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Man, these internets are awesome. I recently decided to look up some old school chums on the My Space and damn if I didn't find two of them right off.
David Boyles I met in a beginning guitar class my second year in college. We pissed off the instructor because we got too busy trading Metallica licks to pay attention to his lesson on Greensleves.
That same night, my other friends were playing a small gig across campus and we walked over and talked for a while. As the college years went by, David grew from a metal foundation to embrace funk, soul and fusion and create a style all his own. If I remember right, he played in Nuclear Jesus and Space Monkey with my best of friends, Brooks Butler.
Brooks and I were roommates off an on for a few years and I have no bigger influence on my guitar abilities than him. I can't say enough how much his friendship meant to me.
After getting his MA at UT, he lived in Berkely for a while, then Miami and now back in Asheville, making the scene in several combinations, but giggin hard with a band called Rafe Hollister.
I haven't seen Dave in more than a decade. In fact, the last time I saw him was after he played a show, singing lead and playing the five-string bass like nobody's business for hours. We migrated back to Brooks' house and as I left, Dave was asleep on the floor. I didn't get a chance to tell him how awesome he was that night, and I new I was about to embark on a forced exile, so I didn't know when I would see him again. So I left a note in his hand or under his pillow with the word "fluid".
I am happy for you guys.
The rest of you should check them out. Their divergent styles speak volumes about the breadth of experiences I've tried to take in in my short time here.
I ain't scared.
David Brooks:
Once upon a time, the fact that hundreds of millions of people around the world are rising out of poverty would have been a source of pride and optimism. But if you listen to the presidential candidates, improvements in the developing world are menacing. Their speeches constitute a symphony of woe about lead-painted toys, manipulated currencies and stolen jobs.
And if Dobbsianism is winning when times are good, you can imagine how attractive it’s going to seem if we enter the serious recession that Larry Summers convincingly and terrifyingly forecasts in yesterday’s Financial Times. If the economy dips as seriously as that, the political climate could shift in ugly ways.
So it’s worth pointing out now more than ever that Dobbsianism is fundamentally wrong. It plays on legitimate anxieties, but it rests at heart on a more existential fear — the fear that America is under assault and is fundamentally fragile. It rests on fears that the America we once knew is bleeding away.
I coudn't resist, espicially since I hear that dumb ass song every day at work.
*Bethan, 56, lives in southern England on the same street as best friend Allie, 64.
They are on their first holiday to Kenya, a country they say is "just full of big young boys who like us older girls."
Hard figures are difficult to come by, but local people on the coast estimate that as many as one in five single women visiting from rich countries are in search of sex.*
Now get up on this:
World Bank:
*The trend from 1990 to 2000 suggests that adult HIV prevalence in Kenya will increase to about 14% by the year 2005 and then stabilize at that level and the number of infected people in the population will have increased from about 2.2 million people in 2000 to 2.6 million by 2005 and to 2.9 million by 2010.
One dramatic impact of AIDS deaths is the decline in life expectancy. The Central Bureau of Statistics estimates that without AIDS, life expectancy at birth would currently be about 65 years. However, because of the large number of AIDS deaths, it is actually only about 46 years and may decline to 45 years by 2010. Thus almost 20 years of life expectancy have already been lost because of AIDS.*
Sean Taylor is a hell of a football player. I hope he gets through this.
*Washington Redskins safety Sean Taylor was shot at his Florida home early Monday and was hospitalized in critical condition, police and relatives said.
Miami-Dade police officials said police received a 1:45 a.m. call from a woman inside Taylor's residence in the affluent suburb of Palmetto Bay, saying that a man had been shot. Ambulance crews found the 24-year-old defensive star struck in the lower extremities, Lt. Nancy Perez said.*
Barack Obama on moving civil rights forward:
*“I didn’t have to go to jail. I haven’t had my head beat in — haven’t had dogs and fire hoses set on me. So I’m benefiting from what the Moses generation did. ... The question is whether the Joshuas among us are willing to stand up, are willing to be counted, are willing to vote, are willing to organize, are willing to mobilize, are willing to get going.”
It was one of the most compelling rationales Obama has articulated for a campaign that has been sidetracked by missteps and mudslinging but that now sees the possibility of upsetting Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) in the make-or-break Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3.*
Shelby Steele on Obama's Iran stance:
*America does not do so well in its disciplinary wars (the Gulf War is an arguable exception) because we begin these wars with only a marginal moral authority and then, as time passes, even this meager store of moral capital bleeds away. Inevitably, into this vacuum comes a clamorous and sanctimonious antiwar movement that sets the bar for American moral authority so high that we must virtually lose the war in order to meet it. There must be no torture, no collateral damage, no cultural insensitivity, no mistreatment of prisoners and no truly aggressive or definitive display of American military power. In other words, no victory.
Meanwhile our enemy is fighting all out to achieve a new balance of power. As we anguish over the possibility of collateral damage, this enemy practices collateral damage as a tactic of war. In Iraq, al Qaeda blows up women and children simply to keep alive the chaos of war that gives it cover. This enemy's sense of moral authority--as misguided as it may be--is so strong that it compensates for its lack of sophisticated military hardware.
On the other hand, our great military might is not enough to compensate for our weak sense of moral authority, our ambivalence. If we have the greatest military in history, it is also true that we lack our enemy's talent for true belief. Our rationale for war is difficult to articulate, always arguable, and distinctly removed from immediate necessity. Our society is deeply divided and there is a vigorous antiwar movement ready to capitalize on our every military setback.*
Fred Hiatt on Obama's convictions:
*The question is particularly acute for Obama, because of his line of attack on Clinton and because he built his candidacy on two foundations: that he can heal the nation's partisan divisions and that he will lead "not by polls, but by principle; not by calculation, but by conviction," as he said in Iowa this month. Without those distinctions, he's just a former state legislator from Illinois with a half-term, and few accomplishments, in the U.S. Senate.
But when the first selling point left him stuck in second in national polls, he shifted, apparently without much difficulty, to attacking Clinton from the left. And at some point it's no longer enough to describe yourself as courageous. Obama followed his not-calculation-but-conviction statement, in a speech generally credited as one of his strongest of the fall, by pledging to stand up to corporate lobbyists, end the war in Iraq and take tax breaks away from companies that send jobs overseas -- not exactly bitter medicine for his Democratic audience.
In the last Democratic debate, Obama again laced into Clinton for not providing "straight answers to tough questions," but it seemed a bit half-hearted. Maybe that's a good sign; maybe he's not happy with how his campaign has diverged from what he promised it would be.*
A while back I posted this song and told you I hoped to record it with a vocalist by the end of the year. Well, we got 'er done last week.
It's a rough take for now, but Jessica's voice is so good, I thought I would share it with you.
Click here to listen (mp3 stream)
We will be retracking it soon, I hope, and I plan to add this to my 11-song collection I hope to release next month.
Music and lyrics copyright 2007 Mushy Mind Music and Jessica Reed.
It's the same story with universal health care. People who are given something precious tend to take it for granted. Just look at the trash that litters each and every roadway that cuts across the greatest gift of all. On the other hand, there is ample evidence to support the conclusion that people who earn their piece of the pie place incredible value on that which they have earned, and pass that sense of stewardship and thankfulness on from one generation to the next.
Enough of my point of view, here is what Gates has to say. The entire article is worth a read.
Excerpts:
*This class divide was predicted long ago, and nobody wanted to listen ... *
*In 1965, when Moynihan published his report, suggesting that the out-of-wedlock birthrate and the number of families headed by single mothers, both about 24 percent, pointed to dissolution of the social fabric of the black community, black scholars and liberals dismissed it. They attacked its author as a right-wing bigot. Now we’d give just about anything to have those statistics back. Today, 69 percent of black babies are born out of wedlock, while 45 percent of black households with children are headed by women ...*
*I have been studying the family trees of 20 successful African-Americans, people in fields ranging from entertainment and sports (Oprah Winfrey, the track star Jackie Joyner-Kersee) to space travel and medicine (the astronaut Mae Jemison and Ben Carson, a pediatric neurosurgeon). And I’ve seen an astonishing pattern: 15 of the 20 descend from at least one line of former slaves who managed to obtain property by 1920 — a time when only 25 percent of all African-American families owned property ...*
*People who own property feel a sense of ownership in their future and their society. They study, save, work, strive and vote. And people trapped in a culture of tenancy do not.
The sad truth is that the civil rights movement cannot be reborn until we identify the causes of black suffering, some of them self-inflicted. Why can’t black leaders organize rallies around responsible sexuality, birth within marriage, parents reading to their children and students staying in school and doing homework? Imagine Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson distributing free copies of Virginia Hamilton’s collection of folktales “The People Could Fly” or Dr. Seuss, and demanding that black parents sign pledges to read to their children. What would it take to make inner-city schools havens of learning?*
Have you ever had a dog that really didn't want to be kept inside his fence? Well, you get the picture.
NYT:
*Opponents say the 12-to-15-foot-tall steel fence and its construction will disrupt the habitat of jaguars, pygmy owls and other sensitive fauna in the wildlife refuge, and encourage illegal immigrants to use more remote, ecologically delicate terrain.
Three times, including twice this year, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has exempted fence construction along the border from environmental reviews normally required for such projects, saying the waivers avoid legal delays that threaten speedy completion.
“This is another example of the federal government riding roughshod over America’s treasured lands and legal process in its rush to complete a highly ineffective and controversial border wall,” said Matt Clark, the Southwest representative for Defenders of Wildlife, an advocacy group.*
David BowieFrom Obama HQ:
According to a new Washington Post/ABC poll, Senator Obama has 30 percent support among likely Democratic caucus-goers, leading Senator Clinton by four points and John Edwards by eight points. ABC News reports: “Most Democratic likely voters in Iowa, 55 percent, say they’re more interested in a ‘new direction and new ideas’ than in strength and experience, compared with 49 percent in July – a help to Obama, who holds a substantial lead among ‘new direction’ voters.” In addition, “just half of Iowa Democrats in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll believe she’s willing to say what she really thinks – far fewer than say so of either Obama or John Edwards. Obama beats her by 2-1 as the most honest and trustworthy candidate. Her advantage on experience, while substantial, has softened since summer.
WaPo:
Iowa Democrats are tilting toward change, and Obama appears to be benefiting from it.
Fifty-five percent of those surveyed reported that a "new direction and new ideas" are their top priority, compared with 33 percent who favored "strength and experience." That is a shift from July, when 49 percent sought change and 39 percent experience.
More ...
She appears more vulnerable on questions of character. Thirty-one percent found Obama to be the most honest and trustworthy, about double the percentage who said the same of Clinton. While about three-quarters credited both Obama and Edwards with speaking their mind on issues, only 50 percent said Clinton is willing enough to say what she really thinks. Forty-five percent said she is not sufficiently candid.
Overall, the poll points to some strategic gains for Obama. His support is up eight percentage points since July among voters 45 and older -- who accounted for two-thirds of Iowa caucus-goers in 2004. He also runs evenly with Clinton among women in Iowa, drawing 32 percent to her 31 percent, despite the fact that her campaign has built its effort around attracting female voters.
Here is the perfect gift for the liberal, Democrat or liberal Democrat on your Christmas, holiday or festivus, list.
I'll particularly relish the month of October.
I know a young man who is spending his first few years out of college working in Southeast Asia as part of a water purification project. It is his second trip to that region.He is stationed somewhere between Calcutta and Saigon, and gets to travel east and west from time to time. What an experience for a young man not yet 25.
This is his latest dispatch, and I think needs to be shared as we approach the period of American surfeit.
You will likely read his book in years to come.
*Kolkata is everything I dreamed it would be. Maybe you've seen such squalor, but I haven't. Everyone there looks like a picture taken for a calendar advocating the problem of suffering. It's the kind of place a blind man's bamboo cane will play over your toes like a xylophone while women in saris the color of rhododendron blossoms wash their children's clothes in sewer drains along the road. Thick flocks of crows hang above the roofs next to crepe paper kites that fly in glorious loops. It's the kind of place you can find a man, right in the middle of the deafening torrent of traffic, lying half-wrapped on the sidewalk like a bundle of bones, curled into the position he held before he entered this world, his hands cupped over his ears.
At this point it goes without saying that I've been in India, but I'm back in the village now, and so happy to be home. It has never seemed so clean and peaceful, so serene. I wish I had time to tell you all about everything, about how the rice fields of West Bengal glow with dew at first light, how I walked along the ridge that is the border of Nepal through fog like tattered prayer flags flown to the wind, how the men up there carry their loads using only a strap across the forehead, how the Himalaya seems to rise from nowhere, too big to be believed, how I missed my train and spent the whole night sleeping on a wooden luggage rack above the no-class cars, how I got the rhythm of walking in me and could hardly bring myself to stop. But that would take so long, and such stories are usually better told in person anyway.
As glad as I am to be gone, I'd like to go back to Kolkata for a moment, if only in my mind. When you get the news that your grandmother has had another serious surgery, you mostly want to be alone near water. You want to sit along the Ganges and watch the bathers descend the ghats by the thousands in a place they've been coming for thousands of years. If you can't do that, then you want to stand at a precipice and look out over the familiar wrinkles of earth that seem to rise and fall endlessly, preferably in a place with a strong breeze that is like the pitchless music of all such cliffs. Any place, really, that is quiet and that reminds you how old the world is, how much it has changed and is ever changing, and what an unimportant part you are in a play that never had to include you, but that chose to anyway. You've got train tickets to Varanasi but the political parties are calling for a strike of at least 48 hours and if you leave there is no guarantee you'll be able to get back in time for your flight. So you stay, against your will, and try to make the most of it.
That's just where I was a week ago, stranded in Kolkata, left to follow around Mother Teresa's ghost. And so I spent the next few days working with the Missionaries of Charity along AJC Bose Road. The sisters' that work there have a thankless, measureless task. The only counts they can make are the number taken in from the streets and the number that died in the night. The good they accomplish will only last as long as that person is alive. I was taken back to my college dorm room when the words of Mother Teresa first asked me from their page, "Do you love your neighbor? Do you know your neighbor?" Those paragraphs went on to speak of the dignity of each life, of a source of love that ebbs into eternity like the blue-gray mountains, of a river that flows from nowhere to nowhere like the universe outside of time. Please, whatever you do, don't think me righteous. At every entrance of those refuges there is a mural of a rosy-cheeked Jesus in pastel robes, the words "You did it for me!" arching around his delicate frame. But I didn't feel a part of that radical ethic. I felt like a man standing in the surf, throwing water on the shore bucket by bucket. I sat there on the beds feeding the sick their rice and dal one spoon at a time while the newly dead were wrapped in white tissue paper and carried to the truck, one of the few that would be allowed on the streets that day. I sat there and tried to think that I was washing the body of Christ, mostly holding my grandmother.
If you were to come to where I live you might be tempted to pity my neighbors, as I have also been. The children's nakedness. The grime on their hands and feet, their faces. The way that they sometimes wreak of urine or days without bathing. But they play all day in the kaleidoscopes of light the sun makes with the palms. They crouch on canoes that glide effortlessly over mirrors of the sky, which always seems to be the most improbable shade of blue. Their hands know how to catch the quickest crabs without being pinched. The colors of this place are in their laughter. I don't mean to minimize their need. I don't mean that I don't love each of them. I'm not sure just what I mean. Is that okay for now? Thanks so much for reading this far. As always, I'd love to hear from you.*
The Reidsville Review continues its march into the 21st Century by maintaining its website with 48-hour old stories.
As of 11:16 a.m. here on Friday Nov. 16 their website homepage displays stories dated Wednesday Nov. 14.
Not much happening under Local News either.
*"During the criminal investigation, evidence was obtained including positive tests for the presence of anabolic steroids and other performance enhancing substances for Bonds and other athletes," the indictment reads.*
Bye, bye, Barry. And good riddance. Those who lie, cheat and steal belong in the ash heap of history. I want Hank Aaron back.
I am a hair's breath from quitting the Republican Party. If the GOP takes one more step toward xenophobia, I will become an independent.
Chavez ahead of the OPEC curve:
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Tuesday proposed OPEC finance social development programs for poor countries and boost activity in geopolitics, seeking to put his self-styled socialist revolution on the global stage.
More...
"If the United States decides to invade Iran, oil will not just reach $100 per barrel, it will reach $200 per barrel," he added, in reference to rumors over a possible U.S. strike on the Islamic country.
But he said that Venezuela wants to create "protection mechanisms so that the price of oil at $100 does not turn into a destructive bomb for weak economies."
"A great alliance of OPEC nations ... (should) direct a part of that oil income to intense programs for literacy, health, education and housing," he said.
Hi-tech robbers in GSO. Spread the word and catch the crooks.
Somewhat semi-related.
In case you missed it, there's a fella running for the Democratic nomination that is a breath of fresh air among *textbook* politicians who believe in their own inevitability.
What's inevitable is that you will fall in love with his ideas if you give him a chance.
Related: Understanding Iowa.
