NEWS

My radio comes on at 6:00 a.m. with news. I start thinking about the day and what I want to do with it. But the news is bad, always bad, really bad. It’s been bad for a long time and that’s a sad, sorry way to start the day. I have to beg the question; is the news all bad or is there just so much news they never get to the better news? I know that a 13 year old girl is pitching on a boys team in the Little League World Series and she is pitching very well. Beyond that, it’s all downhill. Some stuff sounds good but only because it’s counter point to terrible stuff. They have had some success treating victims of the Ebola virus but the virus itself is fatal in 2 of every 3 cases. The Israelis and Palestinians stopped fighting for a couple of days but they are killing each other again. Congress is on vacation but they haven’t done any work in years. They all understand how public opinion polls rate them worse than dreadful but they are all convinced that they are the good guys and it’s the other guys screwing things up. Big banks are paying astronomical fines for the crimes they committed in the housing fiasco of 2008 but the worst offenders have even more wealth stashed away now than they did before. Ferguson, Missouri was singled out as a great place to live only a few years ago. All it took to peel back that veneer was for a white policeman to shoot an unarmed, black teenager. To make matters worse, a grieving, angry community has been exploited by criminal looters and Jim Crow pushback, supporting use of deadly force and attacking the victim’s character. 

I’m getting tired of bad news. I remember, 40 years ago when CNN started giving us news 24-7. It spawned the age of News Junkies, people who couldn’t get enough Wolf Blitzer. Now it’s compounded by political hyperbole and propaganda on ridiculous talk shows. Now there are so many news outlets that you can pick your mis-disinformation as it be, from a wide range of outlets who are much more concerned about their ratings and advertisers than they are about unbiased reporting. So it all gets spun before it goes on air. Each one of us represents a demographic that has been targeted by producers who know what pushes our buttons. Even the weather channel, even PBS; they all frame language and stories to appeal to a well defined sensibility. Of all the news organizations, the BBC is probably the least-spun, unbiased news on the dial. 

I spend a lot of time on highways and Interstates. As I search station to station, I can recognize the tenor of background music and tone of voice so I don’t have to wait for a polarizing statement before I hit the “Skip” button again. Behind the visor on the passenger side I have a CD sleeve with a dozen or so CD’s. I don’t think I can listen to them all in one day. Switching back and forth between road noise, surfing the dial and music, I can hold out for several days. It beats bad news. It’s always a surprise when the radio goes silent and my dashboard comes alive with an amplified, cell phone ring tone. So I touch a button on the steering wheel and say, “Hello.” After we finish and hang up I can touch another button and my dashboard will ask me what I want. I tell it to call a different person. “Do you want to call this person?” it asks. I tell it I do and shortly the phone rings and I talk to someone else; never take my hands off the wheel or my eyes off the road. That’s pretty good news. I slept in the car at a Pilot truck stop in Bristol, TN recently. At 6:00 a.m. I walked up to the diesel fuel counter with my ditty bag and asked if I could have a shower. The young woman didn’t ask me for anything, just punched in a code an handed me a receipt with the assigned shower and pin number. She smiled a real smile and said, “Have a great shower.” That was great news. Shower are free to 18-wheelers but cost $10 or $12 for a 4-wheeler like me. I came out a half hour later, fresh scrubbed in clean clothes and got myself a cup of coffee. At the convenience store counter, I was behind a young man who was buying snacks, smokes and a cold drink. Something was not right, he turned and headed for the back of the store. The same young lady had changed counters. She watched him for a moment then looked at me, with my cup of coffee and a $5 bill. She had already keyed his sale into the register; she smiled the same, genuine smile as before, nodded her head toward the door and told me to have a great day. I thanked her, thanked her again going out the door. That’s good news. 

On my last road trip I bought four new T-shirts. Several light weight, white ones for the hot weather and one from the Martin Guitar Factory gift shop. My shirt drawer is full and I can afford to buy new T-shirts even before the old ones wear out. That’s great news. I got my camera back from the Canon Servicer Center in Virginia just before I left home. When I tried to take photos, it wouldn’t hold a charge on the battery. In Pennsylvania, I sent it UPS, back to Canon. When I got home two weeks later there was a notice on the door; UPS had tried to deliver it and would again the next day. When the bell rang I knew who it was. I signed the electronic receipt and took it inside. Reloaded, new battery, fresh sim card and I came back outside to see how it worked. I looked around for something interesting and the best  I could do was a late-summer grasshopper, perched on the garden hose on my porch rail. It’s that time of year, big grasshoppers only get big after a series of molts (instars) where they shed their exoskeleton, increase in size and grow another chitinous, outer coat. It takes lots of instars over the growing season to get big. This guy was maybe only one instar away from being the herd bull. I put on my macro lens and leaned right up next to it. Shutter-click, shutter-click and I had enough. My camera is working again and that’s great news. I’ve got fresh blue berries, strawberries, apples and tomatoes in the refrigerator. If I had peaches too, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. So there is good news. You just won’t get it from the news media. I shut the radio off in the morning as soon as I get the message. I’ll hear it all, soon enough. But it means I survived the night and that’s great news. 

OCOEE

I have friends who think that life doesn’t get any better than when you sit in a comfortable place, with sweet tea and a good book. Don’t get me wrong; I like all of those but it does gets better, it can get a lot better. I’ve been dabbling in White Water since I was a teenager. A friend and I cut up some large tree limbs, lashed them together and rode the Blue River in flood stage. Instead of life jackets we had plastic jugs tied together with clothes line rope. We put in where the river was narrow and fast but not too deep. As side streams emptied in, its volume increased and whatever control we had over our makeshift raft, vanished. We were just flotsam in a roaring stream that dragged us through treetops, sharing space with all manner of floating debris. With only a foot or two of clearance under a highway bridge, we knew we had to get out. The fact that we both walked away from it is testimony to good luck.

We didn’t tell anyone because it was a foolish thing to do. There is "Crazy" and there is "Stupid." Rather than impressing someone we would have only proven our stupidity. But I did get the “White Water” bug. Over the years, canoe floating in Michigan and Missouri has been great fun and risks were minimal. Then there have been commercial floats on the Arkansas, in Colorado. Plunging down into and coming up out of those monster hydraulics is better than any book I ever read. Each time, I promise myself that we’ll do it again. The last time was four years ago. 

In the Great Smokey Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina, there are two, very special rivers; the Ocoee and the Nantahala. Both drop through steep, narrow gorges with channels full of boulders and outcroppings; the best white water east of the Rocky Mts. In 1996, kayak events for the Atlanta Olympics were staged on the Ocoee. I was there last Friday. There were a few shallow pools between rapids and a thin trickle of current here and there. At the White Water Center they told me, “. . . come back tomorrow.” Lake Ocoee is just upstream, behind the dam. During the week, they hold water back but on weekends, they send it down for kayakers and rafters to ride down the gorge. I did come back and the transformation was awesome. Hundreds of cars, kayaks, rafts and thousands of people, all pointed down stream. Ocoee was running 1,400 cubic feet per second, perfect for both safety and thrills. I watched for a while but had too many miles in front of me to linger. 

Next summer, my daughter and I are floating the Colorado; Lee’s Ferry to Diamond Creek in the Grand Canyon. That will take eight days but I can wait; I don't have a choice. But I’m looking for someone to go with me to the Ocoee, some other time, before I get too old to pull a paddle. I’ll always want to go again. 

OLD BONES

We went to Musik Fest the other day. In Allentown and Bethlehem, PA, it’s a mid-summer festival that stretches along the banks of the river, through two cities. Most folks park in a distant parking lot and ride a shuttle bus to the venue. It reminds me of the October, Storytelling Festival in Jonesboro, TN. All along the way there are circus size tents with different music groups scheduled in every hour or so. We sat in on a Cajun band from Baltimore. Nobody spoke or sang to us in French, not even an accent, and their play list had nothing to do with the “Bayou” talk they were trying to emulate. But they did have an accordion and one of the guitar players had a washboard he used on several songs. I told my son, “If the accordion player doesn’t dance or at least shuffle his feet, he ain’t Cajun.” He played o.k. but never got out of his chair. Then who am I to be critical? They were getting paid and I was listening. The music was good, the crowd got up and danced while we munched on soft pretzels. 

After checking out crafts booths and food vendors it was time to catch another shuttle for the ride across town to the venue in Bethlehem. I couldn’t tell when we crossed city limits but through the trees, you could see the skyline change. Next to the river, the black stacks of old coke furnaces were still intact from another generation, gone to rust. Bethlehem Steel had been the base for an economy here but not anymore. There is a grassy park by the river and things have been cleaned up but the buildings and furnaces are like fossilized bones of giant dinosaurs, left behind in a great, archeological dig site. Some building were still intact; red brick walls, arched windows and rusting, steel beams. Others had been torn down and the grounds cleaned up, leaving only stone walls with pillared archways. The festival was strung out along the main street with an athletic field and grand stands next to the old furnaces. A popular country singer was scheduled to perform there later in the evening. 

We went into a multiplex, theater complex where the local songwriters guild was showcasing their talents. A four piece band played original material and it was fun. The air conditioning in the theater was comfortable and the time went by so quickly, we weren’t ready to leave when the time came. The long walk past rows of concession stands and craft displays took us past the old furnaces, looming over us like movie props in a science fiction thriller. The ride back to the parking lot was uneventful and the idea of going home was a necessity more than preference. I’m glad I got to see the old steel mills and furnaces. I can imagine a time, in my lifetime, when the smoke was belching and steel was glowing, red hot on the foundry floor. Bethlehem Steel was building ships and selling steel in a world that was still blind to its environmental impact. So seeing the old bones of that industry begged the question. Is the aftermath worth the profit to begin with? 

C.F. MARTIN

C. F. Martin immigrated to New York City from Germany in the 1830’s. He was a luthier, made violins, lutes and ultimately guitars. His wife didn’t like New York so after a few years they relocated to Nazareth, Pennsylvania. Martin guitars are still made in Nazareth by another C.F. Martin, six generations removed. Visiting Allentown for the first time I didn’t realize how near we were to the Martin factory. My son suggested that I might be interested in touring Martin Guitars. He didn’t have to twist my arm.

Lots of history in Pennsylvania; everywhere you turn (you turn often) there are museums and namesake landmarks for famous people and events. The roads twist and turn, rise and fall along the same paths as game trails of past centuries, foot paths of indigenous people and two-tracks cut in the ground by wagon wheels. You never know what you will find around the next bend. Along a narrow street in a well kept, old neighborhood we turned right and there was the old, brick front factory with C.F. Martin painted in big white letters above the entrance. Inside, we signed up for the factory tour. In the hour that we had to wait, there was the guitar showroom where you can play guitars, a gift shop and of course a museum. 

Every company that makes good guitars has a museum. Business is business and they give complimentary guitars to the biggest stars; then use photographs of those stars, with their guitars, in advertising. But C.F. Martin is not just another guitar maker. It is the yardstick by which all other good guitars are measured. “Oh, you have this, or that; how does it stack up with a Martin D 28”? Anyway, the museum is loaded with memorabilia and guitars. Under a spotlight, behind glass, there is a life size photo of Johnny Cash with his Martin guitar. I don’t know why Johnny Cash rather than Elvis; maybe his musical legacy and celebrity are more current. In one case, the donors names read like an all star lineup. From left to right they were, Paul Simon, Neil Young, David Crosby, Steven Stills, Judy Collins and more. If Elvis is the king, then the royalty in his kingdom are equally wonderful and they all played Martin guitars. 

Guitars get expensive fast. Once you learn a few chords and start picking out melodies, you realize you need a better guitar. It’s no secret, the better the instrument, the easier to play, the better you sound. Martin quality and workmanship are as good as it gets. Inside the factory, the tour guide showed us the Custom Shop, where custom guitars are made. (Guitars that cost over $5,000 are considered “Custom”) He said that Eric Clapton had just ordered two guitars, exactly alike. That way if a string breaks in a concert, they can switch in the moment and continue without a hitch. For the cost of those two guitars you could buy a new Mercedes Benz and have money left over. They have a factory in Mexico now that makes guitars for the lower end, cheaper models. I have one of those; it’s a really small, backpacker model. It’s nice for sitting in front of the computer and feeling your way through music off the internet. My best guitar is a Taylor 412 CE Limited Edition. Taylor Guitars have their factory in California but their legacy doesn’t begin to go back like Martin does. But they make world class instruments and they have a museum too, with many of the same stars, with Taylor guitars. When other pickers hear my 412 they say, “Sweet; how does it stack up with a Martin?” If they play much they already know but I tell them, “It’s about the same as a D 28.”  I bought a tee-shirt in the gift shop. The tour guide gave everyone a token of the tour, the cut out disc from the sound hole that had the Martin logo burned into the spruce. We were the last in line and he gave me the leftovers, enough to make a set of coasters. 

VELODROME

Racing. . . ‘round & ‘round in circles; when it’s over, everybody finishes back where they began. Not long ago, Son #3 took me to the races. Open wheeled monsters roared around the track, sliding sideways in the turns, spinning mud and dust into the air, into the stands, so loud I had to wear a headset to protect my ears. In the late 70’s and early 80’s we went to stock car races often and we loved it but the best we could do was watch. 

We rode bicycles, really. In the early 80’s, bicycles were for the most part, toys but I took mine seriously. My wife wasn’t happy when I left the house for long stretches, leaving her to take care of her business and herd four kids as well. So I bought more bicycles and took kids with me. Sit-up-straight bicycles with knobby tires were toys for the driveway and yard, but down-in-the-grips bikes with razor thin tires, they were the real deal. In 1980, two hundred dollars for a 10 speed bike was a thorny issue. Whatever else we did without must not have been too important. You can tuck forward, down into the wind and ride for hours, miles on miles and still have legs left for the ride home. St. Joseph County, Michigan had a grid network of blacktop roads with an intersection every mile. There must have been thousands of sprints, to the next sign post or hedge row for nothing more than bragging rights and an excuse to burn off energy. I brought up the rear with Daughter #4; she didn’t like sprints or hills, even the downhill. She knew that another climb would surely follow. For safety sake, we practiced riding the edge, on the white line. Not much traffic out in the county; when you hear cars coming up behind, you ride a true line on the edge, not looking back, letting drivers know that you know what you’re doing. 

Bicycle racing was popular in Canada but in Michigan, the best we could do were local time trials in Kalamazoo and Battle Creek, sharing the road with cars and trucks as we raced against the clock. Son #3 could really ride, like the wind. I bought him a Nishiki racer and he left us behind, riding with the big boys on their aluminum frame racers; cruising at 27-28 mph. Interesting, he is the one who lost his passion for the bicycle and turned to giant tires, high powered monster, mud trucks. It was Son #1 who took me to the velodrome last Friday night. It is a half kilometer, high banked bicycle track, small enough, steep sided enough it looks like a miniature football stadium where the action goes on, on the steep banked part. Spectators are above that, looking down into the bowl. The bikes are all carbon fiber now, even the rims; aerodynamic, strong and feather weight. For a group of racers to sprint to the finish at over 40 mph is normal, equal to the fastest of the fast, thoroughbred race horses. 

Allentown, Pennsylvania has it’s race cars but interest and support for bicycle racing is equally strong. The velodrome is state of the art, not a bad seat in the place. We sat just shy of the finish line. As the chain of riders rolls around on the bell lap, the crowd gets excited and begins to cheer. The riders can hear it all, foot stomping in the bleachers drowns out the cheers but the track itself is silent. One rider, back in 7th or 8th place explodes with a burst of speed, passing on the outside, high enough so he can slingshot out of the turn, into the lead at the finish line. As they go by the crowd goes silent, the only noise a soft rattle of chain link fence, disturbed gently by the wind they make. 

I thought about the winged outlaws, roaring into the 3rd turn at Lakeside speedway; speed junkies and their machines, similar in some ways to the bicycles. I know that auto racing has it’s unique skill set but I don’t identify with it. They need to be strong enough to control the wheel with hand-eye reaction time of an athlete. But otherwise, they can be soft. The vroom-vroom crowd is something else. I was there at Lakeside and the people were nice but I didn’t fit the profile. I’ve never raced a car but I connect with lactic acid burn in the thighs and cramping in the calves. I know the vulnerability of no seat belts or roll bars. If you go down, it’s flesh against the hard surface, at any speed. Son #2 still rides, has Son #3’s racer now, the kid size Nishiki. We all hope someday one of his daughters might want to give it a spin. 

ROCK & ROLL HALL OF FAME

The R & R Hall of Fame started as an idea in the 1980’s and opened its doors in 1995. By he time the building was completed, on the lake front in Cleveland, Ohio, there were many rock & roll heroes already enshrined. I always wanted to go there and see the displays, the memorabilia and certainly the guitars. Yesterday I got to do that. By 9:00 a.m. people were already beginning to collect in front of the building. When they opened at 10:00, it reminded me of the line at Disneyland; lots of every-age, little kids, bent on rock and roll. 

I was by myself. Any enthusiasm was dampened a bit by the fact I couldn’t share it with anyone. Wall after wall was covered with display cases, filled with costumes, posters, musical instruments and awards. It didn’t take very long to realize, you can’t look at everything there’s just too much stuff. Some things were displayed by genre, others by time period or region, some individuals got a space for themselves. It’s a museum and there was nothing to touch. But at every turn, there were kiosks where you could watch film clips of past performances. There are two small and one larger theaters where you can watch past performances and in particular, past induction ceremonies into the hall of fame. 

I was entertained and amused especially in the room documenting famous preachers, ranting and raving to their audiences on the evils of rock & roll. From Jimmy Swaggart to Jerry Falwell, they pounded on their pulpits and cursed shimmy-shaking, body swaying and prophesied to doom of everything righteous. While Jimmy Swaggart was waving his bible and pronouncing God’s inevitable wrath, his cousin Jerry Lee Lewis was, “Rocking My Life Away,” on another stage. We were going to hell and couldn’t wait to get there. 

I loved the guitars, from Jerry Garcia’s Stratocaster to Bo Diddley’s cigar box, square body Gretch; I was in awe. They might be under glass in Cleveland but once upon a time, they were jamming under the lights to a sold out crowd. Naturally, some people are more special to us than others and there are nearly 200 rock & rollers already inducted and available at the museum. So you get to pick and choose which ones you dwell on. I walked into one theater while the film was in progress. It was a close up of the body of an acoustic guitar. It was gorgeous with abalone inlay on the sound hole and bindings. The hand on its strings was playing the bridge to a song I knew but couldn’t identify at the moment. Just as the camera began to zoom back, revealing the artist, I recognized, “The Sound of Silence” and there they were, two, old, gray headed dudes in HD on a stage in front of thousands. Garfunkel was recognizable with his high forehead and frizzy hair but Simon was just a little old man and I don’t know how long it would have taken to put a name on his face if not for the music. I sat there through 7 or 8 songs. Their voices weren’t all they used to be but neither are my ears. It was way-cool. 

The class of 2014 includes The E Street Band and Linda Ronstadt. The Boss made it in in the 90’s and his band has made it now as well. There are others and great as they are, just not my favorites. Linda Ronstadt on the other hand, I’ve loved her since the Stone Ponies. On You Tube there is a duet with her and Bonnie Raitt, from the early 70’s; "Blowing Away." I’ve played it so many times I know every detail, from the camera angles, to the cut aways to when eyes shift one way or the other. I love Bonnie Raitt too, she was inducted in 2000. The two of them together when they were invincible is worth watching again and again. 

Quotes from interviews at the ceremonies were great. Mick Jagger thought it was ironic that they were all on their best behavior when it was their bad behavior that got them there. Pete Townshend’s advice was, “Whatever you do, don’t grow old gracefully. It doesn’t become you.” I recommend the museum to any and everyone. The people there were as interesting as the displays. The ones I noticed most were old folks like me, sharing their enthusiasm with their grand children. One little girl was dragging her grandmother across the room, telling her at every step, “Grandma, it’s Janice Joplin, it’s Janice Joplin.” If one of my granddaughters ever took me by the hand and dragged me to where we could listen to Ruth Brown or Linda Ronstadt, I’d know I was in heaven.