HIGHLANDERS REUNION AT THE FRONT PORCH

marvin cockram and willard gayheart

scott freeman and jimmy zeh

jimmy zeh, marvin cockram, willard gayheart

scott freeman, jimmy zeh, marvin cockram, willard gayheart

The Galax bluegrass band The Highlanders played at the Front Porch tonight. Bobby Patterson played mandolin first half of the show, but he had to get to the Rex Theater at intermission time for a show having to do with the musicians guild in Grayson County. Scott played fiddle with them, taking Buddy Pendleton's place. When Bobby left, Scott took over the mandolin role. It was mountain music start to finish. Another dynamite show of good music by excellent musicians who have made music together 30 years.

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SURREAL KILLER

myself as vanquisher of mice

I've become a serial killer of mice. I did not realize how busy TarBaby was, eating the mice. He ate every one he caught. There was never a mouse in the house while he was living. Now they've moved in like it's Hotel Rwanda. Evidently Caterpillar and Tapo were not interested. They watch the mice run across the floor like they're cute. Caterpillar used to catch them and I've been talking with her lately about taking an interest in killing mice again. She plays like she doesn't hear. I've been using traps. One got Caterpillar on the nose when she went to sniff the peanut butter on the trigger. I heard SNAP, pause, HISS, and Caterpillar ran off to her private place. I know that hurt like hell. When I catch a mouse it's ugly and bloody, eyes bulging out, but it's quick. I like that, for the mouse's sake. But I've lost interest in the mouse's sake.


Today I bought a package of d-con. I don't want any danger of Caterpillar getting into it. Put it in coffee mugs with a few pellets of dry catfood the mice like and a touch of peanut butter on the bottom to fill the cup with scent. One on top of the refrigerator, another on a table surrounded by things a cat cannot get through, but a mouse can, on top of the kitchen stove. I'll put a plate on top of Caterpillar's water bowl so they'll have to go outside to get water. I've heard it's water that activates it once it's eaten. I hate to do this to God's little critters, the same as I hate to run over a squirrel, a dog or a cat. When I saw a baby mouse running about, that was it. They're multiplying faster than I can catch them. That made the decision to go with biological warfare. The Saddam Hussein of Air Bellows, feeding them poison so they will die and bother me no more.


A mouse can have 120 babies in a year. A dozen mice can have 2,440 babies in a year. That's a lot of mouths to feed. And they leave mouse turds everywhere they go. I'm tired of them. I've been through have-a-heart traps, taking them to a place along the road with woods on both sides. That evolved to dropping it into a bucket of water. That was gross too, so I quit doing that and cats came along. End of mice until the mouse serial killer died. I'd still like to blow that dog's head off with a .45 magnum hollow point. Self control is important. We live in civilization where it's important that we get along with our neighbors. It goes against the grain after how many millions of years of evolution in dog-eat-dog feral ways. In tribal times, a tribe was always at war with its neighbor tribes, and allies with the neighbor the other side of the hated neighbor, who hates the same neighbor. And the one in the middle is allied with the ones the other sides of those as well. It grows until we have world wars of Germany destroying its neighbors, Japan destroying its neighbors.


By now, the Jerusalem religions are going at each other, each attempting to outdo the other in atrocities and dehumanizing torment. India and Pakistan threatening each other with nukes. The way I personally see it, political correctness about Islam fails to take history into account. The same can be said of Christendom, and the same of the Hebrews; King Saul with God saying kill em all. It must have been God that said the same thing to Genghis Khan later, and God behind the Anglo-American genocide of the people living on the North American continent. God must have something to do with the training camps at Fort Benning, Georgia, for Latin American death squads. The God of love sure gets blamed a lot for manifestations of hate. Cracks me up every time I hear "God hates" this, that or the other. And it's usually preachers saying it. Oh well.

The picture above is an absurd visioning of my war on mice. It's also a great historical document. It's the story of Genghis Khan's life from birth to the time he became the Great Khan. It's beautifully made by a German director in Mongolia with Mongolians playing the parts. It gets down and dirty. The only sensation we miss is the smells and the taste of the food, and that's a good thing. This is how I feel setting out d-con for a mass extinction. Like God says, Kill em all. Doing my part toward the genocide of varmints.


Maybe God will give me a pink Rolls Royce in heaven and I can ride around with generals and admirals, kings and emperors, the mass murderers down through time God thinks so much of. Maybe God will let me ride around with LBJ and General Sherman throwing empty champagne bottles out the windows to hear them crash on the streets of gold, popping corks out the windows at the helmets of people riding liquorcycles. God will love me all the more now that I've become a mass killer. Maybe I'll do like King David and throw a drunk party after every killing spree. Ya-hoo mountain dew. Rebel yell. The Mouse War is on. Git-er-done.



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CATERPILLAR ALONE

caterpillar



I had not foreseen the turn my relationship with Caterpillar would take after Tapo went to be a cat on the streets of gold. At first it seemed like Caterpillar was glad Tapo was gone. It meant she had me all to herself. What she'd wanted all her life was now hers. That's to be taken as a real response, given she's not been educated in our culture about suppressing your real feelings to put on a pretend feeling that is expected. She's innocent of all that. I have no problem with her having an honest feeling. It seemed like the next couple days she was at a loss. She knew Tapo was gone, seeing me bury her. She seemed to be quiet and inward. I was too. Perhaps it was my own projection, but I don't think so. I was a little more objective watching her than that. I think. I've known her 13.5 years. And she's known me that long. She probably knows me better than I know her. Though there is that leap of consciousness between me and her that makes us two-leggeds as incomprehensible to the four-leggeds as they are to us. Though the deer know the first day of deer season and vanish. They know us very well. What they know is: If one of the humans sees you, you're dead.



Some years ago talking with someone I slightly knew with a cat and the belief the cat was the same as unconscious, that is, couldn't learn, I told him my cats understand a limited vocabulary that I repeat to them. Like when Caterpillar walks over here to the chair and tugs at my pant leg with one claw, just a tug to get my attention, I say, Do you want out? And she walks in front of me to the door. She may not know the dictionary meaning of each of those words. She may not even know it's 4 separate words. It's one short musical phrase, one of several, that is known more for the sounds of the phrases or words, the same as we are. One time she had Tapo cornered, Tapo with her head sideways to the floor, her ears back, her fangs looking like a rattlesnake, eyes too, growling and hissing at Caterpillar threatening to swat her. I step in when their catness gets to be too much. I said, "Caterpillar, that's enough." She stopped. Her feet started moving very slowly backwards, keeping her eyes on Tapo's eyes to be ready in case Tapo might attack, backing up until she felt it was safe to turn around and walk away without getting jumped.



I didn't have to raise my voice. It's a phrase I've never used more than a time or two, so she wasn't familiar with the particular sounds, but she read the tone of voice. More accurately, she read my meaning. I've come to suspect they understand a whole lot more than we notice. TarBaby and I had near perfect communication. He was right there with me where comprehension was concerned. I never communicated with Caterpillar much. She kept herself in the background, deferring to TarBaby and Tapo where my attention was concerned. I gave her attention every day and she didn't seem to need or want any more than that. After her couple days of what I took to be mourning Tapo, allowing that she wouldn't only have one feeling about Tapos absence, on about the 5th day she appeared to have a sparkle in her eyes that said, It's just us! Nobody else! Just us! Her eyes were happy and her entire countenance was happy.



I say seemed at about every interpretation of her thoughts and feelings, because seemed is as close as I can get. It comes from knowing her a long time, our psyches actually blended such that her behavior is in relation to mine. I know they have thoughts, because I've seen them make decisions. We communicate in our feelings the best. And eyes. I believe it's possible to be telepathic with them, but I don't have it. Except it would drive the cat crazy having a direct line into my mind. Hail far! it makes me crazy. Cats understand an awful lot. Dogs do too. One of the aspects of American Indian cultures I admire is their understanding and reverence for the other critters, not holding themselves up as superior, just a fellow traveler on this earth.



Caterpillar and I have a new relationship that happened all of a sudden. It's just us now. She seems very happy to be one on one with the giant, who mothered her into life from 2 weeks old. I've found a new Caterpillar to know, another level of knowing Caterpillar. I'm knowing her now like I knew TarBaby, mind to mind. We pay attention to each other so there isn't much that needs to be said. We don't need to talk. Body language, tone of voice, repeated familiar phrases, eye contact. Paying closer attention is what we're doing now. It feels like her loss of Tapo and TarBaby is shared with my loss of them, our bond. I'm getting to know Caterpillar like I've not known her before. Again, it's the mind to mind connection. She had that with the other cats. Now she can't have it with them any more, so she has it with me. We're in the process of learning each other. It's almost like I brought home a new cat.



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SKEETER IN MY EAR

scott and willard

The last couple days I've been listening to Skeeter & the Skidmarks about all day. Already knew their music pretty well, now know it a lot better. As long as I've known Scott, I've seen his bands Alternate Roots, that made 4 terrific albums, and Skeeter & the Skidmarks that made 2 as art projects. Scott is an artist. Willard is an artist. Mountain musicians are artists. In the world of the art of making mountain music, these guys are very well respected artists. Mountain music is an art form the same as sculpture, painting, writing. Both Willard and Scott write songs and arrange songs for their sound. Willard also is a pencil artist making drawings of mountain people, mountain musicians, past and present.

I appreciate these people as musicians, as artists. They don't WoW the audience with showy pickin. They just play the instrument the best it can be played, the song as well as it can be played, and sung with understanding that makes the song their own. If you get it, you get it, if you don't, you don't. They don't show off as musicians. Their artistry is involved with making the music first. It's straight-forward pickin that keeps the flow of the music in motion. When they're pickin it's as good as pickin gets. You hear it or you don't. They don't ever call attention to their skills as pickers, nor do they get carried away acting out the emotion of the song when the words do it well enough. It's something they share with the Carter Family, who sang mountain music the mountain way.

When Alternate Roots existed, Steve Lewis, the bluegrass banjo picker, was Scott's musical partner. They can smoke a tune together. They make a good team. Scott has the same musical kinship with Edwin Lacy's old-time banjo as with Steve's bluegrass banjo. Lacy's old-time banjo is every bit as dynamic as a bluegrass banjo. Skeeter & the Skidmarks, which preceded Alternate Roots, was a creative band with Scott, Edwin and Willard writing songs, using rhythms of their own. Willard is the right rhythm guitar player for Scott to make music with like Barbara Poole's bass was right for Larry Sigmon.

I'm glad Skeeter is coming back together with Edwin Lacy returning from Indiana to Bristol. The 4 of them, Sandy included, have a certain "chemistry" as a band. They connect musically in such a way something special happens in the music when they play. It is a sound that is all their own. When they play an old-time tune or a bluegrass tune, they "Skeeterize" it, make it their own. It's been a good couple of days engaged with their music, hearing it all day. It's music I listen to closely like to the Alban Berg Quartet playing Dvorjak or anything else. I can't half way listen to their music. It commands my full attention for the beauty of it like when Thelonious Monk and Charlie Rouse play Straight No Chaser. I like the energy Skeeter & the Skidmarks generate as a band. Looking forward to their next album.

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