jazzoLOG

Apocalypse Anonymous

Tue, 13 May 2008 09:52:24 GMT

Winter solitude---
in a world of one color
the sound of wind.

---Basho

Loneliness, my everyday life.
The sweeping winds pass on the night-bell sound.

---Ching An

Science...means unresting endeavor and continually progressing development toward an end which the poetic intuition may apprehend, but which the intellect can never fully grasp.

---Max Planck

The fresco is titled The End of the World, Apocalypse, created by Luca Signorelli from 1499 through 1502, in Orvieto Cathedral, San Brizio Chapel, Orvieto, Italy.

Bill McKibben's latest essay, Civilizations Last Chance: The Planet Is Nearing a Tipping Point on Climate Change, and It Gets Much Worse, Fast, may have appeared first in Sunday's Los Angeles Times, but it's making the rounds fast. Common Dreams put it up yesterday and it has 146 comments so far. http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/11/8875/ When I read it my first thought was to send it out too, but then I realized I was too depressed to do it. What's the use, I thought. People who will read it already know and either are changing their own personal habits or sending money somewhere. Those who won't read it are the problem.

Psychotherapist and professor of history Carolyn Baker linked it in her newsletter and made this comment: "I have great respect for Bill McKibben, but unlike me, he is still waiting for some miracle of mass consciousness to save civilization. In this article he says we are 'nearing' a tipping point which in my opinion, we have already crossed. I believe that climate change now has a life of its own and that our best human efforts cannot stop it. In contrast to McKibben, I believe that it is only the END of civilization that can save what is left of the earth and its inhabitants, and for me, that cannot happen soon enough."

A friend of mine said a couple years ago, "The sooner we run out of oil the better. Aren't a hundred years of war about the stuff enough?" NASA climatologist James Hansen, quoted in McKibben's article, thinks burning coal to make our electricity is what's done it. President Bush said the U.S. is "addicted" to oil...and then advises us to go shopping. The guy sounds like a pusher. I remember his father being interviewed on television, sitting on the family cabin cruiser in Kennebunkport, in the midst of the gasoline shortage during his administration. At the end of it he was asked if he didn't want to urge Americans to conserve gas. He chuckled audibly...and then said, "Sure, conserve."

Is this the problem? Are we addicts now? I mean real addiction to stuff. Do we think we can't live without gasoline engines and the shopping mall? Or is it I don't want to live if I can't have it? I remember a guy in AA telling me once, "Before I gave it up I used to feel all I wanted to do was drink and smoke until I die." Maybe AA is the answer for consumerism too. Carolyn Baker thinks it is...and so last week she offered her 12 Step Plan to kick the habit. Maybe she's got something here. more >

The Snowville Story

Sat, 10 May 2008 11:58:03 GMT

Great Buddha,
lap filling with these
flowers of snow.

---Kikaku

It would imply the regeneration of mankind, if they were to become elevated enough to truly worship sticks and stones.

---Henry David Thoreau

A vigorous five-mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world.

---Paul Dudley White, M.D.

The Snowville logo http://www.snowvillecreamery.com/

It's been a pretty interesting couple of days, as local Krogers patrons registered concern about a single product lots of people seem to like. Snowville Creamery's milk can cost twice as much as other brands, depending on sale situations, but people are devoted. For an old dude like me it's reminiscent of childhood days, not so much of glass bottles the milkman brought to our doorstep---and which we washed out and returned for refill each day. It's because of the cream on top, something I never thought I'd experience again! Mom preferred we shake up the bottles before the first pour, but sometimes I couldn't resist stealing all the cream onto a bowl of Wheaties. Yum! It really was Breakfast of Champions then!

So Thursday and Friday there was a flurry of activity as word got out that for some reason Kroger's had reduced Snowville's shelf area and hiked the price by a buck. As people all over Southeast Ohio called, emailed, and went into the Athens store to contact management, various stories began to emerge. What we learned, if we didn't know already, farm and pharm are hotly competitive...and what the grocer's got and the doctor prescribes are similarly fought over. Lots of people are involved and it's complicated.

For instance, it's not unusual in the aisles of Krogers or in the doctor's waiting room to observe a salesperson pitching away to a department supervisor or the receptionist through the little window. I'll never forget sitting in Dr. Rothstein's one afternoon, and watching this woman push the latest mood-altering capsule. She was inviting the whole crew out to dinner---"someplace special this time"---and then pointed to her clothes which, she said, were specially designed to match the gay colors of the pill. Can you imagine the money involved to deck out the Merck sales force in this wardrobe, plus dinners at the resort? Wonder who pays for all that. more >

The Foothill Fanfairs

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 09:54:13 GMT

Knowledge comes but wisdom lingers.

---Alfred, Lord Tennyson

What is beyond, is that which is also here.

---Ancient Indian aphorism

The Emperor's chief carpenter, Ch'ing, once made a music stand so perfect that all who saw it marveled. When Lu asked him to reveal the mystery of his art, Ch'ing demurred, saying: "No mystery, your Highness, though there is something. When I am about to make such a stand, I first reduce my mind to absolute quiet. Three days in this condition and I am oblivious to any reward to be gained. Five days, and I am oblivious to any fame to be acquired. Seven days, and I become unconscious of my four limbs and body. Then, with no thought of the Court in mind, all my skill concentrated and all disturbing elements gone, I go into the forest to search for a suitable tree. It contains the stand in my mind's eye, and then I set to work."

---Chuang-Tzu

If you've ever been in a choir, particularly the church variety, you may appreciate Dave Walker's cartoon, from the UK's Church Times. http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/blog_home.asp?id=50222

On Saturday, in San Rafael, California, there will be a national competition you may not be aware of. It's the 24th Annual Harmony Sweepstakes A Cappella Festival. Actually this is the final contest, as there already have been 8 elimination contests held in cities all over the country. Now the winning groups there are being flown to Marin Veterans' Auditorium for this big deal over the weekend. It's interesting there are hundreds of these groups involved, and probably not too many are of the barbershop variety anymore. As you can see from these photos and group descriptions, the music is all over the place http://www.harmony-sweepstakes.com/ , but you can be sure of one thing: most of these participants have heard of Phil Mattson and The Foothill Fanfairs.

A couple years ago I stumbled into the best argument I know for writing personal stuff on the Internet. I merely related the coincidental sighting of a name of a musician on a CD set a friend generously gave me, with an LP I had bought years earlier. The name Michele Weir connected me to somebody name Phil Mattson, then I began to find out things about him, and finally I thought somebody somewhere might be interested in this so I wrote about it. http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v63/__show_article/_a000063-000402.htm#com92404 What followed here, elsewhere I post, and in emails has been a continuous flow of messages from people who studied and performed with this great teacher. Most recently I heard from someone named Roy Turpin, who happens to be a therapist now out in California (isn't everybody?) and he has provided me a rare opportunity.

A month ago Gene Puerling died. His passing went largely unnoticed in the media, but those of us who love acapella singing know he formed The Hi-Lo's in the early 1950s, and then Singers Unlimited a decade later, and we mourned appropriately. Phil Mattson appreciated the Puerling genius, which was a style and technique completely original, and had the brilliance himself to begin teaching it to young people. Well, I suppose some folks must have thought he was crazy to attempt it...because certainly those of us who also loved Puerling thought such singing clearly was impossible---even where there it was on records. It really was impossible, because Gene began to experiment with multi-tracking and eventually had 4 singers sound like 8, then 12, or a whole choir. Phil's challenge may have been tougher, because he used real people...and they were kids. more >

The Redemption Of Spring

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 17:08:24 GMT

Lose your mind and come to your senses.

---Fritz Perls

It gets late early out there.

---Yogi Berra

A mystical experience is not any more unique than a modern experiment in physics. On the other hand, it is not less sophisticated, either....The complexity and efficiency of the physicist's technical apparatus is matched, if not surpassed, by that of the mystic's consciousness....A page from a journal of modern experimental physics will be as mysterious to the uninitiated as a Tibetan mandala. Both are records of inquiries into the nature of the universe.

---Fritjof Capra

I stepped out my front door this early morning and started down the driveway. Head lowered in thought, time to fetch the Sunday paper in the box down by the road, when I heard the first spring song of a wood thrush in our woods. He must have come back yesterday. I notice the juncos are packing up and moving out to the North woods for the summer. I looked around and the world was transformed. There hadn't been much rain yesterday, but it was slow and steady...and enough to bring on the first real burst of new leaves. The daffodils are mostly done, tulips in full blast, and redbud coming on at its usual leisurely pace. I'm sure there's plenty more wild flower action in the forest and by the creeks. But that thrush's song lifted my spirits to a healing high.

I just had read an email from my sister, describing her early retirement from administration in local public health in our hometown. The job had become more than tedious, with constant and increasing mandates "to do more and more with less and less." It had become dangerous to one's health, life-threatening. Retirement at 59, with 32 years of service...and she listed 3 others in community and environmental health who did the same thing in a matter of months. No double-dipping for these people, they've had it. How many others who chose careers of public service, before Reagan declared government work a waste of money and Gingrich labeled its workers bureaucrats to be gotten rid of, have done the same thing over the last decade? How many thousands, tens of thousands, from the top ranks of the CIA through the military and into the social agencies? Every level of government affected by budget cuts and increased paperwork to prove accountability. more >

Jeff Goodell Shines The Light On Big Coal

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 10:02:16 GMT

The puzzled ones, the Americans, go through their lives
Buying what they are told to buy,
Pursuing their love affairs with the automobile,

Baseball and football, romance and beauty,
Enthusiastic as trained seals, going into debt, struggling
True believers in liberty, and also security,

And of course sex cheating on each other
For the most part only a little, mostly avoiding violence
Except at a vast blue distance, as between bombsight and earth,

Or on the violent screen, which they adore.
Those who are not Americans think Americans are happy
Because they are so filthy rich, but not so.

They are mostly puzzled and at a loss
As if someone pulled the floor out from under them,
They'd like to believe in God, or something, and they do try.

You can see it in their white faces at the supermarket and the gas station
Not the immigrant faces, they know what they want,
Not the blacks, whose faces are hurt and proud

The white faces, lipsticked, shaven, we do try
To keep smiling, for when we're smiling, the whole world
Smiles with us, but we feel we've lost

That loving feeling. Clouds ride by above us,
Rivers flow, toilets work, traffic lights work, barring floods, fires
And earthquakes, houses and streets appear stable

So what is it, this moon-shaped blankness?
What the hell is it? America is perplexed.
We would fix it if we knew what was broken.

---"Fix" by Alicia Suskin Ostriker, from No Heaven. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005.

America is so concerned about Big Oil! The owners at Big Coal like it that way. They do their mining in the light of day now, but still they're most comfortable working in the dark. Underground movements...where no one can see. Why be concerned about coal? Isn't that some old issue from the 19th century...that just kind of went away? Like the locomotive? Like that big old pile in everybody's basement, dumped loudly through a little window from the coal truck, well into the 1940s? Gone away...like the coal companies abandoning the little towns, full of worker families, all across the hills of Appalachia? Take a look at this

http://www.earthpolicy.org/Indicators/CO2/2008_Sectoral%20Emissions.GIF

Yeah so? Electricity? The fossil fuel burned for electricity generation is coal. "Electricity Generation." I like that. We're the Electricity Generation, but how many of us think of coal as our plug-in connector? Jeff Goodell didn't. He grew up in Silicon Valley, he told us in Athens Wednesday night, and never saw a lump of coal until he was 30 years old. Nobody in Silicon Valley thought coal was behind the screens of these computers. He lives in New York now and tells us no one in New York thinks of West Virginia mountains when they flip a switch. The trouble is, as we've learned at Ohio University during its tremendous presentations this Earth Week, coal releases twice as much carbon into the atmosphere when it's burned than anything else. But I thought everything everybody's heard lately is about Clean Coal. What's going on here? more >

HopeDance And Waking Up

Tue, 8 Apr 2008 10:03:33 GMT

No more "evidence" of collapse is needed; it's happening here and now and with dizzying speed. I no longer feel a need to "convince" anyone; I'm simply sitting back and watching the inevitable unfold, and as I report the daily news, I can scarcely keep up with the events that have turned prophets into historians.

---Carolyn Baker, historian and psychoanalyst
www.carolynbaker.net , her valuable site

We Bring Democracy To The Fish

It is unacceptable that fish prey on each other.
For their comfort and safety, we will liberate them
into fishfarms with secure, durable boundaries
that exclude predators. Our care will provide
for their liberty, health, happiness, and nutrition.
Of course all creatures need to feel useful.
At maturity the fish will discover their purposes.

---Donald Hall, from White Apples and the Taste of Stone. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007.

The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.

---Rachel Carson

The photo is called "Kelley's Tiger Lily," though that isn't what the flower really is, and can be found at [link]

The news about climate and economy are so disturbing every day, that even people who never talk to me about current affairs are doing so now. People acknowledge impending disaster and don't know what to do. What is there to do? Are we doomed?

This must be brief this morning, as I have taken so much time to read. But among the first articles to show up was something Carolyn Baker sent along to subscribers during her fundraiser. It's from a free magazine in Southern California apparently, which is called HopeDance. I couldn't find it at the actual site so I don't know when it was written. It is lengthy but it leads one through the "syndrome" of waking up from this lifestyle of convenience most Americans anyway have fallen into over the last 50 years. It's not impossible and in fact it ain't even so hard. Take the time and you'll feel better at the end

http://www.hopedance.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=413&Itemid=32
more >

Green Energy Development

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 11:26:37 GMT

The most alarming sign of the state of our society now is that our leaders have the courage to sacrifice the lives of young people in war but have not the courage to tell us that we must be less greedy and wasteful.

---Wendell Berry

The essence of the problem is about consumption, recognizing that a society that consumes one third of the world's resources is unsustainable. This level of consumption requires constant intervention into other people's lands. That's what's going on.

---Winona LaDuke

What we are calling for is a revolution in public education. When the hearts and minds of our children are captured by a school lunch curriculum, enriched with the experience in the garden, sustainability will become the lens through which they see the world.

---Alice Waters

The quotations can be found in the April/May 2008 issue of Mother Earth News, and at the website www.americanswhotellthetruth.org .

Perhaps your idea of food production in the future resembles the illustrating photo (which I found here http://carolynbaker.net/site/content/view/412/ ) and you may be right. Many people are preparing for a post-petroleum world by forming small self-sustaining communities of like-minded individuals. Fortified by stocks of food in individual cellars and possibly an arsenal of collective weapons, they await the apocalypse. I understand Tom Cruise is building an underground shelter.

With that kind of worry, on Tuesday I entered Ohio University's Walter Hall Rotunda (not the most environmentally sound structure, we discovered) for something called the Green Energy Development Summit. The forum was sponsored by US Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, OU's Consortium for Energy, Economics and the Environment (CE3), and the Pew Environment Group (which is one of the Pew Charitable Trusts). That's a pretty formidable team for a small college town in one of the most destitute parts of Appalachia. Was rescue coming at last?
Apparently the idea for the summit was cooked up by Tom Bullock, a representative for Pew in Ohio, and Scott Miller, who directs the energy and environment programs for CE3. They both contacted Senator Brown's office to get at least his name connected and some representatives here, remembering perhaps he visited Athens during his campaign for office to bless the solar array then opening on the roof of Athens Middle School. The senator himself came to Athens yesterday for a review of the conference and to meet with university and business leaders. I sat next to a representative of Governor Strickland. So there we were: a lot of suits and a bunch of blue jeans.

A half dozen of the people in neckties turned out to be presenters, each alloted about 20 minutes to tell us of business initiatives in which they were involved. Now I had 2 problems with this already. First of course is my prejudice that it's free market capitalists that have messed us up to the point where chunks of Antarctica the size of an average country are falling off and dissolving. Second is my ignorance, both about business marketing and the engineering that invents the products. That means I'm not such a great candidate to be telling you about this...but I'll try my best. What I want to accomplish is at least to get something on the Internet about what we learned that day, and hopefully attract some reaction from people who do know what they're talking about. more >

Barack Obama: Rock Church, Rock

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 10:13:03 GMT

Chen-Lang approached Shih-Tou and asked: "What is the idea of Bodhidharma's coming from the West?"
"Ask the post over there," Shih-Tou said.
"I don't understand," said Chen-Lang.
"Neither do I," said Shih-Tou.
Suddenly Chen-Lang saw the truth.

---Zen saying

There ain't no answer. There ain't gonna be any answer. There never has been an answer. There's the answer.

---Gertrude Stein

Let Him be only that He is and as He is, and make Him no otherwise. Seek no further in Him but subtlety of wit.

---The Cloud Of Unknowing

The photo shows the soundboard and interior of the Trinity United Church of Christ on the south side of Chicago. It appears at a blog entry by audio engineer Matt Satorius from last September. http://blog.mattsatorius.com/2007/09/big-digital-sound-boards-church-sound.html More about the church can be found at its website http://www.tucc.org/home.htm .

The response to Barack Obama's speech on Race In America has been all over the place. I thought the response would be almost as interesting and profound about us as the oration was about him. I needed some time to observe it and feel things settle inside my own being.

Nothing really confused me about the speech. I loved it. Some people know my own personal background with integration goes back to childhood---and I don't know why. My family didn't promote it particularly...and my mother discouraged relationships even with people who didn't have blue eyes, for Christ's sake! (I know some people from various races have blue eyes, but she didn't.) Once jazz entered my picture in the form of Benny Goodman's Sextet Session in 1947 or so, I knew integrated music was magnificent in every way---and represented democracy too.

I hadn't rushed right out to investigate Rev. Jeremiah Wright's sermons. I didn't need to. The man's name is Jeremiah, and I've read that book in the Bible. I grew into manhood hearing Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael. I lived on Chicago's South Side during the summer of 1961, and trained for Freedom Rides. I knew there were streets there that, if I crossed over and walked on the other side, I could encounter Black Muslims who might insist I get back where I "belong." I'm not shocked by black rage and understand where it comes from. I understand white rage too, and resentment from any group that senses preference granted to another. But I like integration better, and celebration of differences.

My own experience of Chicago clouded my impression of what Mr. Obama's church might be like. I pictured something old and dark and maybe run down. I had heard yesterday that many professional African-Americans are members, but I figured even if the congregation was upscale it still probably was a humble facility. This morning I finally visited the website. The joke's on me.

Americans know what black worship is like. Everybody's at least seen The Blues Brothers I hope. It's a jumpin' joyous business! A preacher in there is a jazz solo to me. The guy takes off and goes. If he honks on that tenor, falls down on his back, still blowin' with his feet kicking in the air, that's the way it's done sometimes. And if you're into that way of expression, you know white players and red players and yellow players all do it too. And when it's done, everybody's let off steam---and hopefully nobody got hurt. more >

Hope

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 11:12:45 GMT

I know what the great cure is: it is to give up, to relinquish, to surrender, so that our little hearts may beat in unison with the great heart of the world.

---Henry Miller

Wonderful! Wonderful!
New Year's morning
in the house where I was born.

---Issa

For the raindrop, joy is in entering the river.

---Ghalib

I thought Friday was particularly black. I envisioned it being called Black Friday someday. The bottom was dropping out of the American and world economy. Had anyone even bothered to construct a bottom for it? To save the day the Fed was starting to bail out greedy banks again...and using our taxes to do it. China was killing the marchers in Tibet. Bush overruled the Environmental Protection Agency, even in its pathetic weakened state, to benefit coal-fired power plants and other industries that emit ground-level ozone that gives us smog. I sent out and posted Tom Toles' cartoon for that day showing Uncle Sam in bed with a barrel of oil and oozing extra excitement at how expensive "she" was. It was a black day dawning.

I began to get replies to the cartoon from resonating friends. Reid Sinclair, a lecturer in management systems at OU and active Episcopalian in Appalachian ministries, sent me a copy of a letter from his brother-in-law in Houston. It so happens the man is none other than the esteemed Rolfian analyst Nicholas French. He was sharing the dour forecast of a close friend of his named Jim Swayze. I thought if these guys can feel bad too, I must not be completely out of synch. more >

What Will It Take?

Sun, 9 Mar 2008 14:01:15 GMT

Our lives are lived in intense and anxious struggle, in a swirl of speed and aggression, in competing, grasping, possessing, and achieving, forever burdening ourselves with extraneous activities and preoccupations.

---Sogyal Rinpoche

Awareness of emptiness brings forth the heart of compassion.

---Gary Snyder

Simplifying our lives does not mean sinking into idleness, but on the contrary, getting rid of the most subtle aspect of laziness: the one which makes us take on thousands of less important activities.

---Matthieu Ricard

In the photo, President Nixon greets released POW Lt. Commander John McCain, future U.S. Senator, upon his return from years in a North Vietnamese prison camp, 1973.

We were sitting out Saturday afternoon, trapped in our house by the storm that buried the Ohio Valley in rain, flood, sleet, hail, ice, inches of new snow, and a whopper of a thunderstorm in the middle of the night. Only emergency vehicles were allowed on the roads. We were putting off clearing the driveway yet again and hauling more wood for the stoves...maybe until the power went down as the final stroke of doom. But the electric stayed on for some unknown reason, so Dana was on the computer hunting the blogosphere for news of potential Diebold corruption of primary results. There had been increasing rumors through the week about this, and everywhere I went the buzz was Republicans crossing over to vote on the Democratic side. Some were doing it because they were fed up with their own party, but others were trying to screw the results so that Hillary will go up against McCain. I figured who knows who is who...and it's hopeless, and I was trying not to think about it.

But I also knew Diebold was being mentioned again, the company that makes the legislatively mandated voting machines. The business suffered such colossal blowback from corruption charges after 2004, that they changed the name to Premier. But what, if anything, was done about it? Some states, like California and Ohio, got busy and started throwing them out. But was Diebold at work controlling who wins? Blogs were saying it was Diebold and not the voters that delivered Tuesday's results to Clinton. The satirical site www.theonion.com got the biggest laughs of the week, claiming Diebold accidentally leaked the results of the '08 Presidential race. The New York Times combined its story of the spoof with the news that mighty defense contractor United Technologies is trying to buy out Diebold. http://theboard.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/03/a-new-role-for-defense-contractors-counting-votes/ If the military runs the elections, what do we have? And is there any significance in the fact Hillary's chief pollster is CEO of the public relations company that Diebold uses? http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_g_e__nor_080306_defense_contractor_t.htm So what have the bloggers come up with? more >