  If public opinion of health has diminished, and still we are a democracy, then all of the politicians in Washington cannot exonerate Anthony Fauci from his actions during the Covid 19 pandemic.  If you work for government, and you are paid by the taxpayers dollars, and if we are a democracy, then the peoples' opinion is relevant.  If they see Fauci as a menace, then it is substantial.  While his position at the CDC or NIH may not be elected, it is not immune from public opinion.  It is us who were dying. 

Up or Down?

Often when one is doing "ship" work, the refrain of, "I'm back in high school," resonates through the cavernous metal corridors.  The "I-95" is the longest corridor on ground zero of a cruise ship.  It is where most of the business takes place running a floating hotel.  The crew traverse this corridor most of the day, because like Disney World, employees are not allowed to use guest spaces.  There are two mess halls, a store, a bar, and offices for personnel.  All of the provisions that are needed for a cruise are loaded into a marshaling area on the I-95.  All of that is beside the point, because being back in high school sometimes is how it feels for a college educated adult to accept work in the cruise industry.  That applies to musicians.  There is truth to this sentiment, and consequently there is political maneurvering in the ranks of entertainers.  I didn't have time to think about it, but when I was dumped into the caldron of boiling water, my jazz skills kept me afloat.  My ability to play jazz sets allowed me to survive.  Ironically these sets did not benefit the guests.  I was used as fodder to amuse other senior musicians.  My jazz sets on one particular ship existed, because the guitarist liked to play drums.  The sole purpose of the sets never was to entertain guests.  It was to provide practice time (at a high level) for a guitarist learning to play drums.  This was not the only hypocrisy.  Several bands on several ships had their material sequenced and recorded, and they just lip-synced.  As I toiled with the most difficult piano music on a ship, show after show of "Fly On" entertainers, which required practice and rehearsal, incumbent bands would just coast through their gigs doing little.  There were two bands on one specific ship, where they faked playing.  It was infuriating to me.  I penciled a little note on the scheduling board about how few hours one band played, and the wrath of the Cruise Director descended upon me.  He demanded that the chief of security sit for hours and watch security video until they found who had written the note.  I wrote, "Foster Trio, seven days, four hours work."  I became a terrorist for such an inane comment written in the wee hours of the morning under the influence of alcohol returning from the Crew Bar.  The reality of the situation was, the response would have not been so savage, if it had not been true.  It was, and I hit a nerve.  They went to the extent of falsifying a schedule to try to prove the Foster Trio had  worked a normal load.  Ship politics, but this was not the case overall.  This was my second least favorite ship, the first being a non-smoking ship to which I was transferred abruptly for being cast a homophobe by the interim Cruise Director.  He was homosexual, and they were intimidated by my musical prowess and masculine spirit.  The new bass player wanted to sleep with me, and I was not interested.  With two days notice they transferred me to another ship, where I had to stop smoking cold turkey.  Again I played jazz set after jazz set for no guests.  It was just proving my worth and value to the incumbent musicians.  What does all of this mean?  What does it mean to kowtow to the popular trends, uneducated tastes, and popularity?  That is American pop music today.  Instead of expressing a viewpoint or opinion, a feeling, or a reaction to life, pop music caters to the lowest common denominator of immediate gratification like social media.  Some social media has value and significance, and Youtube is one platform that has become indispensable for the archiving of classic music footage.  With that massive catalog of information comes the same petty jockeying for position.  Those who are incapable of understanding and appreciating your work are those who are unhappy and unrequited.  They may be jealous and vindictive, and it is best to go around them quickly.  Life is too short to argue with those who love Donald Trump.  The majority of my cruise life I spent trying to survive.  Never was I comfortable or secure in my job performance, and perhaps that is a good thing.  It keeps you working.  It is a recurring refrain in life that the dues you have paid expire, and you must start anew.  Paying dues.  Abandoning your confidence and accomplishment and feigning being a peasant again.  Was this the message of Jesus?  The perfect metaphor for the high school mentality of cruise ship work is, "What is jazz?"  The answer from there is, "Jazz is anything.  It's what you want it to be."  That is not a traditional or historical definition of jazz music.  The reality is jazz is a highly evolved, complex, spiritual, and artistic musical language that could be considered the voice of freed slaves trying to survive in a predominantly white world.  "Holy shite, Batman!"  Should we change the definition?  How could anyone ever conceive of such a thing?  They can't, because they don't have the knowledge, experience, or wisdom to understand.  Does it mean they are not capable of learning or appreciating?  No.  The beauty of jazz is that it can communicate at a visceral level with gut level intent.  If you can feel, then you can understand it.  This is what art can do.  Life is a delicate balancing act of cognitive study and understanding with a hefty dose of raw emotion.  Art will not be art without the affective component.  As jazz evolved over the decades the Avant Garde slowly took over.  Like Abstract Expressionism in visual art, direct, raw, and sometimes brutal gestures were used to illicit an immediate emotional response abandoning some of the more sophisticated styled and techniques.  Rock 'n' Roll took the place of crooning Swing-based music.  African culture can be seen as an example of this aesthetic often cast as primitive or barbaric by those from the West.  Upon closer scrutiny most of the values in Western culture are present in African culture.  It is more dire and immediate, because there is no time for sophistication.  You are trying to survive.  The luxury of time, leisure, and amusement can breed sophistication.  Human beings it would seem intrinsically feel the need to create, progress, and evolve.  Until now.  If you take away the security of human compassion and empathy, and pollute the environment with inciting rhetoric and noise, we have no choice but to devolve to survival.  There is virtue in the finer things, but there can be a balance.  Without them and without art, man has no where to go but down. 

OJ is Dead

"Where do I begin?," in the remarkable sound of the voice of Shirley Bassey, the vocal metaphor of James Bond, 007.  On a more dour note the world is falling.  Inflation.  I couldn't afford to buy tomatoes.  I bought a zucchini in plastic shrink wrap, and it was a cucumber.  I ran over the back legs of a squirrel.  I couldn't avoid him.  Before I slammed on brakes in a 45 mph zone to miss an opossum.  It upset traffic, but he lived.  Across the street they had bunny drama.  Their dog caught a baby bunny, and they tried to save it.  The dog killed it anyway.  It is what dogs do.  It is what cats do. With pets you have the gut level emotional drama.  I can't handle that everyday.  It is inhibiting.  The most important things:  I had to sanitize my Macbook Pro, because it was infecting the skin on my hands.  When Covid first emerged, it infected my hard contact lenses; my eyes were compromised for two years.  Now I soak the lenses in diluted bleach.  America has returned to her roots of the Lost Colony.  The physical challenges of Mother Nature are taking their toll, because we have forgotten her.  She is Queen.  We are not.  The largest problem we face today (in addition to the burning of fossil fuels) is microwaves.  We are being cooked in abstract ways, and it is a beautiful and stealth non-lethal weapon for our enemy.  It will prove to be lethal, if we let it proliferate.  Our bodies are suffering, and we have turned our back on Mother Nature's  healing power.  We are destroying her rapidly.  I stopped at a traffic light, and on a pole twenty feet away was a disguised cell phone transmitter.  I am tired of opening Youtube videos and seeing unknown pundits telling me things they think are true.  Stuck poop.  The best conceal carry holster.  A laser flashlight. 
All profess to be the ultimate judge of product quality or health.  Who are they?  We were a better nation with three networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC, tightly regulated, competitive, and uplifting.  A weekly viewing schedule with reasonable advertising.  Now a TV show has its own channel.  Big Tech or Social Media has dealt a blow to America by undermining this traditional network of broadcasting.  Oversight.  Regulation.  Truth.  Misinformation, Spam, Propaganda, and Gas Lighting.  Disguised private aircraft are problematic with their phased array antennas.  Why should I feel pain, when a commercial jetliner flies overhead?  Other than burning hot gas turbine engines, what else could be onboard a commercial aircraft that would cause harm to human beings?  What is the answer?  Wireless internet for the passengers.  Microwaves.  Phased array antennas are unnaturally heating the Earth.  My aunt died on April Fool's morning at 5:00 a.m.  She is in a happier place. 

Seeing the Forest for the Trees

 Patiently we are waiting for the "documents case" and the Jack White led insurrection case.  SCOTUS will rule on presidential immunity in a few weeks.  Will the Supreme Court of the United States prove their virtue and allegiance to the Constitution?  They will find that President Trump stole and sold national confidential documents for his own gain.  With that information Hamas infiltrated and attacked Israel.  Benjamin Netanyahu took the bait, and like a devoted leader pledged to annihilate Hamas, the terror group responsible for the attack on the Jewish nation.  Donald Trump's son said how valuable the real estate in the Gaza Strip is.  It is the holy grail of the Middle East, that waterfront property.  Bibi has gone extreme, and Israel's response, with no humanitarian sentiment, proves Gaza, the geographic location, is more important to future real estate deals than its population.  It is genocide for economic gain. 

Losing a Democracy

 When looking at fallen democracies or established military dictatorships, the formula is loss of freedom of the vote.  This freedom of the vote, and its instilled intrinsic power to elect a leader of choice, becomes compromised.  This can happen many ways; if Americans paid attention, we could see the danger clearly in the elections of communist countries.  Also we would see it in democratic nations on the verge of collapse and conversion to autocracy.  There are many shades of gray and nations in differing stages of oppression of freedom.  The consensus is one powerful candidate (Padimir Vlutin) dominates the election manipulating the procedure.  This practice has moved to the United States, and the opportunity for anyone to run for office has been quashed.  Money controls the system, the vote.  The Grand Old Party manipulates the vote in America the same way they manipulate the courts and the legal system.  With an encyclopedic knowledge of the law and its implemented loopholes, the playing field of the vote is slanted.  This unfolded in Florida, when George W. Bush antagonized Al Gore until he conceded the Presidential election.  Gore  won like Hillary Clinton in 2016, but the GOP manipulated the system to win.  The population is eliminated from the choice, the populace.  A few people make this choice.  America never has been a true democracy.  We have had peaks and valleys of virtuous political action, and now we have a low point in American history.  Many types of unfair and illegal shenanigans have tilted the playing field of political election.  Gerrymandering is the most obvious.  North Carolina, after many legal battles, continues to sport illegal voting districts favoring Republicans.  The 2024 Presidential election (if we call it that) is the most obvious example of a democratic process gone wrong.  Americans can agree this election, because of the limitations projected by Covid, does not resemble any other in recent memory.  The traces of compromised living in the work place, at home, and in the school systems linger suggesting America has regressed.  We are  gimps, and our previously robust methods of governance have waned.  We should call this election the "Special Presidential Election," because it is operating under the auspices of special social entitlements.  The things that Trump rails against are in play for his benefit.  He lies and tells you one thing and stabs you in the back for his own profit.  This is not an insult or defamation of character.  It is  fact.  If those who love Donald Trump would take the time to read or listen, they would understand this evil.  Should Joe Biden and Donald Trump be treated as special needs patients meriting appeal, and appeal, after court case simply to remain viable candidates?  It is an absurd TV sitcom, and this is what Donald Trump understands.  The integrity, vitality, virtue, and historic value of our Constitutional processes have been soiled by baby spittle.  It is insulting to America, and their will for freedom.  The most low brow and benign hi jinx have challenged the pinnacle of world freedom.  The Three Stooges have toppled George Washington, and we are along for the ride.  Ultimately the Supreme Court of the United States will decide if Trump is immune from criminal prosecution for crimes he committed during his term.  Two impeachments suggest a pattern, and the deep pockets of Super PAC's shoring up Trump's devastating financial losses should wake up.  Their continued support may be the loss of America. 

Too Much Industrial Radio (and they don't play Top 40)

Death comes in waves at nursing homes.  Many things manifest themselves as waves, and their study dates back to the ancient Greeks.  While primarily there are two major types of waves, longitudinal and transverse, the standing wave (i.e. radar) is more controversial.  If death comes in a wave at an assisted living facility, then there is a tangible source.  Many people dying at the same time or on the same wing or floor may not be coincidence.  In Fayetteville, the host community of Fort Liberty, the presence of waves is above normal.  It is not well known, and the recent political campaign of misinformation has gas lighted many harmful phenomenon into oblivion.  "What is a wave?  If we can't see it does it even exist?"  This is their popular train of thought, and it is ignorant.  Academia or our system of public education are the only institutions that adequately can refute such inane suppositions.  Let's attack them.  Let's under fund public education and question the credibility of our institutions of knowledge.  "What kind of wave could visit our geriatric care facilities?"  Let's start with a GE Dash 9 locomotive or C40-9W.  There are twenty discrete "radio" antennas on this particular diesel electric freight locomotive.  The world mostly will acknowledge radio waves, because at one time radio was a prolific cultural influence to American culture.  It was a source of revenue for the economy, and it bonded a disparate America into solidarity.  It was part of the American soul.  Humbly we should grieve the death of commercial and public radio at the behest of wireless internet.  The institution of radio and its influence on America was substantial and positive.  The same cannot be said for social media.  

The GE Dash-9 Locomotive's compliment of radio:

COMM Handler-  160 MHz Voice Radio

COMM Handler-  450 MHZ Distributed Power LOCOTROL Radio A

COMM Handler 450 MHz Distributed Power LOCOTROL Radio B

COMM Handler 450 MHz End of Train Radio

COMM Handler 800 MHz Cellular Radio

COMM Handler 900 MHz Frequency Hopping Yard Radio

COMM Handler 900 MHz ATCS Radio

COMM Handler 1.5 GHz GPS receive only antenna

Antenna Rail/Bar 220 MHz Radio

Antenna Rail/Bar 700 MHz/800MHz/1,900 MHz Cellular Modem

Antenna Rail/Bar 700 MHz/800 MHz/1900 MHz Cellular Modem 2

Antenna Rail/Bar 2.4 GHz PTC Wireless LAN

Antenna Rail/Bar 5.8 GHz Wireless LAN

Antenna Rail/Bar 1.5 GHz GPS receive only antenna

Antenna Rail/Bar 220 MHz Radio

Antenna Rail/Bar 700 MHz/800 MHz/1900 MHz Cellular Modem 1

Antenna Rail/Bar 700 MHz/800 MHz/1900 MHz Cellular Modem 2 

Antenna Rail/Bar 2.4 GHx PTC Wireless LAN

Antenna Rail/Bar 5.8 GHz Wireless LAN

Antenna Rail/Bar 1.5 GHz GPS receive only antenna

 

When the adverse effects of cross modulation of radio signals were attempting to be studied (including interacting with land-based commercial and public radio), the study could not be concluded.  The radio waves were said to be so strong they precluded the existence of any other radio signals with which to react.  In effect the Dash 9 was an ambulatory radio transmission tower.  The Dash 9 is a freight LOCOMOTIVE.  Why does it need such an array of elaborate radio transmitting capability?  That is a good question.  

 A Boeing commercial jetliner is a similar situation, but I will not take the time to document its radio capabilities.  I will suffice to say that the weather radar has been upgraded with a digitally-scanned phased array antenna in its radome.  It is so powerful that it is protocol not to switch it on until the aircraft has taxied onto the runway.  It has been concluded it may cause danger to baggage handlers, air traffic handlers, and refuelers.  The range of this radar is 200 miles, and commercial aircraft routinely fly from 5-8 miles above the earth.  

 While aircraft and locomotives always have posed their own personal infringement to human health from the burning of fossil fuels, readily it is not known why and how they have become dangerous from the emission of radio frequency energy.  When these disparate frequencies of seeming unregulated radio waves interact, their basic effects on human health must be augmented.  A systematic denying of adequate funding for the appropriate regulatory agencies in Washington, DC has played a large role in the dissemination of harmful radiation upon the American public. 

 

Troubled Bridge Over Water

I am a registered democrat.  With the top qualification to work for the RNC being a believer of the "Big Lie," I am glad I am a democrat.  Democrats have a reputation for throwing money at problems.  Why would President Joe Biden ascribe the responsibility for rebuilding the Francis Scott Key Bridge to the government?  When Danish company Maersk charters a ship from Singapore, and it topples an American bridge, our government is not responsible for the bill for fixing the bridge.  What kind of craziness is this?  "Oh, we lost power and hit your bridge killing some people.  Sorry."  How often does a container ship lose power and control?  Sounds like a terrorist action to me.  These are becoming more common using the idiot standard to divert attention from brutal actions.  In our current political dynamic, with Donald Trump assembling the mafia for another attempted take over of the United States government, things are extreme.  There are no coincidences.  I would incarcerate the workers on that ship and investigate them immediately.  Maersk is responsible for the cost of rebuilding the bridge.  It's called playing hard ball, and it is time to do it.  

God is Key

My grandfather taught physics at Lenoir Rhyne College with a degree from Columbia University in Harlem.  The woke, cancel culture, anti science undercurrents are just tools for dismantling a nation of freedom.  Never would I have thought that a science or humanity could be used for ill purpose.  Use biology or chemistry for nefarious purposes?  It must have begun with germ warfare.  To allow a government easement to defame science for war is questionable.  The United States had tried this, and the Geneva Convention proven a stalwart of international behavior.  The idea of humanity, of being human first before wealth or power, once was instilled in the population.  Whence did it come?  The only possible answer is church, the acknowledgement, appreciation, and worshipping of a deity greater than man.  A war on heterosexuality?  The war also is on God, and clearly I remember when the campaign began to remove religion from public consciousness.  First we removed it from public places.  Mistakenly we exorcised it from classrooms.  This volatility, this thin skin and lack of deference is nothing but ignorance, and it has been bred in our public schools.  When public education was sacrificed is when America began to devolve and become separated.  There is no other place.  Our schools were the centers of our universe for good.  Eradicate God.  Fail to educate.  Separate.  Instill fear.  These are the traits of third world countries rife for domination from dictators.  "That is some good real estate in Gaza.  Wish we could get our hands on it."  Trial, evidence, conviction.  The Trump family has emerged as the impetus for this decline in human behavior.  Human.  Christian.  Deference.  If a family cannot understand a historical conflict of biblical proportions, then simply they aspire for wealth.  "It never existed.  The Holocaust was false."  This behavior simply is evil.  It may seem inane.  It may seem amusing.  It may not carry with it ramifications of malfeasance.  If you don't have to account for history, the blood roots of the development of a country, then you are free to rape and pillage at will.  This has been done, and world history is dominated by this evil and violent behavior.  We must aspired for more.  We must aspire to more than ourselves.  We must aspired to be more like God.  

Our Lost Democracy

The Washington Post prints quality stories, and they have improved.  The new editor-in-chief is proving to have integrity.  Often a day after I blog about an issue, an article will appear reporting upon a similar thing.  This makes you feel like democracy is working.  It is the only thing, freedom of the press.  With an upcoming election the decadence is rife.  Local news broadcasts are spattered with pro Trump political ads, and they are low brow, pathetic, and misleading.  Many are blatant lies.  The same tired rhetoric about building a wall, fixing the economy, and making America great fail to resonate after the Covid debacle.  Always there will be MAGA extremists, and their profile is the same as before.  They are threatened, uneducated, white men wanting their country back.  The populace has matured, and Trump candy no longer can tempt the babies.  When you are trying to provide for your family, rear literate children, and prosper no one has time to fixate upon racism. Discrimination is alive and well, and SCOTUS proved that.  There are no more racial quotas in the university system.  Opportunity in America always will be an issue.  Do we want to sublimate into a nation of tribal wars with gang violence and hand to hand combat?  America is splintering, and it is worse after the Donald Trump presidency.  We had problems, but Barack Obama was a virtuous leader.  The country held together under his presidency.  If Donald Trump's plan is to make America great again, it is with a devolution to Jim Crow segregation.  Given a choice I'm sure he would reinstate slavery, along with other extreme members of the GOP.  He proved this time and time again hiring workers, exploiting their labor, and refusing them payment.  He thought they were slaves.  If you vote for Donald Trump in 2024, you are voting for white supremacy.  This may seem exciting as a television pilot, but we are talking reality, not fantasy.  Donald watched a lot of television, and he has difficulty discerning the difference.  Watching Mitch McConnell concede his Senate leadership position is like watching a bigot gracefully step aside avoiding persecution.  He and what he represents are what have made America what it is today.  No longer are we a nation governed by the people.  We are governed by a small group of wealthy autocrats who are concerned only with advancing their own personal interests.  "Democracy is in peril is the headline," but we all ready have lost it.  We are not governred by the people, because those we elect to represent us are seditious.  Donald Trump is a traitor to America.  We have not ruled ourselves since his electing.  Mitch is the prime example of ignoring the people.  Yes, he represents a constituency in Kentucky, but that constituency is not our people.  It is a polarized group of elitists clinging to the ideals of America's racist past.  Donald Trump is Jim Crow Jr.  When we see only decline, crime, and inequality, then we know we are not being represented.  When government makes it more difficult for you to canvas their work, that is when you know they are not looking out for you.  Changing a city council meeting time to keep the public out is wrong.  Joe Biden's infrastructure legislation has allocated money for states and cities, and these local officials are like kids in the candy store.  Tennis complexes.  Baseball stadiums.  The streets are full of pot holes.  There are no police, and the air is dirty from jet exhaust.  We are sucking the fumes of those wealthy elite who prefer for everyone to own a black man.  If he resists shoot him in the drive through of a Wendy's.  You can choose to ignore reality, turn the other cheek, or don the rose colored glasses.  Each day when I shop for home staples, I am confronted with this reality.  Homelessness.  Poverty.  Despair.  America has not been governing herself for a long time.  When corporate America does what ever they want at the expense of the people, democracy has failed.  Cell phone towers every block.  PFAS in the water.  Shot Spotter sensors all over town listening to your lives.  Big Brother is here, and that ugly menacing image on the screen is Donald Trump.  We will bide our time until the week of April 22, when SCOTUS will decide if Trump is immune from prosecution.  If they protect him, then we will know democracy is lost.  

The Post-Covid Snake Oil Show

America has lost focus.  So many things changed us during Covid.  We are walking with limps, breathing with gasps, working with limitations, and trying to feign normalcy pre-pandemic.  I don't think it is possible.  Long Covid is a grievous wound, and the labor force is the worst casualty.  Not only are we physically weaker, our mental faculties have become strained.  We use drugs to feel normal.  Interesting predicament.  Our environment has become so abrasive, almost antagonistic, that we need drugs to survive.  Is this a naturally unfolding scenario, such as the questionable emergence of Covid, or is it deliberate?  Perhaps it is a byproduct of the lack of regulation and oversight by the appropriate agencies.  When I drink a glass of home-brewed ice tea, I am ingesting PFAS.  Although I use bottled spring water, the ice from my ice maker uses city water, the worst water in the state of North Carolina.  If I fill my tea glass with ice, I drink more of this water than water from my bottle.  This is unsettling, and buying ice trays is on my "To Do" list.  At every turn in my average every day life, there are health challenges.  I have thrown away most of my flower pots for fear the dirt is tainted with viruses.  I ditched some of my house plants.  Recently we ground, sealed, and coated the garage floor.  It is when I sleep that I am susceptible to illness.  Why is this?  This is a contradiction of human existence.  Sleep is supposed to rejuvenate us, and yet it has become the most sacrificed therapy.  Why?  The answer is the trains run after sundown under the cover of blackness.  Since it has become Precision Scheduled Railroading, the trains should be predictable.  They are predictably longer, because of Locotrol (a crazy gringo driving the train).  Intermodulation.  If we can't decide whether or not to wear a mask that doesn't even cover our eyes, how can we understand this concept?  The top of a GE locomotive is a transmitting station replete with Wifi, Cell, and traditional radio.  My internet slows down when a train goes by.  Is this acceptable, a rail monopoly?  The Post-Covid Snake Oil Show is a campaign of misinformation and down right lies.  Scare the people, and they won't pay attention to the polluted environment.  Corporate America has become slimy with malfeasance.  No one is looking out for the people.  Within several miles our our home, which is near historic Haymount, trees are being razed like there is no tomorrow.  Trees that have taken decades to grow, and which provide rich oxygen for us to breath into our lungs, are just being pushed over with bulldozers and hauled to the city dump.  There has been no thought as to how to integrate a tree into a yard or neighborhood.  "0 Jura Drive" is a newly proposed Fayetteville subdivision.  Miraculously, with a huge housing shortage within the city limits, a fifty acre, ninety home subdivision materializes out of nowhere, at the expense of fifty acres of trees.  Similarly on North Edgewater Drive in Van Story Hills, a hillside of oaks, pines, and maples that has been in existence from the beginning, suddenly is razed to the ground in one fell swoop.  The precursors to these events have been "The Shops at Village Green," and the pine forest on the corner of Glensford and Cliffdale Roads.  Several years ago this wooded lot which bordered a middle class neighborhood off of the All American Expressway was razed to the ground exposing the flanks of these homes.  Their property values decreased immediately.  No sound barrier from traffic.  No privacy.  Nothing.  Nothing has been built there, just as nothing has been built on the corner of Village Drive and Robeson Street.  They felled all of the trees, and now it sits.  Less oxygen.  More noise.  Urban decay.  The air is rife with the smell of jet fuel and diesel exhaust, and the things that manufacture breathable air are not valued.  We needs drugs to survive now.  Pretty soon we'll need bottled oxygen.  Who is going to sell it to us?  America, the biodome.  It's depressing. 

The Raveling of the Hem of America

 Ironically during the Covid sequestering, when air travel was limited, the ozone hole over the South Pole almost healed itself.  When the quarantine was lifted, and the world was declared safe to resume a convalescent recovery, the checks and balances of the democratic system were weakened.  From the pulpit of his Presidency, Donald Trump limited federal regulation and oversight.  What does this mean?  It is easiest to cast Fayettenam as a metaphor.  Environmental protections always have been important in assuring the quality of life of America citizens penned in the United States Constitution.  During his Presidency the nature and purpose of our declaration of rights has come into question.  In addition to a physical and violent insurrection on the United States Capital, when they were attempting to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election, the philosophy of America postulated in the Constitution has come under attack. Two substantial, tangible, and legal attacks are enough to convict an entity of treason.  For treason should Donald Trump be held accountable.  It makes no matter that he is a silver-tongued sloth, and seasoned cult leader, and a sociopath.  The courts will find him guilty of his crimes, and criminal trials will exclude him for running for reelection.  Until then it is hedge, hedge, hedge.  As a nation we do not care what his deranged mind aspires to accomplish in his new fascist regime.  If we are banking on America empowering a communist upheaval, it would contradict the essence of American Way.  If you desire authoritarianism, feel free to immigrate to Moscow.  Incarceration, poison, or death will be the result of your resistance.  In America we are free to speak our minds, but organizing a second revolution will take more than the fanatical posturing of the anachronistic Ku Klux Klan.  Historically lynching sent a gruesome message, but as a matured and intelligent nation, hopefully we have moved past that probable propaganda.  Constitutional peace still is possible. 

The Covid Debacle

 Covid was too convenient.  If one wanted to disable an economy, a supposed free market system with rule by the people, then attack its country with a deadly pathogen.  As the socioeconomic system falters Robber barons are poised to take the reins.  Big Pharma, who all ready have undermined America's health, will benefit by providing the appropriate remedy.  It was Editor-in-Chief Holden Thorp who told me that to become affluent and famous, one has to create the malady to which they all ready possess the remedy.  Like HIV and the now invisible and rich Anthony Fauci, it took a few years for the Covid vaccines to emerge.  Hundreds of thousands died of AIDS before the virus was isolated.  Misinformation about treatment was rampant.  It really seemed as if they wanted those intravenous drug users and homosexuals to die.  There was the saga of Judy Mikovits, "And the Band Played On."  Political and economic maneuvering for the appropriate patents, and people just kept dying.  Covid was too convenient, and its development at the Chinese Wuhan Labs was financed by the United States.  It could be interpreted as a brazen, fascist, domestic, terror attack, and its gains were financial for a specific few.  Amazon all ready was established  as an internet-based mail order powerhouse, that had dealt a stark blow to brick and mortar stores.  When an entire citizenry is forced to shelter-in-place, who prospers?  The State.  People must eat, so internet-based meal ordering and delivery appeared.  Grub Hub.  Uber Eats.  To ease the pain, suffering, and death of Covid 19, we would become addicted to our smart phones.  The availability of meals.  Graphic sex.  Products.  Entertainment.  Games.  All in the palm of your hand.  Once it was your genitalia.  If the Robber barons could minimize our sexual desire and the actual methods of sexual fulfillment, then they could replace them with meaningless commodities (anodynes).  Games.  Videos.  Music.  Shopping.  Sex.  All in the palm of your hand.  It is too good to be true, and it takes the challenge out of human interaction.  We become docile lambs led to the slaughter.  Covid 19 was a ruthless ethnic cleansing and reduction of the global population, and it is frightening to think who has it now.  A strong Secretary of Defense, like Leon Panetta, would be a good start.   

Remembering Our Lost Friends

 Cumberland County has the worst water in the state.  The presence of the Chemours plant, an offshoot of DuPont, doesn't help.  After polluting the watershed with forever chemicals for decades, Chemours now is professing to care.  Locals are not buying it.  Irresponsibility runs deep, and Camp Lejeune used similar chemicals to clean grungy locomotives on "Track X" back in the day.  These chemicals seeped into the ground water and contaminated wells causing disease and death for many locals at Marine Base Camp Lejeune.  National defense has a long powerful arm, and unfortunately the Pentagon feels local citizens are expendable.  It is not a sentiment dissimilar from corporate America.  The needs of the masses outweigh the needs of the few.  While their is a mass migration into North Carolina, because of its relatively low cost of living, there are trade offs.  The host county for the world's largest military base has the worst water in the state.  This is a contradiction.  If we wanted our defending troops to be strong and intelligent, then we would treat them better.  Life at Fort Liberty is no walk in the park.  Fort Bragg has a history of violence, and it is understandable, because it is a training ground for ensuing war.  It is difficult to balance that training, fierce dedicated fighting with enlightened living.  Fayetteville suffers consequently.  It is common knowledge that children leave Cumberland County and never return.  It does not offer the amenities of other cities.  Military personnel who move here become disillusioned.  Since the outbreak of Covid 19 the quality of life in Fayetteville has plummeted.  During the pandemic it remained relatively steady, while people sheltered at home.  When the disease began to ebb, urban decay emerged.  With a severely disabled work force, middle class businesses quickly succumbed to a markedly changed clientele.  It was difficult to find quality labor, and the socioeconomic status of neighborhoods changed.  Suddenly Fayetteville resembled a ghetto, something I never have witnessed.  Parts of Fayetteville have waned in the past and fallen into disrepair.  In time these properties are purchased and rejuvenated.  Joe Biden's ending of the War in Afghanistan had major consequences for Cumberland Country.  Defense contractors, local businesses with contracts through the Department of Defense, began to disappear.  Those free flowing dollars sanctioned by war dried up.  It has become obvious these types of war-related entities comprise a majority of Cumberland County's middle and upper classes.  This not always was the case.  Once Fayetteville had a substantial societal class  funded by businesses outside of the United States military.  Merita baked fresh bread on Ramsey Street.  The Coca Cola bottling plant was torn down and replaced with government agencies.  Black and Decker closed.  There was an elite group of business professionals living on "The Gold Coast," Skye Drive, and many other upper middle class neighborhoods.  With the absence of these businesses, the influence of this old money has lessened.  The older generation has died off, and as many know, children do not return to Fayetteville.  Consequently these reputable historic neighborhoods have suffered from disrespect.  That disrespect comes from corporate America mainly in their activity supporting the Military Industrial Complex.  While BRAC painted the moving of Ground Forces Command to Fort Liberty as positive with its influx of dollars, it in fact has contributed to the neglect and decline of Cumberland Country infrastructure.  Yes, we have I-195, an outer loop that serves the post.  Also we have other eye candy which is meant to feign civility and enlightenment such as a baseball stadium, new tennis complex, and skateboard park.  The reality is none of these things can overcome the brusk reality of industrial activity such as freight rail, military air traffic, and now commercial air flight.  These three things have forsaken the city of Fayetteville and turned the city into a small nuclear reactor with people living in its core.  A Facebook group named "Remembering Our Lost Friends" is necessary to commemorate the memories of so many lost souls.  People die more rapidly and more often in Cumberland County, and it is no mystery why.  Downtown Fayetteville a few years ago was a focal point of revitalization.  It would seem Covid 19 and its effects on the population largely are responsible for these societal changes.  Urban flight covertly drained Fayetteville of its middle class dollars, and a ghetto remains.  The police force has numerous vacancies, and drug distribution in particular through "Vape" shops has flourished.  These legal fronts for drug distribution, gambling, and prostitution are a smear on virtuous living.  They are unneeded temptations, a short term fix, for the now long term problems of a military city. 

The American Oligarchy

It is difficult not to wax pessimism, when most of what we see in the media is controversy.  If we turn to traditional avenues of enlightenment, academia has become marred with plagiarism, discrimination, politics, and corruption.  College sports have bolstered capitalism and undermined the virtue of academia.  It's all about the dollar, and America has lost a myriad of ways to earn that dollar.  Like American Popular music or more succinctly, the "Pop Star," the shallowness of capitalism has indoctrinated us into win/lose.  Controversy.  Competition.  Dominance.  Battle.  War.  Win!  Lose!  Most people will agree some competition is positive, but traditionally academia was a shelter from the cut throat dynamic of Wall Street.  It was thought of as a nurturing place intelligent students could learn and hone their craft.  The illusion of the "College Town" remains, but it is less present.  Georgetown.  Chapel Hill.  Athens.  Asheville.  These places were Camelot back in the day and were far from the inner city ghetto.  If you are not careful you could be seduced by the college town.  As soon as you drive away from the collegiate environment, things change back to the countryside.  Iowa Farm Boy.  Corn Huskers.  Midwest Diary Farms.  The values of the small town have been a mainstay in the history of America, and perhaps they found their origins in Puritan settlers and their beliefs.  The temptations of the modern city did not suit them, and they felt the values of a working community were enough.  Farming.  Building.  Harvesting.  Was it the sexual allure of Rock 'n' Roll that seduced America's youth and created a sexual revolution?  Bob Fosse's choreography was a metaphor for this modern perspective.  The "Crooning" of our parents time no longer was relevant, and America's Youth sought a more aggressive, powerful, and empowering aesthetic.  Blaxpolitation has negative connotations, but after the assassinations of Martin Luther King, John F Kennedy, and Malcolm X, popular culture necessarily changed.  The dynamic of music, television, and film changed with the rise of the Black Panther Party.  Characters like Shaft, "Who's the private dick that is a sex machine to all the chicks?" were born in contrast to the passive and docile image of freed slaves.  After decades of segregation, Jim Crow, and lynchings, STAX records felt a stronger black persona was needed.  With the Viet Nam War raging, drug trafficking, and gang violence, crooning romantic music no longer was viable as an outlet for America.  Rock 'n' Roll was here to stay.  In our current search for identity and solidarity, there are many American choices.  Necessarily with the history of slavery they unfold over racial lines.  Integration was implemented in America's public schools offering equal opportunities for all.  Acutely we remember this scenario, Rosa Parks, George Wallace, and the Kennedy Clan competing in the arena of Civil Rights.  In a great disservice to America, bigotry and white supremacy would not allow the further dissemination of these principles.  Reganomics overshadowed the Civil Rights Movement and replaced it with the Yuppie, Young, Upwardly Mobile, Professional.  Reducing the 70% tax rate on the wealthy, expendable capital was released changing the economic landscape of America for better or worse.  Stagflation was thwarted, and people have mixed views on the result.  Instead of stuffing money into their pockets like our modern breed of billionaires, businesses, companies, and corporations invested back into their interests creating an American Renaissance of television, film, music, fashion, and commerce.  Not unlike the "Roaring Twenties," readily available cocaine fueled this mania.  As Americans we have our choice.  MAGA is an empty, politically motivated, manipulative ploy to destroy American democracy and self governance.  If we do want to make America great again, we need to increase the tax percentage on the ultra-rich, empower the middle and lower classes, and spread the dollar out through smaller businesses and practices.  The age of the "Pop Star" cannot sustain.  All men are created equal, but as a sovereign nation we have forgotten this.  America is an oligarchy, and our rulers are not adept at governance.  

Elder Care and Planning

What is difficult is when your mom wants to come home.  It is after all her house.  Mostly it was my father's house.  He paid for it, but it became hers when he left this earth.  I need to remember that some times.  What I need to remember always is things never will be the same.  That is what aging is.  I never experienced this until now, because I always felt young enough to make something else happen.  Then your family begins to pass away, uncles, aunts, grandparents, parents, and their friends a different reality presents itself.  You are in a different place than the rest of your life, and you have to make changes.  Upon what you relied before does not apply now.  Things never will be the same.  You must have a clear vision of your future plan, and that plan accommodates loss in your family.  My plan included a self-actualized estate sale, but there will be no money exchanged.  There will be no sale at all, but the process of the estate sale occurs.  That means everything your family leaves behind is examined, evaluated, and tasked for its future.  This is a hulking daunting job, and that is why Estate Sale companies exist.  It is too much for most families.  Allowing your family heirlooms to be sold off for a fraction of their value is sacrilege.  I am doing it myself, and it is sad.  You are looking at the loss of a family square in the face.  Christmas decorations, ornaments, and memorabilia.  All of the things that made a family a family.  It is heartbreaking, but it needs to be done.  My mother wants to come home, but it would not be good for her.  Her tenure in the family dwelling lasted until 90.  It was a quality run, but it had run it course.  The day she picked up that forty pound flower pot is the day life changed for her.  Without kyphoplasty she never would have gotten out of bed.  Five broken vertebra later her spine is crooked and weak, and she barely can stand up.  She sits in a wheelchair, and keeping her from falling keeps her alive.  It is the same with my aunt.  Not that long ago she tried to get up and landed on her head.  It is a necessity to keep them sitting in their chairs.  Our house is inaccessible, and no matter how hard we try, there is just no way to make it different.  The most pressing reality is even if she could stay here, it would not be good for her.  There are all kinds of environmental problems, and those include invasive low-flying aircraft, rumbling freight trains (like now), menacing Apache helicopters, and more.  Life is not the same in Fayettenam, and steadily it has gotten worse.  She gets the daily newspaper.  I take her periodicals.  She has television, mostly Turner Classic Movies.  But her room is comfortable, and they take care of her needs.  She gets three meals a day, and they take her to the restroom.  It is an adjustment for sure, but mostly it is in the mind.  If she decides to accept it, then she could be happy.  Always she is consumed with what I am doing, and that is attempting to accomplish the large task of feigning the Estate Sale.  It would entertain her to see it happen, and it did with my aunt.  There is more to it, and that is me.  If I had married and spawned a family, then perhaps we wouldn't care.  It is a difficult decision how to handle elder care.  She thinks the family that sold us the house has moved back in.  I have no idea where she thinks I live.  I'm not sure she cares much anymore.  You plan your work and work you plan and stick to it.  That is what I am doing.  Her home will become turn key, and the prospect of that hassle in my future will dissipate.  I am getting it done now.  Then I can rest.  

Walking to the Beat of Your Own Drummer

 Choosing a college was difficult.  I had five choices.  They were Appalachian State University, East Carolina University, North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  The purpose of the state university system is to offer affordable quality education.  Unlike Ivy League schools, which earn from out-of-state tuition, colleges and universities within the state system are there for a specific reason.  When I chose Chapel Hill, there was no doubt in my mind it was the best school.  I didn't necessarily want to go there, but I felt like if I was offered the opportunity, I should respect and take it.  In retrospect and at the urging of my Professor uncle, Dr. Peter Reichle, perhaps Appalachian State could have been a better choice.  I majored in music for lack of a better choice.  I did not want to become a music teacher, but like many others, I completed the Bachelor of Music Education degree as a backup.  Graduating from UNC was the single most difficult thing I ever did.  On graduation day I had to look in the program to see if my name was there.  I nearly failed Sight Singing ll under Dr. Ann M Woodward, the wife of noted musicologist Dr. Howard E. Smither.  My final exam score was a 59, and she gave me the extra point to allow me to graduate.  I spent no time working on the assignment, because it was my last semester.  We were expected to sight sing the opening to Igor Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" in seven clefs with moveable do.  I could not do it, although I was a good sight reader and aced the piano proficiency test.  I could read and sing pitches and intervals, but it didn't make sense to me to have to remember syllables to go with the pitches.  It is a different mental process, and it takes a lot of effort.  Fixed do made more sense to me.  I was able to play all of my scales four octaves, both major and minor keys.  The piano faculty was impressed, because I was a trumpet major.  You had to harmonize a few melodies at sight and then transpose them to a different key.  This process is related to jazz, and while that was not the chosen topic of this blog entry, it would be good upon which to expound.  Lately as I have been trying to play the piano more, I am becoming more aware of the difference between a jazz education and a traditional one.  My undergraduate degree at UNC-Chapel Hill was traditional, so I satisfied all the requirements of a European-based university music degree.  That meant part writing in the style of J.S. Bach, counterpoint of different centuries, orchestration, music history and the rest.  It is a bear, and my interest in jazz got me through it.  You can be musical and be learned.  Many academics in music are not musical at all and don't have talent.  There is enough substance to music theory to keep you occupied.  If anyone wants to listen to you play or hear one of your tunes is a different story.  American jazz musicians for the most part were not traditionally trained.  The Creoles were different, and their European/African mix allowed them to attend institutions of higher learning.  It was not until Jim Crow laws were enacted in Louisiana that Creoles lost their once white status and became lowly slaves.  Classically trained musicians playing in orchestras and opera houses turned to jazz as a viable vocation.  The disparity or battle between jazz and classical music never has waned, and like the return of Trump versus Biden, it is a mainstay go to issue that never will go away.  There is a lot to debate.  In the position I find myself, the difference between the jazz vernacular and classical music is stark.  While the Fayetteville Symphony Orchestra and the military bands bridge this gap well, the difference is most obvious at the lower levels of music proficiency.  The place to learn less formal music, popular music, folk, jazz, or gospel would be in the black churches.  Easily this designation could suffice for the difference.  I have been interested in the history of the Black Church for this reason, and freely I admit I am ignorant.  There only are a few documentaries on PBS and Youtube.  Less than a week ago in in the throes of Black History Month, I stumbled upon Louis Gates' offering.  I did not have a fond opinion of his show researching celebrity bloodlines on PBS.  He seemed like an ordinary talk show host without much knowledge.  His newest offering, a four episode two hour long history of the Black Church was exactly what I was missing in my research of jazz history.  I had finished my study of Early Jass, and necessarily was moving to American Popular Music.  this nebulous and oft cited entity, the Black Church, has not been documented well enough.  In light of the recent Woke movement it is understandable.  White America has not interest in the roots of American Popular Music and the exploitation of black musicians.  Best to stay in your own neighborhood, church, or community.  When you begin trying to influence the American mainstream is when assassinations begin.  Unfortunately America was racist enough not to allow this proliferation of black Civil Rights.  We swept it under the rug, and recently with the Black Lives Matter movement it has erupted again.  As it turns out the Black Church is a metaphor for black Civil Rights.  It is a metaphor for survival of the black race in America.  When the stakes are this high, then the content of this movement is valid, relevant, and important to document and sustain.  I find myself squarely in the middle of this racial tug of war.  I grew up in the Episcopal Church playing the trumpet at Christmas and Easter and engaging in "high" church.  The Eucharist was followed in our prayer book, and the service was formal.  As I have matured, grown, and aged musically as a human being playing jazz and American popular music, it is difficult to adopt this aged approach as my source of worship.  It would seem there are other viable alternatives for worship embracing more modern kinds of music.  Of course this is true, because traditional learned church quickly is becoming extinct in America.  All denominations are having difficulty attracting and keeping members.  I would say with the advent of the interactivity of the internet and its accompanying technology, traditional church has become passe.  It is reasonable that a new generation of younger Americans seek more modern and familiar surroundings in their place of worship.  This includes "Shobiz," a term that always has denoted the glamour and pageantry of Hollywood-based television, film, and music television.  Rock 'n' Roll would be another metaphor for this style of worship.  The mixing of American Popular Music and church is new to me, but I don't feel a problem with it.  My interest in traditional jazz and the origins of the Hammond organ lead me to the Black Church, where openly they choose this instrument as their major voice.  The major difference between traditional European-based music is its source on paper.  Because audio recording was not invented until the 1920's, written manuscript was the only choice for documenting and preserving music.  When I sit down and read out of a songbook, like I have been doing for the first time recently, the disparity between the two processes is stark.  Those written notes on the staff do purvey some of the intent of the music, and certainly expressive markings for dynamics and phrasing help.  What the written music does not convey is sound.  What audible sounds are you trying to make, and what is the human process for creating these sounds?  Jazz music bypasses written music and jumps to the chase.  It mostly is an aural tradition, one that is passed on by mouth through human beings.  No one can dispute the musical artistry of Louis Armstrong, although shallow and discriminatory bigots may call him an unpleasant-looking Negro.  Some will say he is unrefined and gross, the same way American bigots characterized the freed slaves.  African blood and culture is different than European influenced America, and it is what has made America rich, unique, and artistic.  The quest of the black race to survive and flourish in America is our most viable identity.  Addressing the effects of slavery are necessary for an understanding of the history of America and who we are as a people.  While as a nation since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950's and 1960's, we have shuttered that unpleasant history.  Are we better for it?  It was Donald Trump and the Far Right who reignited this bigotry.  It is a broken record.  The red state MAGA ads are appearing on television now, and they are a sickening concoction of formula, manipulation, and lies.  They no longer are relevant, and they will fail to sway any voter.  The assembled cast of gruesome characters are a tepid lot of figure heads chosen by and driven by selfish, corrupt, and almost fascist Political Action Committees.  Vladimir Putin himself admonished Donald Trump for his high crimes and misdemeanors, and suggested Joe Biden should be reelected in 2024.  Trumps egocentric tirade to shield himself from prosecution by being reelected is a huge, unwanted, detrital siege of American consciousness.  For America to survive, regroup, and begin to develop a new identity with solidarity, Donald Trump should wane in presence.