NERDS HAVE MORE FUN

chairs



At Selma's twice today for morning coffee and an afternoon mocha. I can't go through Sparta and not stop at Selma's. Saw Dudley this morning and Joe came in after he left. Later, in the afternoon, Joe came in after awhile and asked if I'd been there since the morning. I told him I had, and Selma affirmed it. He had a hard time believing it, but there it was with witness. We bantered some more about it and finally he said, "Really?" Selma and I laughed and told him we'd made it up. I'd been away and just came back. That's the kind of fun we have. It's like games cats play on each other. A cat gets a kick out of seeing another cat jump. It amuses them just like it amuses us to see a cat jump. We just made Joe jump, had a good laugh and went on like nothing happened.



Cats really do have a sense of humor and so do dogs. They laugh too. They laugh like they talk, silently. Dudley, who was there this morning, would go with animals having a sense of humor. He made reference to himself as the unrepentant nerd. He asked what a repentant nerd might be. I couldn't answer it. The word nerd always carries for me images from the movie Revenge of the Nerds, a movie that made me laugh like PeeWee's Big Adventure did and Ernest Goes to Camp. Nutty, goofball movies with slap stick comedy that is still funny to some. Nerds come in a wide variety. The nerds are the people who haven't figured out what it takes to be cool, which comes apparently natural to most, or so it seems when you're a nerd. I've an idea there are as many nerds per class as there are cool kids. The nerds are more fun, because they're not straight-jacketed by attending to their cool quotient. The nerds are nerds often because they're interested in something besides sports.



As an unrepentant nerd, like Dudley, I look at the jocks as the nerds. What's so interesting about them? They practice rigorously every day chasing a ball. It never made a lick of sense to me. Perhaps that right there is the definition of a nerd. Doesn't see the sense in running with a ball or hitting a ball or bouncing a ball or kicking it. Doesn't get it. I never saw the thrill in shooting guns at other people with intent to kill. Why? If somebody makes you mad enough, that's pretty good reason until seeing in the mind's eye a prison cell from the inside. Nerds don't kill. Nerds sometimes get drafted and are forced to, but they hate it.



This night at an event I was talking with Hillbilly Wes about his act, what a good time he's having with his comic persona. He was saying he won't accept money for his mc act. The money would spoil it. He's doing it for the spirit of the fun in it. He was noting that the way things are now, we need to laugh. He goes up on stage and makes people laugh. That's important in this time. His small gesture to make his world a better place. Levity for the spirit. And there's enough greed in the world and everything having a dollar value to choke down the spirit in anybody. Doing his show for no pay he's breaking the cycle of money being the almighty, allowing the spirit of laughter to come through. I can't help but think as we get deeper into hard times that more and more people will be wanting to do things that help people in some kind of poverty, of the spirit, of the bank account, both. When times are rough, people tend to gather and do for one another and feel better about everyday life.



Hillbilly Wes gives a good show when he carries on as comedy mc. He's been in the Marines, did his time in Iraq rescuing people by helicopter in difficult zones. In his comic act he rescues people from the blues. The Wes Brinegar I know working in the Post Office has the same kind of heart as Hillbilly Wes. You'd think they were identical twins. They look just alike and talk just alike. They must have been twins separated at birth. I need to ask Wes about that. He's a valuable citizen in the Alleghany community.



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SPRINGTIME AND THE SKIDMARKS

angels in flight

The daffodils glow in full flower like stars come down from the night sky to play on the ground in the daytime, sway on a stem in the earth breeze and enjoy being seen up close with appreciation for their beauty. They bloom for a good long time giving some of the people on earth a chance to see them up close. Then they go back to the sky til next year.

We've had a couple of days of sun and even tshirt temperature. It's like one of those stories of down and out, if it wasn't for bad luck I wouldn't have any luck at all, been down so long it looks like up, no light in the tunnel so it must be a grave, then Da-da, everything is coming up daffodils, it couldn't be any rosier, sittin on top of the world, rollin along, singin a song. It's Spring. Calves sprawled out in the sunlight next to their mamas taking a rest, soaking up some rays. Driving with the window down and the air feeling good. 

Last Friday night I picked up cassettes of the 2 Skeeter & The Skidmarks albums for the car. Costs less than putting in a cd player. I can drive now with the Skidmarks playing. It makes driving fun to hear them tearing up a composition by Scott and Edwin, Groundhog Shuffle, an instrumental that is funny to listen to. I can see a groundhog running with the way Edwin is clucking his banjo and Scott his mandolin, fast, fingers way down on the frets in the high notes, running that groundhog fast as they can make him go. There goes the groundhog scuttling fast as groundhog legs can carry him, the body weight shifting back and forth going full tilt. They run at about the speed of a cat. A cat is all grace. A groundhog in our way of seeing has obesity issues. When he runs, it's a sight. Can't help but laugh. 

They are a wildly light-hearted band that plays a song as a spontaneous expression of joy. Their song list is varied from old country songs to old-time fiddle tunes, banjo tunes, singing good-worded songs. Willard found the original words to Yellow Rose of Texas and sings it the way it was sung way back when, before the state of Texas made a commercial of it. Sandy sings two songs about the South, Dixie Darling and When The Roses Bloom In Dixie Land. Scott's mandolin 15+ years ago sounds good. Their sound now is their sound then on steroids. In concert, they bear down on it, several years advanced in their musicianship and in their experience making music together. The music comes from a light-hearted place in their hearts and goes directly to the listener's heart and lightens it up. That's the kind of band Skeeter and the Skidmarks is. They lighten the heart with good music played in a burst of delight. 

Good springtime music to roll down the highway playing in my sound capsule adjusted so the music is happening in the middle of my head like with headphones. It's refreshing music. It's people who love making music together laughing all the way through because they have so much fun. The spirit of their music is what gives them the unique sound that is the Skeeter sound. It's the spirit of their laughter. For the sake of the music of these mountains and my own ears, I'm glad they're making a new album, or project. Musicians call them projects, we call them albums. If it's as good as their shows they've been putting on at the Front Porch in Woodlawn, it will be a treasure. I don't think they've finished recording all of it, but I already know a treasure in SW Virginia and NW North Carolina music it will be. Like old man Tom Pruitt would say, They's no two ways about it.     

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TREE HUGGING PEACENIK

accidental image



In a movie a few days ago a man was talking about a blog and the other man dismissed it because, "Everybody's writing a blog." Really? Glad he told me, I hadn't noticed. I think from last time I looked there are about a dozen blogs in the county. Around 10,000 people in the county. Possibly a dozen with blogs. Everybody? What he was saying by way of this exaggeration was it's not cool any more, too many people doing it for it to be cool. I'm not one to surf blogs, but do from time to time. I see some very amazing stuff blogged. Every kind of thing. A lot of suburban parents showcasing their babies and using the blog to record the kid's early childhood. That's just one genre.



I like about the blog that it is so democratic. Democracy isn't cool any more either, so they make a good fit. Democratic in that anyone can have a blog or several with any purpose or no purpose. I love that about the blog. The name "blog" is not right, but it's too well known by now to change it. Therefore, blog is what it is. Mine is a way to make myself write something every day. If I were to do this in a notebook, it wouldn't last a week. But online with unknown people seeing it, I feel compelled to keep it going. Doing it so a few people can see something every day, whoever finds it and chooses to see it again.



The only people I know of reading the blog are a few here who have told me they see it. Somebody is seeing it several times a week from South Korea, somebody in China, somebody in Russia, Canada, Netherlands, Croatia, Slovenia, UK, Germany, Sweden, and several other places. I think that's fabulous. I don't need a big readership of several thousand. I like small numbers. The blog gets seen average 30-50 times a day. I assume several of those views are by the same people. Whatever the case, there is someone in each of several countries who resonates with what I'm writing enough to return several days a week. I've made no effort to make it eye candy. Reading is so of the past, but I and many people do it anyway. Thought I'd make a writing blog without concern if no one ever saw it. Everything doesn't have to bow to a way of doing things that will draw the attention of thousands. I prefer a few to many.



The blog's only purpose is that I write in it every day. It's about making me write something every day. The writing itself is the purpose. Each entry is not something I'm putting up for debate. I see them like prose poems, brief essays, entities unto themselves. Who would want to debate Robert Frost on his poems, like Swinger of Birches. It's an entity unto itself. It's not up for disapproval or approval. It just is what it is. This is a major reason I can't join a church. I'm not putting self up for evaluation to be approved. For such a panel of judges I'm inclined to say I drink, smoke, cuss, am somewhat contrary, laugh at race jokes, don't practice political correctness, don't believe the virgin birth, and none of that is gonna change.



When it comes to religion, I go by the red words and nothing else. In politics, I'm for We The People; therefore, a Peacenik anti-Republican, even a tree-hugger. I'm everything objectionable to militarists. I don't care if militarism has been our human way since the start, I am not of that mind, nor will I entertain it. If militarism is the most masculine activity there is, then I'm the least masculine. That's another ladder I'm at the bottom of. On a totem pole, my face is the one on the bottom with grass grown up around it that hasn't been weed-eaten. That's why I like having maybe a few dozen people reading my daily sorta journal. I try to make it interesting for my friends reading it frequently or once in awhile or almost never. Every day a surprise, sometimes not.



All that matters to me is that whoever is reading whatever it is comes away with perhaps an insight or two, or a feeling of confidence that whoever you are is ok. Maybe that's the only real message I have, if you come away from reading one of these things feeling comfortable about who you are, I'm satisfied. Since I've learned by experience what I've been told and have read since childhood that we are souls with bodies, our souls being God (heaven) within, drops from the ocean of Love. The soul in each of us is love. We all want way way down to love and to be loved. That's where I see our authentic selves in that light. The soul is who I'm communicating with through the other's hearing and sight, necessary senses for living in a physical world. I see that light within filtered through belief systems, fears, confusions, sorrows, worries until there's hardly any light left. I believe that's what Jesus meant when he said ye are gods. We have God inside us, but our minds are so preoccupied with money, status, and all the 7 deadly sins, we don't even notice.



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DECEPTION RULES

by robert irwin




The "peepers" or frogs or whatever they are fill the air now in the gloaming with their nighttime in the mountains sounds. Back in the days before pesticides and oil, they would have been everywhere in abundance chirping their chorus. It's a relaxing sound, as sounds from the natural world tend to be. I never realized how loud tires are until I had a shop in Sparta. At Jr's house on hwy 18, when I paid attention to the sound when a car or truck went by, the noise was far more tires on pavement than exhaust. Passing an 18-wheeler on the interstate is an exceptionally loud event that drowns out the car's interior sound system. Unlike that bitter noise, the peep of these little frogs is something like an auditory fireplace. Like a fire, the peeps in relation to the others are constantly changing, never the same, in ongoing random change. Same pattern, but different arrangements of the sounds. A bit like Philip Glass music in that way.



Since I have learned this time we're in is temporary, I feel quite a bit better about humanity of the future, like the Indians said, for 7 generations. In America we don't make considerations for future generations. Take it all now. Like a needle-point pillow I saw on a sofa in Roaring Gap said, "We're spending our children's inheritance." That is as American as jazz. Attitudes of the ruling class make their way into the middle class, then into the working class. That one has reached the working class by now. I don't know of anybody who thinks 2 or 3 generations ahead. Even one. I don't. Now that I've seen how temporary this period of time is that is lethal to humanity and our home planet, everything that lives on the planet, I relax seeing that humanity does have a future, albeit to the chagrin of the repubs. In fact, a sorrow I've carried for the 2/3 of the earth's population in poverty, the capitalist passion for killing the poor, the American passion for putting people in prison, especially the darker  brothers and sisters, a portion of the sorrow has lifted.



In our society depression over not having what you want is believable, but it's absolutely not believable if one is depressed over the human condition that keeps billions of people living in slum cities around landfills. It's like the attitude is if you don't experience it, it's invalid for you to empathize with the people who do experience it. We are such an anti-literate society by now it's not even conceivable that someone can know about something he/she has not experienced first hand, like from reading. Reading is not even given consideration any more as a way of learning something. Except in school. When school is over, reading is over. In school, we read texts full of facts to memorize for the test. And yes, Bob, there are exceptions.



Earlier today I saw the documentary about Pat Tillman, the pro footballer who gave it up to serve the propaganda machine, ended up in Afghanistan, propaganda superstar, recruiting poster child. He went into it naive, got the picture right away, was snuffed by a bullet from a rifle with a scope from about 30 yards. From 30 yards the American Army outfit and helmet are recognizable by people in the same garb. Through a scope at 30 yards you can easily recognize the face in the crosshairs even if overlooking the outfit. It was not in the heat of a firefight. He was manufactured into a hero by the propagandists with Cheney/Rumsfeldt lies that even were told before congressional hearings, and the congressmen knew they were lies. No problem, boys. I hear more and more people talking about the way things are going in DC, and educated people I know, not all, of course, are uniformly saying tear the whole thing down, throw everybody out and start over. It's interesting how universal that thinking has become.



I remind myself we are the Babylon of the end times, and like in the reggae songs, Babylon will fall. The fall is the end of the age of oil, because this Babylon is made of oil; the economy, plastic toys, plastic everything, car interiors, computers. Civilization as we know it will be over, the 2nd time. First time was the 150 years since oil came into our control. The 50s ideal of conveniences, the time of washing machines, electric can openers, garbage disposals, modern living that took a long time for everybody to give over to, quit having gardens, quit knowing self-sufficiency, and let the corporations handle all of it and choke us to death with inflation.



I believe it has raised our collective consciousness a great deal, and the downward curve will raise our consciousness further. Then we'll be back to like we were before, living in communities again, though this time with awareness of soil composition and much that has been learned by science over that time too. I see it an intensely creative time of learning to live without, while the time learning to live with what oil can be used for was creative too. In the overall history of humanity, this period of time will be an amazing time in History classes and Art History, as well as the sciences and everything else.



This Pat Tillman story spells out that this is where our government has failed its people from the middle class down. They will lie to us before they'll tell the truth about anything. They're all on the take, on the make and Congress plays step-n-fetchit for the ruling class. In the American class system, one does not ever look down the ladder. Congress only looks up the ladder. That's where the money is. Down the ladder is working class, people out of work, people living in kitchen stove boxes. To the ones at the top in charge, we're no threat. We're not organized and the ruling class has spent the last 30 years dismantling any possible organization of the working class, except as right wing stooges rallied by Bobo Limbaugh to work against their own interest for the ruling class.



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