When It All Comes Down To It, Gimme Rock

I'm old rocker. No apologies. As I surf through my music tastes, I listen to a wide range of genres regularly. But I was born in 1966. I bought my first LP in 1976. (Wild Cherry, purchased at Dominick's). Favorites are found in all generations for me, but my default is blues-based rock.

I teethed on Led Zeppelin, the Doors, and the 1960s rock library. My dad listened to music from the generation before. During a high school job at a now-closed Palos Heights restaurant, I was introduced to Ricky Nelson, the Everly Brothers and Gene Vincent. I've learned a little about jazz, blues and classical, and can listen to banjo music all day. I dig it all.

When I think of today's music, I know it isn't all bad. Taking Back Sunday is listenable. But, when it all comes down to it:

• Gimme Bowie (genuine poetic rock)
• Gimme Dylan (he ticked off a lot of people when he converted)
• Gimme Jimi (we need a whole lot more Jimi and a lot less Britney Spears)
• Gimme Satchmo (passion blew a horn)
• Gimme Frank (you need more?)
• Gimme Keaggy (now, lemme tell you, that's a guitar)
• Gimme Talbot (not rock at all, but I like it)
• Gimme Norman (white soul)
• Gimme Mahalia (if you don't know, find out)
• Gimme Tharp (before there was Christian rock, there was Sister Rosetta Tharp)

Each link is a YouTube video. Click around and have fun. What's your music path?

Evening Writing

Late in the evening, I often begin my best writing. It is quiet, and my mind is at rest. There is a settling of all things.

No cars are coming by on Ramblewood Drive. COD students are not walking to school. The phone never rings. Birds aren't singing. Just quiet.

Nothing is in front of me, like an appointment or some errands needing taking care of. These things are silent too.

This is when my writing is often best. I can linger on a word, confident nothing will interrupt me.

Myself -- I am slightly tired, and so, internal distractions from my favorite thorn do not bother me either. It is when all is at respite, I hear the conversation of ideas. During the day, the conversation is still there, but is cluttered out by the maintenance of the day. This is as much a reprieve emotionally as it is a function of production.

If an idea comes about, I will cater its cause, and work until I can no longer shrug off sleep. Bad ideas will mix in with the good, but I can sort all of this out in the morning.

Nights are gentle. For Robert Frost, it intoned a sad, melancholic time.

Acquainted with the Night
by: Robert Frost

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
O luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

From "New Hampshire", 1923

I remembering understanding this poem best when I was younger. There were days I would spend hours talking with a friend, then walking two miles back. It was a misty walk, with dew on the grass, cool, with an evening fog blowing in off the Cal-Sag Channel (Calumet-Saganashkee Channel for those who care.). It could have been creepy if a moor was involved, but for me, there was just a tincture of peace matched by an equal amount of sadness. Childhood ends, and I knew it would.

From my friend's house, I would walk through the neighborhood, along Central Ave at Conkey Woods, then cut over at Bob's Citgo, and follow 127th to my street. As a runner, then, two miles was nothing if I ran, but I walked slowly then (before I learned the hurried, never talk to strangers commuter walk in Chicago).

In Bloomington, IL
Later, in college, I learned the art of porch reading. I found an old chair on the porch at the house at Linden and Poplar (a block from the Old Rt 66). I leaned back against a broken refrigerator under a dim light bright enough for a few hours of reading and to attract moths my landlord's kitten would seduce into lunch. I was a private tutor then, and this was how I kept up with my students' reading list. Linden was a mildly busy road then, leading north into Hudson, but quiet enough as I played Louis Armstrong and Bing Crosby tapes as I flipped through hundreds of pages of "Treasure Island," "The Island of the Blue Dolphins," and other such junior high school classics.

A few years before, I lived across from Illinois Wesleyan University in the basement of a dilapidated house on Center Street, the northbound part of Rt. 51. The landlord lived an hour south in Springfield and so repairs rarely happened. A constant stench of humidity and mold would waft through if the windows would open for a breeze. This was before my first car, so to escape, I would wander south to downtown Bloomington, and the east on Washington. Bloomington carries the scent of corn and soy in July, and I'd end up in a park, or sitting on the stairs of the Old Courthouse watching policeman and late shifters go by. Sometimes, I would see an old friend and we'd sit together and talk about hopeful days ahead.

Now, in the evening, I am in these places whenever I like. I am anywhere the mood or poem suits. Imagination has been a friend to me all my life, and the quiet of the night helps get me wherever I need to be. Childhood has ended, but I walk Central Avenue or Rt. 51 any night I need.

These days, I can indulge. My situation provides the freedom to write late at night, so I will. The morning can tolerate me getting up late (8:00 am is late). My writing list is long, from poems and short stories to blogs to professional writing to book reviews. Even longer is the need to edit existing pieces into submittable form.

It is a good life.

Sarah Palin Fan

Am I a Sarah Palin fan? If you see my Facebook presence, you might think so. I am intrigued. I expect a few of my Palin-phobic friends to wince, but I trust that they are bright enough to know already what I'm saying below describes my perspective. Yet, I joined the Sarah Palin Facebook group.

Will I vote for her if she runs in 2012? I don't know. She hasn't announced this, hasn't even competed in the primaries as a presidential candidate, and I have no idea what the issues in 2012 will be. I won't likely vote in the primaries for her, that's for sure. I can't. I'm not a Republican and she is.

I know that unless Barack Obama becomes prolife and stops being the patsy for the Democratic Party (or is it that the Democratic Party has become his patsy?), I will not be voting for him in 2012.

So what will it be?

For now, Barack Obama is my president. I am an American, and he is the president of the United States of America. George W. Bush was the president of every American for the eight years prior (yes, even for those who claim otherwise, unless they were Canadian or Cuban or English or...).

I do admire certain aspects of Palin. She grinned through a lot of abuse thrown at her by city-folk who did not like her northwestern USA accent. She did not waver in her prolife stand even though a middle-of-the-road statement could have helped her in the McCain effort.

I also am impressed with her willingness to stand up for her faith. Even some Christians trashed her for this, including ones comfortable with Obama's ex-pastor supporting him. That took guts. Palin would quickly dismiss supporters to do what she believed is right.

Will she make a good president? That depends on the kind of president we need in 2012. I think Barack Obama might be a one-year president whose job is simply to get our economy on track. If he runs again, it would be difficult for her to win, presuming ObamaLove is still in heat. However, I can see him fighting for hard policies at the end of his first term that could lose him liberal supporters. He's started to buck some of the most antiwar supporters with his Afghanistan war strategy.

McCain, to me, was no maverick. He was bold, but still a party member when it was all over. She is frustrating both parties because she is thinking for herself. This amazes me, especially as she remains popular. While she may not ultimately have enough supporters to win the presidency (but there seems to be a slow tide increasing), she is showing herself to be a leader. Just by speaking about important issues, she may, like a third party candidate, force the front runners to change their stand.

Am I fan? Yep. Will I vote for her? Too early to call.

http://www.cafepress.com/Sarah_Palin2012

How One Man Made a Difference: Review of Hotel Rwanda

Hotel Rwanda

What the "Hotel Rwanda" is can be argued, but what cannot be dismissed is the power of this two hour movie about how one man can make a difference.

Is "Hotel Rwanda" a story about internal, contrived politics destroying a country? Or it is dealing with how those in wealthier, more established countries prefer to pretend such trouble does not exist, that they need not become involved?

Is it about two very similar people groups killing each other? Could the movie be a reminder of how the systemic killing of a people group can happen today, that the evil of the Jewish Holocaust is not unique to the 1940s?

At first glance, "Hotel Rwanda" might look like a condemnation against the West's unwillingness to respond to an absolute carnage of genocidal hate. For some, they might see Bill Clinton, or the United Nations as impotent figures in this tragedy of humanity. They are easy figures to pick on, depending on the audience's personal politics, and the fact of who was in office at the time.

For me, the tremendous strength of the movie was one man's valor, of hotel manager's Paul Rusesabagina humble commitment to do the right thing, even though the world around him was chaotically destroying itself.

The plot is simple: two of Rwanda's people groups, the Hutus and Tutsis, are killing each other. Mostly, it was Hutu extremists trying to exterminate the Tutsis. A hotel becomes an ad hoc refugee camp, deftly managed by a man who preferred to be anywhere else. Can the hotel remain safe? Will the people hiding there survive?

Don Cheadle, perhaps best known for his portrayal as Sammy Davis Jr. in 1998's "The Rat Pack," is hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina.

Rusesabagina was just a businessman, the manager of the Belgian-owned Mille Collines, a top hotel in Kigali, Rwanda's capital. He worked hard to raise his family, and tried to keep politically neutral. When he saw neighbors killed, he kept his head low. When he brings in neighbors to be sheltered in the hotel, he still fights to retain his neutrality. However, when refugees start coming to the hotel by the dozens, he begins a new mission as the shepherd of a displaced people.

The bulk of the movie is shot within the hotel. Rusesabagina struggles to manage the appearance of a top quality hotel, since this image helps gird them against attacks. Bribes of money and liquor provide him with more protection, as do desperate calls from some 'guests' to their powerful connections outside of Rwanda.

When the camera takes us outside, we see awful scenes of gang-style killings. Although the Hutus and Tutsis aren't Bloods, Crips, Vice Lords or Latin Kings, but instead, are arbitrarily designated cultural groups, the murders are the same. Just as in any Chicago, New York or Los Angeles gangland war, the precise reasons for the constant violence are loosely based on dictatorial leadership, bigotry and bloodlust.

Listing the scenes which sank my heart is impossible. Singularly difficult to watch was the body-strewn road where Rusesabagina was driving.

"Hotel Rwanda" is not a movie to bring a young family. Like "The Passion of the Christ" and "Schindler's List," it has the kind of violence which is shown to remind us of the reality of the events being presented. Like in those movies, the audience I sat with sat stunned while the final credits rolled.

Like "Schindler's List," the antihero's commitment is the redemption of the story. Although 1 million "corpses were left behind," we see that although many men succumb to evil, not all do. Just as Oskar Schindler could not save every Jew, nor could Paul Rusesabagina save every Rwandan. But, just as Schindler helped a few, Rusesabagina also protected those he could.

Director Terry George might have chosen to dwell on what wasn't happening, and make this a political movie ala Michael Moore. He took the higher road, and tells a story of hope in the middle of a holocaust. I fully recommend "Hotel Rwanda." If the movie impacts you, please consider supporting relief efforts that continue in Kigali today.

Anthony Trendl
editor, HungarianBookstore.com

Neda Salehi, an Innocent, Murdered by Iran #neda

Iran is lead by evil men. While corruption and voting are not new bedfellows, or unique to Iran (Chicago is famous for this, especially under Mayor Richard J Daley's Democratic Machine), murder is less common. Not in Iran. Not under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Basiji sniper takes out teenage Iranian girl amid protest, Tehran, Saturday 20 June

Yesterday, Neda Salehi Agha Soltan was killed by Iranian militia. What will the USA do? I'm not sure what, or if, we should do anything. Our recent history intervening has not been good. However, our longer history of involvement shows that when we do nothing, things get worse. And we also know that when we entered both WWI and WWII, America was instrumental in ending both wars.

In 1956, Russian soldiers killed thousands of Hungarians who wanted their own country back. The USA stood passive, and Soviet forces won. Freedom was denied as those with the willingness to kill prevailed.

More currently was the USA's ignoring of the 1994 genocide of Rwandans, made famous by the movie Hotel Rwanda. (my review)

Whatever we do or do not do is only one question. The greater question is what will happen globaly as militant Islam grows, and countries like Iran continue to struggle with thugs like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in charge.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neda_(Iranian_protester)

Happy Music for a Glum Day - Two Fun Music Videos for Cheering Up a Rainy Morning

Two music videos to make all you Chicagoans smile on a rainy day. The first one has two guys playing one guitar. Needs a little jug blowin', maybe a stand-up bass, don'tcha think? (Facebook readers click here to see the videos.)



Jerry's Breakdown composed by Jerry Reed, played by Antoine Dufour and Tommy Gauthier on a single guitar.
Please visit: myspace.com/antoinedufour myspace.com/tommygauthier



Stonebridge guitars and candyrat presents:
Spiritual Groove, composed by Antoine Dufour and Tommy Gauthier. From Antoine Dufour's album «Development» available on candyrat.com.

Please visit:
candyrat.com
stonebridgeguitars.com
myspace.com/antoinedufour
myspace.com/tommygauthier

Cat Power and Dirty Delta Blues cover Amazing Grace (video)

Cat Power and Dirty Delta Blues cover Amazing Grace. And here's a nod to my friend Dylan, whose brother Judah Bauer (from Blues Explosion) plays guitar.

Click Fraud - They Think They Caught Someone

I used to advertise online a great deal. Mostly, I have used Google, and to a lesser degree, Yahoo's PPC service.

Now, barely. I suspect click fraud. Hard to explain to novices, but essentially, when my ads would show up on other people's websites, I received more click (by far) than had those same ads shown up on Google. Since I felt Google was not addressing my concerns, I dropped most of my ads.

Looks like Microsoft caught someone doing it to them.

I have Google's ads up here. Those are pay-per-click. All the other ads you see on my sites and blogs only make me cash when you can buy something (If you buy from Amazon, click through my ad first, and I'll make 6%) Click --> Amazon

So I am glad as an advertiser and as an online publisher. I want to advertise more. I used to spend a couple thousand dollars a year. Now, just a few hundred. I need to trust the industry. I do not.

Good catch Microsoft.

Erik von Brunn's False Paradox

"I loved my father. But what he did was unforgivable," Erik von Brunn, 32, said.

Who is von Brunn? The son of James von Brunn, the white supremacist who is accused of killing a security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The problem? Unforgiveability.

While I am in no place to suggest the younger von Brunn wants to forgive his father. Suggesting it would be easy would also be in error.

But he should. To claim love and in the next breath claim he cannot be forgiven misses so much.

I never met either man, and do not know what either believes. At best I know what the media is saying they believe. As a Christian, in the worst of situation, I still must forgive. Any less is hatred.

Kindle DX: Amazon's 9.7 : My Generation?

Being a frequent reader, I cannot help but consider this. If not this version, then the next? As much as I appreciate the feel of paper, I know that is just the anti-progressive in me thinking. There are times for tradition, but some traditions are over-romanticized. Convenience, portability, price? All good.

What would the best version of this look like? Color? The ability to write marginalia?

Kindle DX: Amazon's 9.7



Kindle DX: Amazon's New Addition To The Kindle Family

• Slim: Just over 1/3 of an inch, as thin as most magazines


• Carry Your Library: Holds up to 3,500 books, periodicals, and documents


• Beautiful Large Display: 9.7" diagonal e-ink screen reads like real paper; boasts 16 shades of gray for clear text and sharp images


• Auto-Rotating Screen: Display auto-rotates from portrait to landscape as you turn the device so you can view full-width maps, graphs, tables, and Web pages


• Built-In PDF Reader: Native PDF support allows you to carry and read all of your personal and professional documents on the go


• Wireless: 3G wireless lets you download books right from your Kindle DX, anytime, anywhere; no monthly fees, no annual contracts, and no hunting for Wi-Fi hotspots


• Books In Under 60 Seconds: You get free wireless delivery of books in less than 60 seconds; no PC required


• Long Battery Life: Read for days without recharging


• Read-to-Me: With the text-to-speech feature, Kindle DX can read newspapers, magazines, blogs, and books out loud to you, unless the book's rights holder made the feature unavailable


• Big Selection, Low Prices: Over 285,000 books; New York Times Best Sellers and New Releases are only $9.99, unless marked otherwise


• More Than Books: U.S. and international newspapers including the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, magazines including The New Yorker and Time, plus popular blogs, all auto-delivered wirelessly

An Article I Wrote About an Art Teacher

You can see it in context with a few photos here or in the Trib Local here.

Strength in Numbers?

100,000 good men can fend off a small legion.
20 fierce men can fight off a group of 10 tough men.
3 earnest men can take on 1 man.

and one holy man can take on the world.

This is the Day

This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.
-Psalm 118:24

I know this, but today, it is, and will be, good to remember. It is more than a Sunday school song or greeting card platitude.

Author and Poet? Defining Each.

My friend Justice Carmon plugged this blog in a recent post. (How Christian Are Superheroes, Really?). I certainly appreciate that. He called me an author and a poet. I wondered. Am I each? Either?

My poetry has been published by Decision, a major religious magazine maybe 10 times. They paid for it, and came back for more, assigning me projects. So I am a poet. I'll accept that. It is a long way from where I want to be, but it is still something I am proud of.

Am I an author? Depends who you ask. Justice may not have dwelt on the term a long time, and, given the question, he may think similarly as I do. Then again, by the technical definition, the one you'll find in a dictionary, he's right the first time.

Me? No, I don't think so. I am, not an author. However, Wikipedia allows for the possibility.

An author is defined both as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. The second entry goes on to clarify that, when using the term author, the "anything" which is created is most usually associated with written work.

I write. There's no question in my mind I am a writer. Not just poetry, but several blogs. I write for a living as well. Sometimes, when I write, it gets edited so much that it is hard to point to something and say, "I wrote that," but behind me are hundreds of pieces from speeches, articles, web content, brochures, newsletters, and even a radio commercial script or two. You already know about the poetry. I don't need to own every single word to know what I do. Besides, a good editor makes my writing better, and that's a good thing.

I have always associated being an author as being the writer of books. I have much of a chapter with my name it in two books (same content, similar books), but so far, no book.

Am I an author, again? No, not accordingly to my own definition, and, not according to the second definition.

There's a deeper thing about authoring. Wikipedia says it a person who gives existence to something. This I cannot do. Neither can you. This job is taken by He Who Can.

Heroes: Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989

The men and women who stood up for freedom June 5, 1989 are heroes. Anyone alive then remembers the unknown man who stood in front of several tanks. He faced death with military honors. Behind him though, even more unknown, are the ones killed before they could protest, away from the world's view.

Tiananmen Square protests of 1989

Now, as Twitter gets blocked by Chinese leaders who are afraid, it is clear the people want more. With 20 years gone, the lust for free speech and the right to pursue happiness continues.