Every now and again I catch a glimpse of my tablet in harsh, glancing daylight and marvel at how much grime I've deposited on it since last taking time to clean the thing. After flinching at the sight of the mess, I then become intrigued by the kinds of detritus scattered there. A gray, kinky whisker on the upper left side. A short, white nose hair a bit to the right of that. A lot of dust particles, or is all of that flakiness bits of skin I've been shedding. And, of course,

I've only played a few fretless instruments before, Cello being the only one of which any level of achievement was attained. Now this fretless electric guitar is handy and getting a lot of attention, sparking memories of playing fretless, but even more pronounced are odd sensations of fresh neural pathways being kindled into aged brain matter as the mind living within the fatty mass struggles to guide still clumsy flanges to finesse sounds of quality from the fret-free landsc

Mavoji is the first and only Oud Player I've ever met . An introverted but overtly enthusiastic individual, nothing existed in the realm of music which seemed impossible for Mavoji. We met while waiting to perform in our first solo performance recitals. I was playing classical guitar pieces, Mavoji was playing pieces arranged for Lute. We were both nervous as hell and anxious to get up on stage, do the deed, and then disappear quickly before anyone could intercept and critiqu

As the 70s were wrapping up I was languishing and discontented with progress I was making in life, which was pratctically nill. I had completed only a couple of semesters of college coursework and had avoided dying in a couple of close-call accidents–one while hiking, the other while driving a motorcycle. So I decided to head in a new, concerted direction linked to what interested me most. Music. The search (even in those pre-world wide web days) for a good undergraduate sch

Bell pepper plants have been pruned, potted and are ready for moving into the greenroom. Holes where they were growing have been filled with their trimmed limbs and leaves topped with plenty of fresh soil teaming with wriggling and crawling life from the compost bin. By morning the tall okra plants will be rapidly wilting away. End of growing season here. It was a malicious season with too much heat and not enough rain. The only survivors were tomatoes, okra, bell peppers and

Here in the USA midterm election results are still being counted but it appears we have good chances now to continue to dwell and thrive in peace as a nation of free peoples. It's an existence requiring determination and diligence to protect but all well worth the effort. About a month before discovering an artist willing to create a set of custom guitars to replace some lost in the Hermit's Peak Fire, that artist's homeland bravely exercised its right to ban transit of EU-sa

I began worrying seriously about catastrophic forest fire in June 2013. That summer the Tres Lagunas Fire was started by a downed electric-coop power line when a 150 foot tall dead tree was blown into power lines by high winds. That fire burned more than 10,000 acres and seemed devastating at the time. With extreme drought conditions persisting for most of the year throughout the previous winter and Independence Day coming soon after that fire started, I began fretting a lot

Fried okra. One of my favorite side dishes. Don't like it in my gumbo, though. Sacrilege. Worse than tomatoes in chili. Took a lot of watering to keep the plants alive through the hottest midsummer days but it was worth it. And with freezing weather still weeks away there will be more to harvest within a few more days to add to the almost full bag in the freezer.

She writes slowly, with deliberation and style, tending her scribed web stretched over the kitchen window for a full week now. Nothing disturbs her there, and I don't intend to either. A leggy beauty, I rarely see her moving. When she does I watch mesmerized, always surprised by how long I've been observing her when I finally snap out of it and move on to other things going on in life. Her writing casts ysterious spells. How long she'll remain on her web in the window is a gu

Autumn weather is finally upon us here and Rapolas Gražys just sent a tantalizing finish-phase glimpse of a fretted guitar he is building for me. Just a few swipes of finish applied to the instrument's top, but plenty enough to get my heart racing in joyful anticipation. The woodgrain and color are superb and it's fun to imagine the artist's own reaction to this reveal as autumn starts where he is. Here it's finally cooling to increasingly pleasant temperatures both during da

In 1976 I finally purchased my first high-fidelity sound system including a set of Infinity WTLC speakers with intentions of using it both as a home stereo and as a live-performance sound system. The system was way out of my budget at the time but I had just begun composing and performing tunes and songs of my own creation and wanted a sound system with plenty of wattage and a decent pair of speakers which both looked and sounded great for listening to records at home and to

When I was still in grade school my parents would take us out on weekends into the real world where actual learning happened. We would hike and camp and climb mountains and swim and fish. One of the places we would stop for bait when we went fishing was at the crossroads of highways 6 and 283. It was called Four Corners Bait Shop, a very cool place. What made it cool was a galvanized water tank full of salamanders the proprietor was raising and selling for fishing bait. Hellb

Here I am, almost five months after the United State Forest Service (USFS) committed negligent arson by starting a prescribed burn which instantly ran out of control and their wildfire burned me out of house and homestead. All I have to show for it is a measly $179.82 recently paid out by FEMA for repairs to make my totally destroyed home "safely habitable". This pittance payment–awarded only after an incompetent FEMA field inspector–a "professional" field inspector which cou

Imagining artists meticulously applying talents and skills in passionate pursuit of dreamed visions they seek to birth into reality is a favorite pastime. Where they do it is equally fun to imagine. Only rarely have I been fortunate enough to see any in action. In my youth I enjoyed watching my brother painting in oils to create astounding pieces of art now hanging in various homes and businesses. Aromas of paints and thinner and linseed oil always trigger pleasant memories o

Not long after hosting the post-production party for a play presented by the Pickwick Players, my mother and I were clearing my bedroom as our family prepared to move to a new location about twelve hundred miles diagonally across the nation to the northeast. We would be living on a farm there not far from the southern tip of Lake Michigan. With everything else boxed up in the room and its closets, she decided we should turn the mattress on my bed. When we did, we both spotted

Being holed up is not a problem for me. I've holed up for lots of reasons over the decades to survive jinky situations–some of my own making, others not at all. Those of my own making are easy to bear up under, having no one to blame but myself. Situations not of my making are just irksome and only slightly less easily endured. Practice and plenty of hobbies to practice at make it so. One of the latest hole ups not of my choosing was caused by a nasty virus apparently gifted

This website had its first visit from someone in New Zealand this week. It's fun to dig into the metadata to find out precisely where they were when they visited the site, courtesy of GPS. The visitor was in Auckland, apparently sitting on the edge of the fountain pool in Albert Park just across the street from the university. The visitor may have been an Auckland University student visiting the site while cooling tired heels between classes, enjoying the sound of water falli

This old photograph is titled simply "The Family". I never met any of these family members from my mother's side. I've only heard stories from her about them. It's fun to imagine their lives unfolding along different paths so long ago. And I like to think Malcomb hated wearing that suit, but it may have been all the rage back then. I know I wouldn't have liked wearing it. Back row: Walter, Mollie, Jack and Bert. Front row: Will, Bob, Sam and Malcomb. The photo stirs odd feeli

When the Moon is full it's easier to dream big for some strange reason possibly associated with its gravitational influences on brain-fueling fluids flow. And now that my own government has burned me out of house and home and canyon for who knows how far into my future, I'm imagining all sorts of life-choice vectors to take from here. There's a lot of the world I haven't seen yet which might provide more than ample amounts of fun from traveling again. But it would have to be

That seems to be what it's all about these days of hyper-connectedness. I'm not concerned about whom or how many I influence in the world, but it is fascinating to be able to see where in the world my influence may have spread through this web site. The yellow areas in this unique-users-location-by-country map shown here indicate zero visitors. Dark blue the most visitors. Light blue fewer. Light brown very few. Two hundred sixty-four cities in all around the world. And some