Went there, did that
The whole thing with time is an arrow that only flies in one direction is a pain in the keister. I’ve mentioned previously that due to some deep dive pieces I’m (still) working on, the time between issues would be every other month…ish. September into October became a ‘get this done now so you can get this other thing done now,’ and this is really the first moment I’ve had to pull all those things together.
In keeping with the where the hell did the time go theme (or whine, I suppose), there are the usual assortment of Open Tabs, and links to previous September/October memories from my touring days (there are at least a handful of you that became subscribers after the stories’ first appearance), and An Essay.
The date of 2017 's fire, October 8th, passed just a few days ago, although it didn't occur 'to' us until it crested the hill and hopped the highway in the very early hours of the ninth. Amazingly to me, I often forget the date is coming up. I think that’s largely because my dad passed only a couple years ago on the ninth, so those memories’ emotions are slightly fresher.
The fire came hard; old friends, family, and new friends helped us land soft; we are here, now, well and happy.
What a fuckin’ ride.
But I digress.
Here are the fire-related links:
Interview in the Press Democrat newspaper
My Real Simple essay about recovery
The Storm Stories interview and footage (begins around the twenty-minute mark, I think), and I don't know why of all the bands I had worked for they skipped Journey...
Open Tabs
A mom who truly wears her heart 'under' her sleeve for her son.
No spin, no hype yea or nay, just the data on data centers' electricity and water appetites.
The phrase itself is okay – 'organ bridge' – and it could save lives, it's just that the idea of using a non-human organ to stay alive until a 'real' one comes along is, ummm...well, read it for yourself.
What the heck, let's stay with the kinda uncomfortable med moment. Here's one, with a description lift from the piece itself. Ready? "a cadaver on a ventilator."
And here's your measles update, sadly.
This story's title needs not a whiff of enhancement from me: Earth's driest desert is covered in wild flowers right now.
Where I was When
September into October when I toured weren't as packed as peak summer shows, but still had personally memorable events for me, to wit:
My road to the road – Journey part one and Journey part two
A different kind of road for my friend Steph – The man who produced every Steve Jobs NeXT and Apple event for thirty years.
And not the weirdest road, but certainly, um, unique – The Michael Jackson 1981 Bad tour in Japan and Australia
A new feature – “Where you been?”
A suburb west of Chicago for a niece’s wedding and then a visit to a long time, cherished friend a couple of hours up the road.
There is no real depth here because you deserve better than a bunch of sentences strung together like a version of “wanna see my summer vacation slides?” I’ll attempt to be succinct in this brief travelogue.
The wedding was a hoot, not just because my extended family can be a hoot (I’m looking at you Moe), but because it it took place where I had those greathorrible formative years of high school (for better and for worse), that I came back to from the Army, and left behind to go on the road with a band.
So, saw some folks I haven’t seen in over 50 years. Drove around places that I just couldn’t recognize but thought I would, and places unchanged save for decades of tired wear from humidity, heat, cold, and snow…and repeat.
The ceremony and reception (dance party with a fun digital print-in-seconds photo area for free picts, kinda like an open area photo booth) took place in what was once the city’s library, a stately two-story building within a large park. I don’t remember if summer concerts in the park were a regular thing, and lord knows enough time has passed that there could have been all sorts of events there, but during two summers in the mid-‘70s I played with two fairly well known local acts, a band and as part of a duet. I hadn’t thought about them in years, then the memory popped into my head as I prepped for the trip.
Before the Chicago trip I’d been up at Wild Horse Sanctuary in Shingletown, California, the state’s oldest sanctuary, for a few days as a volunteer working its annual Open House. Spectacular place and people.
Events, errands and must-get-dones and, dang, here it is mid-October.
Onward.
An Essay – The Hard Line
"Polarization research shows that when politics becomes a core identity, people often interpret disagreement as a personal attack. Experts say that in these cases, a truce may not be possible until the political temperature cools—or until the other person chooses to change..."
From When a Lifelong Friendship Ends in the MAGA Era
An acquaintance of a friend — as in, I knew him but only barely socially, didn’t hang or do things together, a nice guy — pointed out the pickup truck he’d borrowed for the day from a buddy. A few stickers on the bumper included a rebel flag I felt compelled to ask about it, and he briefly explained the friend had some caucasian-centric opinions, a whites-first kinda lifestyle. I was clearly surprised, and responded with “And he’s a ‘friend’ of yours?”
“Yeah,” he answered, “he’s just got a few things like that but otherwise he’s a good guy.”
He’s a good guy?
I’ve used the following analogy many times in the last few years: just because you have your picture taken with someone who isn’t wearing their KKK sheet and hood at that time doesn’t mean you’re not having your picture taken with a member of the KKK.
And we’re not going to get sidetracked by any attempt to nuance the general, widely seen Rebel flag image as ‘not representing the South’ because it’s the 28th Virginia flag which, I guess, is supposed to ameliorate that it still represents a government structure and philosophy in which enslavement and all its attendant commerce should be a State right (and yep, people owned slaves in Virginia.
And yes, some people do whip out such rationales.
Back to the acquaintance. Was he simply more accepting of someone’s misguided views than I would be, thus enabling him to have a friend with, at a minimum, misguided views?
That don’t resonate with me. Understanding that the broad brushing, labeling, demeaning, abusing, and wishing to eliminate people of certain races or ethnicities is abhorrent, I don’t accept the perspective that those views can be perceived as some kind of quirk or chink in an otherwise okay friend’s armor.
And that’s my issue with a handful of friends I haven’t seen or spoken to in the last few years. I had a relationship with them, I enjoyed their company, and knew they leaned right. That was okay. Then. Now…?
Of the casual friends, acquaintances, and extended family who stand on or lean to the right, there are two that I have not spoken to since orange-faced mess came into office. I simply don’t reach out to them. Seven decades of life have brought me an understanding that some of another side’s philosophies always deserve not just recognition but agreement that they can create positive results. Up until, oh, a decade ago, I’d had many sane, friendly conversations involving some element of politics.
But I can’t do that anymore, because of an undeniable intolerance at the core of the current Republican party’s overseer. Long before his decision to seek office — decided in part as a way to get back at President Obama’s comedic hits delivered during a D.C. Press Corps dinner — the current President’s intolerance, bigotry, record of bankruptcies (leaving employees unpaid; lovely), history of unpaid bills, adultery and then financial attempts to silence not just the story but the two women involved with him — it all foreshadowed everything that has occurred in the previous two years.
Not the least of all of that stuff above are the two methods he uses regularly to demean, disparage, and degrade anyone he doesn’t like: slapping labels on people and use of antagonistic puffery. By incorporating those traits into his leadership style, they didn’t just resonate with his base — or more accurately put, his reality TV audience — they emboldened his followers and supporters to behave the same obnoxious way. Hell, it’s also fair to say those behaviors manifest in his non-supporters, the fringe of which includes potential assassinators.
We all have at least one label slapped on us, many of us have several, and despite knowing how classless, clueless, and stupid it makes people sound when the say it (see what I did there), other labels just as silly are created all the time because, well, everyday language and common words are not enough, apparently. Here’s an example: lib-tard. A word in play since the late ‘90s, created with a pinch of disgust, several units of ignorance, used by those too intellectually lazy to do better things than this, maybe let down by the educational system, or convinced the world at large refuses to give them a fair shake — everyone is against me, wrong, and stupid.
An acquaintance who brought me into a employee consulting group to provide personal communications consulting to C-suite clients and oversee corporate messaging, became a friend. He was much like a publisher I once worked with who only went rabidly conservative on the first page of his business magazine every month (“It’s my magazine, so I give myself one page.”), always on the Right but never obstinate about it.
The employee consultant/friend, a Vietnam vet, went all in with this current administration, ran a flag with that orange-faced guy’s name on it up a front yard pole, signs in the front yard, that sort of thing. Subsequently the orange face’s team gets in and starts chopping the budgets of federal institutions, including the Veterans Administration. A week later, there’s my friend on the news, protesting outside a local VA with other vets about the cuts.
Really?
He sends me an email every now and then, and dropped a card in the mail when he saw a photo in one of our regional newspapers of me and my dad together, each of us wearing our military berets, on Veterans Day. Gotta say that was a nice gesture, but it holds no sway with me and I didn’t respond.
And I’m slightly, uneasily sometimes, unsure about my position.
As a kid I heard my parents occasionally speak about politics during parties, I eavesdropped every now and then like kids do, and never heard a word about politics amidst the many adult things discussed in lowered voices. Everyone simply had a good time.
Now, much about politics has become deeply personal. No, it’s better said that it’s always been personal, but it’s never been so extreme, in each other’s face, and everywhere we look. Certainly, in so many ways that’s a natural evolution of awareness propagated by technology’s you-can-know-everything-right-now. Flood in Tibet? Ding goes your phone, laptop, or desktop. Got a strong interest in a particular subject or thing, hell, TikTok is the repository of every interest everywhere.
I’ve talked about all this with a few friends, and researched ‘how should I deal with…’, and much of what I’ve come across includes: listen to the other’s position; keep the conversation civil; don’t insult; and know that on some things there will never be agreement.
Um, yeah…
That’s all fine, but there are hard stops. At least for me there are. And for everyone I hang with. Hang with now, that is. The pull quotes that follow are about what I know is the bigger person way to sort through these times but, again, that hard stop line is even mentioned it it, to wit:
"Experts note that political differences alone don’t usually end relationships—but value differences often do (bold highlight is mine). When someone’s political identity becomes tied to beliefs that undermine your dignity or safety, letting go of the relationship can be an act of self‑care." When a Lifelong Friendship Ends in the MAGA Era
If you know what’s hanging in a guy’s closet — in this case, misogyny, adultery, sexual predation and sexual violence, racism, bribery, graft, and an apparently inherent inability to tell the truth — and you choose to support that guy, you’re on wrong side of a hard line, and I gotta let you go.
Let the outside in
Fall belongs to the artist and to the artist within all of us. Not just for its colors, but because all of it, the colors, ever changing skies, brisk air, the actual chance to be within a transition from one season to another, it’s all so evocative. Once a year and for a brief time we are part of a changing canvas that manifests in everything around us. Walks through the transition offer rare opportunities for the outside world to influence our inside world. That can happen at anytime, certainly, but for those who for whatever reason don’t remember to look around and let the outside world seep into your heart and soul, fall is a visual and experiential reminder to let oneself be emotionally influenced by what surrounds us. It’s magical.
Get outside.
Be safe, be well, be grateful...and pass it on.
MWH