I’ve seen the future baby it is murder

Before the bodies are cold in Texas, someone else is killing office workers in Orlando.


I’ve been angry at people before but never so angry that I made plans to murder them. I’ve been in combat; there was nothing about it I wish to re-experience. Nor do I wish to subject anyone else to such experiences. At the end of days spent in combat, I was glad that I was a medic. Yet being a medic was horribly frustrating and depressing because people die in combat and medics/corpsmen/nurses/doctors can’t prevent or change that no matter how hard we try.

There is a great anger in the land of America with its foundations in many problems. No one group of people elected to represent and lead us created all these problems although my opinion is that the Reagan and Bush administrations are largely responsible for more of them than are the Clinton and Obama administrations. The GOP, when in control, has elevated greed to a credo, allowed the Christian fundamentalists to gain far more prevalence and political power than they deserve. The GOP has essentially encouraged racism and bigotry by marketing to the populations most likely to believe racist and bigoted propaganda. The GOP has made false patriotism a measuring stick for the public behavior of citizens and elected officials. The GOP has supported illegal and un-necessary wars in Granada, Panama, and Iraq while underfunding and understaffing the armed forces it claims to admire. In fact, the GOP has presided over the creation and employment of mercenary forces to perform tasks that the armed forces once performed and paying them at much greater rates of pay than the troops who wear our uniforms.

Meanwhile, the Democrats have made patriotism into a thing to be scorned, have alienated many veterans, and have insisted that illegal aliens be provided housing, food, education, and health care that many citizens cannot afford. Many Democrats and voters on the extreme left want to do away with borders, object to any mention of English as a national language. They tend to champion gun control and look down on people who hunt and fish as “knuckle-draggers,” hicks, and red-necks.

There is no common course or common cause in our land today.

There is no political party for many Americans.

I reject the greed, corruption, bigotry, theocracy, false patriotism, and willingness to destroy our government and our nation that characterizes the Republican Party.

I reject the failure of the Democratic party to understand the need for a strong military presence, for their inability to understand that we must secure our borders, that we must stop illegal immigration, for their inability to act in concert when they have control of the legislature.

I reject the Libertarians for their utter lack of concern for the bulk of the populace, for their failure to recognize that public schools, parks, forests, and national services such as DCD & FDA are necessary and good for all of us. I reject them for their continual waving of the 2nd and 10th amendments in our faces as if ownership of firearms and the insistence on a literal 18th century interpretation of federal powers vs. states’ rights; as if that problem hadn’t been settled by the Civil War.

And they all reject me for fitting none of their molds. I believe in social safety nets, public education, and health care for all citizens in a manner similar to the models of Canada and France. I believe in a strong military presence – we need the biggest stick. I believe we need a national education standard – no more Kansas or Deep South models. I believe we need to declare English our national language, repeal the anchor baby clause in the 14th amendment, and send Mexican illegals back to Mexico so they can protest and rebuild their country, using Spanish if they like. We need to jail employers who hire illegals. We need to remove all religion from government, school, and public matters. I don’t want a Christmas tree on public land in December. But I don’t want a Chanukiot (candle stick commonly mislabeled a menorah) there either. Religious holidays should be celebrated at home or in places of worship by people who honestly believe in that particular faith rather than be the impetus for maniacal shopping sprees.

For most of us, there really is no political party that welcomes us by matching what we believe in. The GOP comes closest to matching the theocratic oligarchy its leaders, financial backers, and remaining base call for. I don’t want them in power, ever again. 1929, 1987, 2008, you’d think we might have learned not to let them run anything having to do with money. But we haven’t yet. I don’t know that we ever will.

One thing I know is that we must have some influx of jobs to reduce the unemployment rate or we will never recover from the depression that Reagan, Cheney, and the Bush’s dug for the nation. The private sector, despite all the GOP posturing and imagination of the tea party idiots, will never forego profits for the good of the nation. They’ll be off shoring jobs when the last flag is hauled down and burned by jobless citizens, in order to get that final billion dollar bonus. The jobs are going to have to come from the Government and as of now, the GOP’s scorched earth policy and the Democrat’s inability to work together continues to block that avenue of recovery.

The neighbor across the road has a flag staff at his gate. We have one in the driveway island. We are currently flying the third flag I’ve purchased since we moved in. We won’t fly a torn flag. It’s against the U.S. flag code as well as wrong at several other levels. His flag is barely recognizable as a U.S. flag. If it were anyone else but him, we’d buy another flag and drop it off. From earlier conversations, it is clear that he regards this scrap cloth as some sort of “last real American symbol. Guess who he voted for. Guess why. See what we’re up against.

First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin!

Thunder Road Convoy




Waiting for the MP's to open up the gates,

All gassed up and lined out, each one with its load

Drivers and their shotguns waiting for the go ahead,

Up endless klicks of highway that we call the Thunder Road



Have you written home today? Have you made your will out, troop?

Are you the lucky bastards with the ordnance in your load?

Are you hauling mogas, diesel fuel or JP-4?

God ain't riding any truck that's running Thunder Road



Black smoke coughing skyward, multi-fuelers rumbling,

Passing through the gates you hear the shotguns lock and load.

Helmets weighing heads down, flack vests zipped to sit upon,

Sandbags on the floorboards 'cause they're running Thunder Road.



When the war was younger, wasn't any open road,

Jungle brushed the sidestakes and blocked out the overhead.

Set up in the brush nearby, ambushes were hard to spot,

Troopers running Thunder Road too often wound up dead.



Enter high technology, Monsanto, Dow and chemistry,

Sprayed it with defoliants that burned the jungle back.

Agent Orange, Agent White, one of them will work just right,

Turn the Thunder Road into an open, safer track.



Next the Rome Plows came along, tore the dying jungle down,

Opened up the land one hundred meters either side,

Left an open area of stunted brush and head high grass,

200 open meters for the ambush teams to hide.



From Lai Khe up to Loc Ninh, anxious damned kilometers,

Ain't a single klick that can't be ambushed, sniped or mined.

Lead off with a jeep that mounts a single .50 caliber,

Close the convoy with another .50 back behind.



Every single pothole is the one that hides a waiting mine,

Lots of ruts and potholes form in Asian laterite

Follow in the tire tracks of the truck that’s just ahead in line

If we make it through, we'll sleep in Loc Ninh's wire tonight



Paddies line the lower road, water boo and wooden plows,

Slow down through the hamlets where they try to steal the loads,

Children running after us, "Souvenir me C rats, Joe!"

All of them are VC and they're watching Thunder Road





Women mob the market place, old men squatting in the shade,

Counting 4 by's, 6 by's and the fuel trucks as we go,

Accelerating, roaring north, up highway 13 toward Loc Ninh

Bound to where the mines are buried out on Thunder Road



Trying to relax a bit, hands and arms are cramped and sore,

Tension and the road ruts knot the muscles in our backs,

Someone plays a radio, barely heard above the noise,

Of diesel engines crawling up the twisting, climbing track.



Quon Loi turn-off falls behind, heading for Cambodia

Defoliants have lost their grip; the jungle's closing in,

Rolling through the Michelin, Rome plows never made it here,

Can't upset the planters who still live outside Loc Ninh.



Haggard faces in the trucks caked with thick red laterite

Sweat trails turning dust to mud and not a breath of wind,

To blow the dust away from us as the truck tires churn it up,

It clogs our mouths and noses and it infiltrates our skin.



Every one is twitchy now. If they ambush, should be soon.

Road is down to just one lane and daylight's getting thin

Thunder Road is nearly run; we've survived another day,

Stop! The tanker has to back and fill to make the bend.



Jungle slowly falls behind, sudden tropic nightfall near,

Racing up the final klicks while fading daylight shows.

Road has opened out again, lifting tension from our minds,

Flash! The fuel truck up ahead is blown right off the road



Windshield shatters suddenly, fragments slashing into skin,

Shit! He's hauling Mogas; see the fire consume the load.

Driver never had a chance, torn and burned, cremated there,

The thunder of the mines was why we named it Thunder Road.



Black smoke blowing over us, brings the stench of burning flesh,

B-40 from the tree line detonates another load

Popping of the 16's as we crouch in weed-choked ditches,

Firing 'cross the evil ground that borders Thunder Road.



Choppers strafe the tree lines but Charlie isn't hanging round,

He's killed some long-nosed devils and destroyed a couple loads.

Heading back to safety he can hear the secondary sounds,

Of ammo cooking off in dying trucks on Thunder Road.



Policing up the dead then, nothing left that looks like men

Zip 'em in a body bag and write the letters home.

"Sorry 'bout that, folks, your son got greased below Loc Ninh

On a convoy running highway 13 known as Thunder Road."



Have you written home today? Have you made your will out, troop?

Are you the lucky bastards with the ordnance in your load?

Are you hauling mogas, diesel fuel or JP-4?

Listen to the mines exploding out on Thunder Road

No “Democracy” coming to the USA

Other than that omission, an absolutely spectacular concert took place last night. Leonard Cohen rewarded a sold out house for their attendance by delivering slightly over three hours of high energy, tour-tested music and poetry to a crowd that came expecting much and left well satisfied.


We drove to Asheville, leaving the dog to guard the house and keep the free world safe from cats and the GOP. Pleasant drive over except for one stretch where the setting sun was blazing through a cloud layer and literally destroying all forward vision. Since I was wearing my glasses without sun clips – highly unusual – all I could do was to follow a truck slowly climbing the pass, using the truck body for as much shadow and road definition as possible. Once past that stretch, traffic flowed well and we arrived at the venue when planned. We found convenient garage parking and walked to the restaurant we had chosen. It was an easy walk, a bit chilly as the sun went down.

The restaurant didn’t look all that busy. We were seated and quickly decided what we would order. Gloria had trout filets crusted with falafel, served with saffron rice and a remoulade of vegetables. I had Kafta with the same rice dish and grilled vegetables. We both drank Lebanese mint tea. The plates arrived quickly and we fell to refueling. There was another couple seated next to us. Gloria struck up a conversation and we discovered they were also in town to see Cohen perform. Two more tables of people showed up while we were eating and they, too, were concert bound. We traded travel information, concert histories, and discussed many of the inconsequential things that make us fans of particular performers. I added a very nice baklava for dessert and we both ordered Turkish coffee, made for us without sugar. It was a very pleasant meal and we’d happily dine there again.

Back at the venue, we found our seats and settled into row B orchestra right. The more expensive rows AA & BB turned out to be stackable convention floor chairs with no arm rests and no padding, little better than folding chairs. Neither the venue or the ticket purveyors had made this plain to buyers and there were several very unhappy fans when they saw what their extra dollars brought them. Our row filled up, large people occupied the seats on both sides of us. The venue was poorly ventilated and overly warm. It remained that way throughout the evening. The speaker stacks were, unfortunately, arranged so that we had a partially obstructed view of the band.

Leonard Cohen took the stage, running onto it, precisely on time. As has been the practice for this tour, the opener was “Dance Me To The End Of Love” for the next three hours we were treated to song after song from the newer material and the older. With the exception of a 15 minute intermission Cohen and his excellent band of musicians and vocalists played and sang continually until 2315. There was no downtime between songs, no idle chatter. The performance began at a high energy level and never fell below that line. Every minute on stage was treated as valuable and every person on stage gave peak effort and attention to every note played or sang. There was no impression of a band bored by repeating a show many times. They played with the enthusiasm and promise of the first night of a tour. They laughed with the audience, nailed harmonies, improvised when the music wanted improvisation. Everyone on stage was offered ample time to solo and to demonstrate their particular expertise. They were treated like friends by Cohen rather than as “side men and back-up singers.” The result is a band or extremely tight and cohesive nature.

While our view was somewhat obstructed, we found the sound crew, part of the tour crew rather than local hires, to be experts in their field. Every note played or sung was recognized and treated as the thing of value to the overall performance that the musician or singer meant it to be.

Cohen did two full sets including The Future, Bird On a Wire, In My Secret Life, Waiting For The Miracle, Chelsea Hotel #2, Hallelujah, Boogie Street, Anthem, Who By Fire, Ain’t No Cure For Love, Everybody Knows, Gypsy Wife, Suzanne, Tower of Song, I’m Your Man, Take This Waltz, A Thousand Kisses Deep, Sisters of Mercy, and others I don’t recognize by name. We were treated to a new blues number that as yet has not been named on the fan sites. There were three encores which included a wonderful “If It Be Your Will, First We Take Manhattan, Closing Time, and the final “I Tried To Leave You, sung half in jest at the audience’s reluctance to allow the band to quit.

Gloria and I enjoyed many of the references to Jewish tradition and lyrics taken in part from our liturgy. These certainly increase our appreciation of his ability as a poet and lyricist, and in some cases deepen our own understanding of the liturgical and textual elements Cohen has used in his writing. We both agreed that we had just seen one of the best concerts we could recall. Given Gloria’s long history with the Washington Folk Festival and her access to great bands while living in the DC metro area that says quite a lot. I value my opinion as a musician but she has been able to see many more live performances by musicians that I know only by broadcast or by album work.

It’s hard to say which material we enjoyed most. The opening has tremendous meaning for us. Had we been more aware of this when we married we would have used it in our music for the day. Both of us discovered Cohen early but followed other tracks until we both rediscovered his work via a PBS program. For me, the instrumental lead in to “Who By Fire,” richly Sephardic in character, scored with incredible bass-driven harmonics at the low end of audibility where sound becomes more physical presence than hearing, was certainly a highlight. The words and melody echo the Unetaneh Tokef, an 11th century liturgical poem recited on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. It’s a visceral response to the evocation of essential Judaism. There wasn’t a bad choice of material offered us. Cohen wisely rotates his material in frequency and placement while on tour. We hit a particularly good night. A new song in the repertoire is always interesting and sometime good. Last night’s unnamed offering was good, better than the Chicago reading I heard today.

The drive home went smoothly. We hit some patches of fog going up to Sam’s Pass and most of the way downhill to home had patchy to dense fog. The Pathfinder has good fog lamps and I know when and how to use them. We pulled into the driveway ca. 0115 after leaving the parking garage in Asheville at 2325. All in all a wonderful evening of music and food not to be soon repeated.

We’re hoping to recover enough to dance in Jonesborough Saturday evening. Time will tell.

 Cell phone photograph 1 November 2009 Thomas Wolf Auditorium Asheville NC

The day is occupied with those things that enable and enrich life. Bright blue sky, moderate temperatures, the loud music of the creek, laundry, meal planning, and the affection of a dog who forgave us for making her stand sentry duty alone, last night.

Gloria had hoped to hear “Democracy” last night, as had I. She was disappointed that it was not played.


“It's coming from the women and the men.

O baby, we'll be making love again.
We'll be going down so deep

the river's going to weep,

and the mountain's going to shout Amen!

It's coming like the tidal flood

beneath the lunar sway,

imperial, mysterious,

in amorous array:

Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Sail on, sail on

O mighty Ship of State!

To the Shores of Need

Past the Reefs of Greed

Through the Squalls of Hate

Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on.”

She’s very correct in her hope – We could use a refresher course in our own system of government. Cohen has described the course we need to steer if we only can.

How much? To see who? You’ve got to be kidding me?

28 September 2009 How much? To see who? You’ve got to be kidding me?


Many nights I have joined a line at a 24 hour USPS facility with a white #10 envelope in hand. In the envelope were a second, a stamped self-addressed envelope, a 3x5 index card, and a U.S. Postal money order. The index card had my name, address, and phone numbers printed carefully in the upper left corner. In the center, on one line, was printed a location, a date, and the number of tickets requested for that show. If I wanted tickets for other venues, those were requested on lines beneath the first request. Also in the envelope was a money order in the amount of the total cost for the requested tickets and additional money to pay for the tickets to be returned by registered mail. Everything was double checked, before being put in the mail slot as soon after midnight as possible.

If everything worked as planned, if fortune gazed upon me, after an interminable, seemingly endless wait, the self-addressed envelope would arrive in my mailbox, containing tickets to a Grateful Dead show. Grateful Dead Ticket Service filled hundreds of thousands of requests for tickets over the years T The Grateful Dead toured. The most I ever paid for a ticket to see The Grateful Dead was $35.00 in 1995. That price bought a stadium floor seat, beside the sound booth, 19 rows behind the taper section. We had folding chairs to sit on. The band played what was a great show by 1995 standards and I’m happy we went through the ritual and were there at what was the last Grateful Dead show Gloria and I attended.

A friend of ours taped the show and within two weeks I had an astoundingly clear pair of audience tapes, decorated and personalized by the taper. Those tapes cost me $4.00 and another $4.00 in postage paid for getting my blank tapes to him and his filled tapes back to me.

We just paid for the most expensive concert tickets we’ve ever purchased. We’re going to see Leonard Cohen in Asheville NC in November. Each of us will be listening to a week's worth of groceries. The really unsettling thing about this is we will be occupying cheap seats, orchestra seats off to the right. The center seats were never made available for the average fan to buy.

Ticket Master has distribution privileges rather than the performer or the venue. Ticket Master has reserved its own block of seats to scalp to those fans that are eager to give them more money for a few trinkets. These are the elite fan packages for the Leonard Cohen world tour 2009. Please note that I have no idea what P1 & P2 location refers to. We’ll be seeing him in a small, ca 2400 seat venue.

The Emerald ticket package is $299 per person

Emerald VIP Package Includes:

- One Excellent P2 Location!

** Please note in New York the Emerald Package is based on a P1 Location

- One Exclusive Leonard Cohen Unified Heart Tour Journal

- One Limited Edition Leonard Cohen Unified Heart Embroidered Tote Bag

- One Premium Leonard Cohen Unified Heart Embroidered Fleece Blanket

- One Custom Leonard Cohen Unified Heart Key Chain & Gift Box

- One Souvenir Leonard Cohen Tour Program

The Diamond ticket package is: $589 per person

Diamond VIP Package Includes:

- One Amazing Ticket in the First Ten Rows!

- One Exclusive Leonard Cohen Unified Heart Tour Journal

- One Limited Edition Leonard Cohen Unified Heart Embroidered Tote Bag

- One Premium Leonard Cohen Unified Heart Embroidered Fleece Blanket

- One Custom Leonard Cohen Unified Heart Key Chain & Gift Box

- One Souvenir Leonard Cohen Tour Program

According to TicketMaster, All Diamond & Emerald packages are to be sold in pairs. Package Ticket Limits: 6 Ticket Limit for presale & public on-sale

In searching for tickets I’ve already seen tickets for some of Cohen’s concerts being offered on EBay and other web sites for up to $1000. I hope no one is that desperate? I really dislike scalping. The Grateful Dead used to smack down parking lot scalpers- anyone asking more than face price for tickets. The only time I sold unused tickets to a Grateful Dead Show, I sold them at face price. It was an unwritten agreement between the band and fans to keep scalping from taking place.

“The Dead,” the remnants of The Grateful Dead toured last year and offered their own set of elite packages which included hotel rooms, parking, bus transportation to the venue, special seating, backstage access and food backstage ( no band access). Some of these packages went for nearly $1000. Far too rich for my blood. And the fact that they, the band, were complicit in this high end scalping deleted any desire I had to see the band at any price.

Music has begun pricing itself out of affordability. Aging rock bands go on tour once a year or once a decade and ask fans to pay outrageous ticket prices before scalping begins. And fans pay it. It amuses me no end that fans will pay $1000 or more per seat to see the band play exactly the same notes with the same vocals that are on the CD or DVD they will buy after the concert for $40 or more. At least, The Grateful Dead provided a different show every night. Today’s fans could stay home and watch the DVD and avoid having beer spilled on them. Or, for the right reimbursement, I’ll be happy to go a fan’s house, hand him a beer, block his view of the television and start his DVD playing, then spill beer on him before leaving.

So we children of the 50s and 60s have reached the point where we not only have to choose between food and medication but also between food and music.

It’s not just music.

We flew to Vancouver in June to attend my older son’s wedding to a very nice young woman named Amy Lee. I’d met Amy only once, Gloria had never met her. Nor had we met her parents or sister, whom we found to be very nice people. It was a beach wedding that went off well, particularly when one considers that Amy had probably suffered hairline fractures of some ribs prior to the wedding.

Picture by Gloria Lenon, 10 June 2009  Kitselano Beach, Vancouver BC




We had a great time in Vancouver, met my cousin Danny Gelmon, and would have enjoyed more time in


a wonderful city.

 Picture by Gloria Lenon, 11 June 2009

But the flight to Vancouver, the leg from Denver to Vancouver was miserable. Packed plane and the cabin crew kept the cabin temperature near 80F because someone in first class was cold. There was insufficient room for me to put my feet into the foot well. Yes, I have big feet, wear an 11 ½ - 13, depending on the shoe or boor. On that flight, if I had needed to exit quickly, I would have been trapped by the seat hardware. Dangerous? Unsafe for passengers? I certainly think so.


The airlines are charging for every bit of service they can name. $20 per checked bag. And because I wanted to have foot room on the flight back to Knoxville, we each wound up paying an additional $50.00 above our ticket price. Something really wrong about charging a passenger to fly, then charging them more for a relatively safer seat. Charge for food? OK, I can live with that and carry my own food aboard. But charging for safety? I’ve got some thoughts about people who think up ways to screw the public like that. You probably do., too. Please join me in reciting them.


Dinner, tonight, is left overs.

It’s windy and partly cloudy today. I think the wind on highway 107 was about 25 knots. Down in our valley, we’ve recorded only a 9.4 gust. The house is sheltered by the valley walls and the trees around us.

We can hear the gusts spilling over the ridge crest and funneling down the valley. Really impressive to hear and to watch the trees bend as the gust roll by. We can’t see the pockets of air that we are hearing but we understand the science behind them. Nice to sit and watch it go by.

Unlike health care, gasoline, music, travel, or food, no one has yet found a way to raise the price of a sunset on your own front porch.

19 September 2009


Something about their voices

I’m drawn to voices that are never going to win vocalist of the year honors

Hoyt Axton sang with a rumbling voice that spoke of experience on the road. Too many nights spent playing in smoke-filled bars, too much cheap alcohol, and maybe a few close escapes out the back door.

“Della and the Dealer” is another of the songs that I immediately knew I had to learn the first time I heard it.” It grabbed me so intensely that I learned the words after hearing it played only twice. The chord progressions took a bit more work, but that is one of the problems with not really knowing how to read sheet music as I should.

“Snow-Blind Friend,” another Hoyt Axton contribution, has it’s a permanent grip on me. The lyric has its icy talons deeply dug into the back of my brain, causes graveyard shivers whenever I hear it or play it. It is, for me, permanently tied to my brother, who died in 1976. Not “snow-blind” but subject to his own despair, his own loss of will to live. Not dead of drugs, but drug related just as surely as if someone had held him down and injected a lethal dose of something. One of thousands of brothers and sisters, friends, and lovers who succumbed to the cultural, technical, and societal changes that hit this country as the VietNam War shuddered to a bloody halt. Loss of jobs, loss of friends, loss of interest, loss of support; they all had their part to play in the increasing tide of drug-related deaths.

The night after my sister and I emptied his apartment of personal belongings, I sat on the floor through all of the mid watch and half the morning watch, playing the song over and over, never above a whisper, strings barely audible even to me. We’d tried to help him, tried to intervene in the cycle of despair that took him down as surely as a bullet. But he never reached the point where he could accept help from us. It happens like that. There’s nothing one can do about it but sing the song.



Bob Dylan has another such voice. Coming along side his mastery of lyrics, he brought the realization that, in an industry geared to polished voices, there was hope for the person who really had no hope of ever being applauded for the excellence of his voice. The glimmer of hope that singers like Dylan conveyed to young males of my generation was that if we, too, might get lucky enough to get a group of people to listen to us, to convince some young woman that a spark of genius and talent burned within us, sufficient to cause her to grant that favor all young male singers are begging for.

Leonard Cohen, Leon Redbone, Dave Van Ronk, Merle Haggard convey that same hope to every young man that can pick a guitar and mutter through a song in that whiskey and tobacco-roughened voice that we hope conveys authenticity but is actually either a genetic gift or the precursor of self-inflicted damage.

I’ve always wished for a singing voice in that range and with that timber and resonance. But, in truth, I’ve never been able to define what sort of singing voice I have. I know that it changed when I quit smoking. I know that it changed again when I began taking pain meds after my back and neck surgeries. But I’ve also got enough hearing loss to contend with that I’m no longer a good judge of my own voice. It doesn’t matter, really. All male singing voices are just highly stylized mating calls. No matter what the lyric, what the melody, no matter how beautiful or how discordant, they all come down to the same thing:

“Please! Please! Please! Please! Please!

Think I’m imagining this?  Leonard Cohen, highly acclaimed poet and singer-songwriter seems to agree with me.

Here is the bridge lyric from his song, “I’m Your Man.”

“Ah but a man never got a woman back

Not by begging on his knees

Or I'd crawl to you baby

And I'd fall at your feet

And I'd howl at your beauty

Like a dog in heat

And I'd claw at your heart

And I'd tear at your sheet

I'd say please, please

I'm your man”

Then there are those voices that reach out and surround you, wrap you in fascination. Women’s voices that hit you in the solar plexus, prop you up, jerk your head around in their direction, and demand every scrap of your attention. Siren’s voices, bound to lure and allure us. Voices that promise mercy and an answer to that “Please!” that we do well to utter in their earshot.

Every generation has its own prime examples. Voices that attract me include Annette Harshaw from the 1920’s; Lauren Bacall, throaty siren voice of the Bogart era,; Marilyn Monroe, breathy and enticing, singing to JFK. Nina Simone, Eartha Kitt, Bessie Smith, Billy Holiday. From our generation, Janice Joplin, tragedy in blues, Valkyrie screams barely confined; Judy Collins, following the rodeo rider; Little Eva, just exotic enough to stand out; Judy Henske, Mary Travers, sultry, perfect harmony, immense power, flowing around one like deep water.

Then for me, one voice, above all. When I first heard Gloria’s voice she was recovering from laryngitis. Bacall, Travers, a bit of Boston, a tiny tinge of Yiddish, sultry, highly erotic, spinning a web of sound I had never experienced, had no desire to escape. I was immediately hooked, not struggling, hoping that what I thought I heard was what I really heard. Damaged hearing, you know.

I can’t even begin to imagine what caused her to take interest in me. But it apparently translated as “Please, Please, Please!” Some words can’t be improved upon.

Neither can some voices!

.

The Chef recommends"

Today's house special is:
Lamb kebabs marinated in olive oil, lemon juice, oregano, black pepper, garlic, mint, and cumin; grilled over mesquite charcoal to med-rare, accompanied by grilled button mushrooms and sweet peppers.
Served on a bed of steamed, herb-seasoned couscous with a dill, cucumber, mint, Greek yogurt sauce.

Alternative entrees:
peanut butter & jelly on multi-grain toast

Music recommendation of the day:
Leonard Cohen "Live in London"
http://www.leonardcohen.com/

I first heard Leonard Cohen's music in the summer of 1968. A single jukebox in a long-forgotten EM club somewhere near the MTC at Ft. Sam Houston had a copy of "Suzanne." I spent that Saturday afternoon nursing a glass of ice tea, feeding coins into the slot and waiting for the song to migrate to the top of the play que so I could scribble down the lyrics and take them back to the barracks to work up.

In the months that followed, I lost contact with much of the music that I had hoped to explore, even much that I enjoyed at the time. I recently became re-acquinted with Leonard Cohen via a local PBS television program. The "Live in London" album is well worth the price and the time to listen to it. It is also available on DVD for those who like their music tied to images.

Cohen is booked to play in Asheville NC this fall but by the time we discovered that there were no reasonably priced tickets left to purchase. The ticket services scooped up all they could to re-market as part of luxury packages or just to boost the price for their benefit. $200.00/person concert tickets are far beyond what we can afford. If you fall into that category, the album is a great deal.

Best small venue singer-songwriter out there:
David Gans - http://www.trufun.com/
Writes and performs excellent topical songs, is a one man jam band, highly accomplished musician. See him if and when you can! His tour schedule is posted at his website. His albums stand on their own. There is no throw-away or filler material on them. It is possible to get lost in his websites and links that lead you from the depths of The Well to the nearest farmer's market in song and image.


We return to the mundane.
There is firewood to be cut but I am unwilling to accept the pain that splitting, cutting, and stacking it guarantees. Later this week I'll force myself to start that chore. I'll also work on the tree along the creek bank, 45 feet of pine that appeared during the high water in January, riding the flood from somewhere up valley. It's not great firewood, sooty to burn, bad for the chimney, but it it close to the house and I can buck it into manageable lengths. We bought a 16 inch chainsaw when we moved here. An 18 inch would have been better, one of those things we learn by virtue of mistake. I can borrow one from our down stream neighbor but I hate to borrow tools from anyone.


Amherst Electric Mosquito:
A dry fly pattern updated to a salmon fly tied on a 2/0 salmon iron.
The collar is Lady Amherst pheasant, the black and white ribbing on the fly body is Uni-Flexx black and phosphorescent white instead of moose mane. The body of the fly glows pale green after exposure to light due to the phosphorescent material used by Uni. The fly is an original pattern submitted as a contest entry. For that reason, the barb on the hook was not removed.