Epic Songs

Every few years an epic song comes along which gets people thinking or makes them feel nostalgic about something in their lives.  In the past there has been songs like Don McLean's, "American Pie" and "Vincent", Harry Chapin's, "Cats in the Cradle",  Shel Silverstein's, " Rosalee's Good Eats Cafe" and Steve Goodman's "My Old Man".  More recently there are songs like the Decemberists, "Mariner's Revenge".

These songs are pieces of lyrical art and I can imagine the writers  shaking and shivering after the entire first play through realizing fully that they have just written a song of a life time.

I just found another of these songs by the Avett Brothers called the Ballad of Love and Hate.  Here is the song with lyrics.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Pre7bINBps

We All Raise Our Voices To The Air

 

If you are a fan of the Decemberists and especially if you have ever been to one of their concerts you will be enchanted by their new live two CD collection, We All Raise Our Voices To The Air.  This collection will take you back to the theater where you saw them.

The Decemberists are fun and intelligent.  Colin Meloy's lyrics use words and phrases of long lost and forgotten languages. (when was the last time you heard of someone being called a rake?)

This collection hosts songs from each of their previous albums, and yes, the Mariners Revenge is there in all of its glory.  You can practice screaming as though you were being eaten by a whale...

Kissing Frogs

Kissing frogs is the term we use for horse shopping.  Our last two goes at finding good horses went pretty well and I think we are done for a while.

In the last year my wife had a horse that put her in the hospital on several occasions. He was unpredictable and would throw her on a whim.  He needed an owner that could school him on being more polite to riders.  She has since found a local horse on her first try on Dream Horse.  Her horse is well trained and does everything we need him to do, calmly.

Then in failing health, I had to put my horse down last fall and I got the Beav on a one year trial, but after several months and probably a thousand dollars in vet care, we realized he would never over come his foot issues so we returned him.  I then got a loaner horse which we've had for the last two or so months.  He was big he could do everything, but he wasn't for sale.  We had him only until we could find another horse for me.

The photo above is my new horse Kali.  I have her on a one month trial.  She is young, six years old, but has some good training under her, though she is still considered green which shows when she confronts a new situation like cows and culvert pipes  She keeps her ears on the rider looking for cues as to what she should do.

She is a Belgian/Quarter Horse mix and she is a big girl at 16 hands.  She has the enormous feet of a draft horse and they are good sound feet.  The last three horses I've had had foot problems and that changes what you can do with a horse.

It takes about a year for a rider and a horse to know each other and anticipate what each is thinking.  Kali learned a few things on the trail today.  I got her to walk through several puddles and she didn't even look for a way around it. She did get spooked a couple times but I kept her going and she was much more relaxed at the half way point.  There is a tarp beside the road that spooked her last time we rode and this time she didn't pay any attention to it at all.

Now I need to test her to see how she feels about the beach and walking in the surf.  I need to get her to cross a river and go over bridges.  The adventure begins, again.

New Bees

I took the five-hour round trip drive to pick up my bees for the season.  Five of my seven colonies I attempted to keep alive over the winter died.  The two that did make it through the winter are strong and are off to a good start.

I got only four additional colonies this year.  I often start the year with ten colonies but after being called to pick up swarms I have ended up with up to sixteen colonies.  That is way more colonies than I care to deal with.  Hopefully I'll top out with ten hives this year, but I will probably only take honey from six of them.

Last year was the first year I cut the honey production, and it was kind of nice.  I was sold out easily by November.  Most of the years of large production I still am scrambling to sell the rest of the harvest in December.  Though selling honey and hive products makes it so I can at least break even on my endeavors; a person can get used to the less is better module.  It may not be really better, but it is easier.

A Delay

One of the only two fears I have is being late.  I would rather not show up for something than be late.  I've known people who are chronically late and it doesn't seem to mater to them in the least no matter how much it inconveniences others.

The worse consequence for me would arriving late and being turned away.  Most people think I'm crazy for this, but when I have an appointment in Portland I try to leave three hours ahead of time.  If you stop for gas or for coffee along the way that can easily chew up a half hour and then if you encounter traffic some where along the trip you can easily lose any time you have remaining.

I had an appointment in Portland on Thursday and yes I left three hours early.  We got a mile down the road and we encountered a stampede of cattle running in the same direction we were going.  I didn't want to push the cows further and as I started turning around to tell the neighbors their cows were running down the road I saw our neighbor driving the tractor with hay towards the scene.

It was obvious we had to try to head them off and keep them in one lane with out spooking them and about a half mile later were able to stop the herd.  A neighbor from the other direction was drove up with her son and now there were four of us and a tractor pushing the cows back in the right direction.  We were shouting, waving jackets and sticks.  The cows kept trying to leave the road  and we had to push them back and forward to their pasture.  It took a while but within 45 minutes we all had them back in their field with their very grateful owner.

I still made it to my appointment in Portland on time and had an adventure along the way.

Sequestered Like Veal

I finally had laser surgery on my eye.  I wrote months ago about being somewhat blind in my left eye because of a condition called Central Serous Retinopathy.  I had it once before in 2008 and it pretty much got better on it's own and then it came back last August and hasn't gotten better. 

The surgery was pretty simple. They infused me with a medication called Visudine and then they focused a cold laser in my eye for 60 seconds.  It is the ultra violet that interacts with the medication and seals off the problems in my retina. Hopefully my vision will be much better within two weeks.

In the mean time I have to stay out of the light for the next three days because any exposure to sunlight will cause a severe sun burn that will require a skin graft.  So just to go out side I have to wear a hat with a full brim with a hoody over that, sunglasses, gloves and sleeves.  No skin can be exposed even though it is cloudy and raining.  So I'm just staying inside until Sunday when all the medication should be out of my system.

The Nattering of the Birds

Place yourself in the evening of a warm summer day.  You spent the afternoon working outdoors, mowing the grass, trimming hedges, or painting.  It's getting late and your chores are done for the day and you sit outside and have a drink.  The air is full of the smells and the sounds of a summer evening.  You notice that the robins and other birds are no longer searching you lawn for food, but rather they are all perched in trees, singing and sounding.  They are talking amongst one another and I envision them telling one another about their personal successes of the day.

Oddly, this seems to happen with other birds as well.  We got some baby chicks a couple weeks ago and they were living in a large cage I built for them.  It's easier to keep chicks in the house for the first couple of weeks where you can monitor their food, water and temperature.  They were monitoring the length of the day for us and every evening just before dusk they would start talking like the birds in the trees talk to one another.  They shared their days with one another, quite vocally for about fifteen minutes before it got dark.

We have since moved the chicks into the chicken yard and I have to admit I do miss their nattering every evening.  I'll look forward to the next batch of chicks that will be delivered to us in June.

Adam Cohen

Throughout the history of the music industry it is rare that a child of a star will ever be better than their parent. Look at Frank Sinatra; his son Frank JR and daughter Nancy never amounted to much in the industry other than a wisp of fame in the 60’s. Nearly all of Frank Zappa’s children have had musical ventures and careers of riding the coattails of Frank, but none have ever risen to his level. Hank Williams Junior is just a nasty drunk with none of the heart his father had, though Hank III has potential. None of the kids of the Beatles have made much of an impact.

BUT… Finally there is potential; a kid is doing his father proud. Leonard Cohen’s son Adam has turned out probably the best son of a star album I’ve ever heard. It is as though Adam sat at the foot of the master and actually absorbed and was able to comprehend the genius of his father.

Adam picks up where the interesting Leonard Cohen left off, before his voice turned to gravel and his songs turned into lullabies. Adam is as musically interesting as his father. His poetry/lyrics are every bit as clever as his father. The production is very similar to his father’s but perhaps more interesting. He employs a bevy of the same style back-ground singers, or as Leonard calls them, the angels. Adam’s voice is totally recognizable as a Cohen.

If you are a Leonard Cohen fan, you must pick up this collect, Adam Cohen, Like a Man. You won’t be disappointed.

Cookies

I have some cookie issues. First they are mis-named. They should be called bakies since you bake them, not cook them. This aside, I've always loved cookies. What's not to love? Even a bad cookie is better than no cookie at all, but I see a major change slowly changing the face of my cookie world that is disturbing.

When I was a kid the markets had a cookie aisle. There were different types of cookies four shelves high for the entire length of the aisle. Now if you go to the cookie aisle at Fred Meyer there are about five feet of cookies, then ten feet of every sort of chocolate chip concoction possible then it goes into a couple feet of Nilla Wafers and bang you are into crackers for the rest of the aisle.

I can understand why people are off commercial cookies. They have changed past the point of being good, tasty or interesting. Have you had a Fig Newton lately. It's not the succulent treat it used to be. The fig paste is chewy and the cookie shell is akin to shredded cardboard. Have you tried dunking a chocolate cover graham cracker in milk lately? You can bite off the ends, put it in a glass of milk, come back an hour later and and find it still floating and the inside is still crisp. A proper graham cracker cookie should get totally mushy inside while the chocolate shell becomes cold and crisp.

Sometimes I just was a little cookie. That's why I usually have a bag of Mother's in the cupboard. I don't want the burden of trying to cut myself off from eating an entire bakery cookie. Mother's cookies are the perfect bite size for me.

Now let's talk about bakery cookies for a moment. Aside from chocolate chip and maybe oatmeal cookies, I am willing to bet that sinckerdoodles are among the top three most popular bakery cookies. So why can't you get a commercial snickerdoodle? There are so many nauseating varieties of chocolate chips on the shelves, why not pull one of the big chip with sprinkles and corn nuts that everyone overlooks and throw in sinckerdoodles. A new cookie could breath some new life into the dwindling cookie aisle. Trust me, I'm an expert.

It's All Over Now, Baby Blue

Blue is dead. I had a love/hate relationship with him. Blue came into our lives three years ago when we ordered some chickens from Murray McMurray. The deal was that when ever you order chicks from them they throw in an exotic bird, which is their way of getting rid of roosters.

Blue was an Americuna. His first year was spent mating. I've had roosters before and I never saw one that could mate as often as Blue. He was on a different hen every minute or so; all day, every day.

He slowed down during his second year; mating only every hour or so, but this gave him more time to try to attack me. When I was outside he'd make his way to me and he'd try to ambush me. I kept a close eye on him because the moment I didn't he was in the air trying to spur me. He did catch me in the back of the boot on two occasions.

Blue was pretty noisy. Though I had gotten used to the sound of his crow, I never enjoyed hearing him scream from inside the coop three hours before day light. The neighbors must be delighted in his passing for that reason. Sometimes I'd be working out side and I could hear him crowing every few seconds for a half hour or so.

A neighbor dog took Blue and though I am upset any time one of the chickens are preyed upon by a dog, this neighbor called us and fessed up about the incident.

Blue was a beautiful bird. He kept the flock in order, but on the other hand he had a mean streak and he was noisy. I do miss him in a way, but on the other hand I'm enjoying the peace and quiet.

You Asked For It

All right already. Here’s a new post. Three of my seven readers have made me feel guilty enough that I’m writing a new article. Especially because one of them gave up drinking for Lent and the photo of the glass of applejack was haunting her and making her question her resolve when she checks the blog every morning. That applejack is calling her name.

Once in a while someone will bring up a topic I had written about in the past, and I will search the archives to see what I had to say back in the day. I am constantly amazed by how much I’ve mellowed over the years. This blog had some really good writing and commentary in the past. I took on people and issues. Sure I may have been wrong sometimes, but I had a fire in the belly and I kind of miss it.

I used to make it a point to be involved. I’d go to board meetings and meet the movers and shakers. I was on a few advisory committees and I got to attend some great election night parties. Though it was exciting at the time, in retrospect I should have felt dirty. I would feel dirty now if I were involved in the political cesspit I used to swim in. This is not to say I was on the wrong side of anything, or that my position or opinions have changed; politics is dirty no matter what side you are on. The ends always justified the means.

Now that I’ve distanced myself from all politics I am no longer the choir that gets preached to. Sadly one of the side effects is that I no longer write about my outrage. I haven’t had a post in a while, and before this topic came up today I was considering writing a post about cookies. Cookies…Snickerdoodles no less… what have I become?

P.S. hope you injoy this photo for the next couple of weeks.

Apple Jack

We are big fans of Alton Brown who is food guru on a couple of the cooking channels. He is really into the history and science of food and constantly comes up with unique ways of enhancing standard recipes. A while back he was extolling the use of apple jack when making an apple pie.

My father drank apple jack on occasion. I wouldn’t call him an alcoholic, though his family roots were based in boot legging back during prohibition. They made whiskey in the family bakery and delivered it in the bakery truck. He seemed to have a fondness for novelty booze such as corn whiskey, apple jack and a variety of other spirits. His main stay was Johnny Walker Black. I don’t know if he actually enjoyed drinking scotch or if he figured it elevated his social standing.

I always recall him tying one on when we went to Canada every summer. He’s buy a bottle of scotch at the duty free shop at the border and he’d spend a long night drinking with our hosts at the lodge. Then randomly at another time of the year he’d tie one on with one of his novelty spirits. Twice a year; never more or less, just twice a year consistently.

I recall when he rediscovered apple jack. I saw an impish look on his face that reminded him of his youth. When Alton Brown talked about using apple jack in the pie recipe I was taken back to that look on my father’s face, so I went to the liquor store to get some.

I am not a real drinker. I think in the last year I’ve had only a couple beers, a couple glasses of wine, a few snifters of sherry and perhaps three Margaritas in the heat of the summer. When I go into the liquor store I immediately have sticker shock. My next shock comes from the quantity of apple jack one must buy. I considered not getting it, but the recipe called for it and I was committed.

When I got the bottle home I figured I’d have a taste to see what my father found good about the stuff. I guess what I was expecting was a combination of apple cider and brandy, but the first taste was something more like fortified jet fuel. I wondered how they could sell this poison. There was nothing charming about it in the least. As far as I could tell it did nothing for the pie. I’m considering it as accelerant the next time I need to burn brush.

Value

There are certain things that were not better in the old days though they may have had character or built character. Most houses were drafty because of poor or no insulation, single pane windows, inefficient heating systems and so on. Bath tubs were hard and cold glazed cast iron with showers a later add-on. Shampoo bottles were made of glass and they would shatter if dropped onto the hard tub surface.

Some things were better back then. Police cars had big domed flashing lights on their roofs, cherry-tops. You could spot one a mile away. Now-a-days the lights are visor or grill lights, sneaky, sneaky, sneaky.

Another thing I really liked about the old days was the silver dollar. When I was a kid and did something notable I was often rewarded with a silver dollar. A silver dollar had much more character than paper money. A silver dollar had weight and when it was in your pocket you knew it was there. When you collected a few of them you really had a collection. They were artful and they had a bell-like ring to them when dropped on a hard surface.

There are new smaller dollar coins presently in circulation. They are roughly the size of quarters and have a golden mist of a color to them. They replaced the Susan B. Anthony coins which were a dismal failure.

The old silver dollars were and still are a coin of quality and value. When you had one or some you felt the value of it immediately. I now realize what the old timers were saying when they protested the change over from silver certificates to Federal Reserve notes. Once our dollar bills were promissory certificates for silver. You could take a silver certificate paper bill into a bank and walk out with the equivalent value of silver. When the Federal Reserve made paper money into reserve notes the value could now fluctuate with the world market not the precious metals market. There was no longer a precious metal to hold a value. So let’s say you have a silver certificate dollar from the 30’s; as of 1968 they could only be exchanged reserve notes, so unless you sell them to a collector you will get only one dollar for them. However if you had a silver dollar from back in the day the value of the silver is now around $40; collectors may pay more depending upon the quality and rarity of the coin.

Seeing what has happened to the value of our money over the last three decades makes me wonder why this devaluation is acceptable to so many. Times were once a lot better for the value of our money and it makes me realize that the true value is not in money, but rather in barter.

The Neighborhood

When I first moved here there were very few neighbors and the ones I had couldn’t be seen through the trees. Life was good them, but with the combination of the over-development of this desirable real estate and the storm of 2007 that took all the trees I can now see close to 20 houses from my place.

Though I am on a first name basis with maybe five of these neighbors, I have no idea who the rest are and I don’t really care to make their acquaintances. Instead I prefer to give them the names they deserve because of what they do. Just like how people who in the past ran a mill became the Miller’s; I have renamed the neighborhood.

I started this tradition when I had neighbors that fought all the time. I called them the Goddamnit’s. They would shout one another’s’ name followed by the word Goddamnit.

There are the Drivers. All day, every day they drive they drive away and return not long after. They have at least five cars and there is rarely a ten minute rest when one of them isn’t going up or down their road.

Then there are four families of Lighthouses. These are folks that love illuminating the outside of their houses and yards to the point where I probably don’t need to turn the lights in my house. The sun-like glow makes it possible for me to see the colors of my walls at night just from the light they share with the neighborhood.

Then there are the Tillers. This family somehow doesn’t like mowing their lawn so every year they bring in a tractor with a tiller and they plow it all under.

Then there are the Burners. This family has a major pit fire every week and I have no idea where they get all the brush to burn. I generate a lot of burning material with brush, scrap wood and old bee boxes but I generally burn once a year. These people burn nearly every weekend and I have to figure they take on the burning material of others.

Finally there are the Outofdoors. This is a family that is outdoors all the time. Day or night no matter what the weather they are out there, adults, kids and pets. I have no idea what they are doing out there, but they are outside making family noises all the time.

Sounds Bad Doesn't It?

Sometimes I have to laugh and go eeew when certain archaic terms are used. The other day I heard the term "Sexpot." I don't know if the term is still in common use, but it once described someone one who is super sexy, however if you form a mental picture of what a sex pot might look like the term becomes totally repulsive.

Another of these weird terms is "Sex Kitten." This is wrong on so many levels, yet it is still in common use.

Do you readers have any others?

My Vote

Being an unaffiliated voter I am the target of both Republicans and Democrats who want to sway me to vote for their candidates. If you are in the party leadership I think you should know that I throw all of your mail away without reading it (as does everyone else) and I keep track of who phoned me most often and every phone call I get on behalf of a candidate makes me less likely to vote for them. Rob Cornilles' campaign bothered me with 7 calls, one of which was a robo call from a former commissioner, who I saw recently and asked if he had lost his mind...

Look, I don't care what your campaign people tell you but a lawn sign has never convinced me to vote for someone. A direct mail campaign has never changed my mind and most of all phone calls make me run in another direction. I find it ironic that a candidate that wants less government intrusion feels free to intrude in my life via the telephone.

Trust me, I know what you stand for and against. I know what you said in your debates. I read the voter pamphlet. If you want to impress me don't waste money on lawn signs, mailings surveys and phone banks. Take your campaign funds and donate them to a food bank or to a non profit clinic or to schools in your district. This would tell voters that your heart is really in the causes you believe in and getting elected will be a benefit of your charity.

The Worst Coffee Ever

At this minute I am drinking possibly the worst cup of coffee I've ever had. I have no one but me and my laziness to blame. First let me state that I do know the difference between a good cup of coffee and mediocre coffee and bad coffee. My taste in coffee is pedestrian compared to people who spend $10+ dollars a day on their habit. I like to use half and half and sugar. I find it brings out some of the hidden complexity of the better coffees.

I know bad coffee, like the coffee that is offered in hotel rooms and aluminum pot catering hall coffee, most restaurant coffee...however I think I've topped them all.

I did mention that I am lazy about coffee. I rarely ever grind coffee and I normally buy the big bag of Pleasant Hill coffee from Costco. I set it up in our coffee maker and set the timer so the coffee is waiting for me when I wake up at 5AM.

A couple weeks ago my wife cleaned our coffee maker and I think it was submerged. The clock and timer stopped working, so I unplugged it and let it dry. After that point I got the clock working again, and the timer was difficult to set but I was able to wrangle it into submission, but the time was set in stone and I have been unable to change it since.

So last night I set it up as usual, but somehow at midnight the smell of freshly brewed coffee was wafting up-stairs. I thought it was just a dream, but I got up before 5 and found a tepid carafe awaiting me. The timer now turns on to brew randomly. Too lazy to brew a fresh pot; I had bad coffee. For my second cup I realized I ran out of half and half (too lazy to go shopping)so I used my wife's sugar-free french vanilla creamer... Even though I microwaved the coffee it was absolutely bad and chemical in nature. I'm writing off the coffee today. Lets hope for a better tomorrow.

The Three Graces

Tonight I was the guest of honor of The Three Graces. It was Guy Appreciation Night. I have three women friends. Each of us are close for different reasons and we are all friends with one another. All of our demographics are very different, but we are all oddly tied together somehow is a strong friendship.

In Greek mythology The Three Graces are goddesses of such things as charm, beauty, and creativity. One of the Graces is and artist who I met because of this blog. I am a collector of her art; three pieces is a collection. One Grace is a cowgirl who I've ridden with often and we rely on one another to care for each others horses. The third Grace is a very stylish pillar of the community ; ) She has a strong moral compass. I appreciate her honesty and her quick reaction when someone does something evil. She is the champion of those who have been wronged.

It was an honor to be in the presence of these Three Graces for an hour this evening. It was great that they treated to a wonderful dinner.

Foodie Adjectives

I find it interesting how the names food items are given over to a use as human condition and general condition descriptions. For example:

Ducky is a snide description of thing being OK on the surface.
Corny is descriptive of something being silly and/or immature.
Nutty is descriptive of being crazy.
Flaky is descriptive of scatter-mindedness.
Seedy is descriptive of a less than honorable person or place.
Fruity is a descriptive slur of a male with feminine characteristics.
Peachy is descriptive of things being OK, and can also be snide.
Crabby is descriptive of a foul mood.
Foul is descriptive of a crabby mood.
Fishy is descriptive of something that is not right.
Cheesy is descriptive of something of poor quality.
Hammy is descriptive of a show-off.
Beefy is descriptive of one who is muscular.
Porky is descriptive of someone who is corpulent.

3D

Speaking of the woes of the film industry, you can tell that Hollywood has nothing new to offer when they have to resort to gimmicks such as 3D to lure the masses into a smelly dark room for 90 minutes.

A good film is good even if it is shot in grainy 2 dimensional black and white. Color doesn't make it better and 3-D further detracts from any charm.

Look at it this way, plays are in 3-D and that doesn't make them any better. I think a good spoken word or written story is superior to any technical adaptation. This is because with the spoken word or written story, your mind sets the parameters and in the movie theater one is at a total loss of control.