Some Random Thoughts

I grew up in a small town, actually on a small cattle ranch near that small town. It was about 1,000 people. The county I lived in was about 40 miles square and had a total population of less than 10,000. I grew up in a very rural environment. As I was growing up, passing the long, slow boring days I used to think city kids had all the fun,m they had all the neat things to do, amusement parks, show houses, swimming pools, skating rinks and the list goes on and on. But now, as I sit with 1,000,000 other people in a county very similar in size to the one I knew as a kid, I realize that city life is not what I thought, no amusement park can ever compare to the woods behind our house, and the pond we swam in and skated on was something a swimming pool or skating rink can never even come close to duplicating.

I used to hate the gossiping old women, and their phone network that went into action whenever the fire alarm rang (other than for the 10 o'clock curfew every week-night) or when the ambulance went out, but now that nosy gossiping concern seems a lot more warm and caring to me; and the total unconcern for others and the "don't bother me" attitude I see everyday here in the city bothers me a lot more than some gossiping old ladies.

I remember thinking the local people were pretty dumb to hand around this podunk town when they could be in the big time of the city. I remember feeling sorry for the people I thought were stuck there for the rest of their lives. I remember thinking that small town people were stupid and unsophisticated and behind the times. I thought we weren't cool and we didn't know what was going on; I realize now after I've been around people who are "cool", "sophisticated, and "smart"; that part of what I thougt about those dumb, backwoods, small town hicks was true, and I'm glad its true. I've come to realize that while they may not be smart in book-learning or city-ways, that many of those dumb country bumpkins are a lot smarter than I ever gave them credit for and they're twice the people that any of the shallow, selfish, sophisticated city people that I've met since I left that small cattle ranch, near that tiny little town.

(Seattle, 1985)

Here I sit in a house thats much too large. I've succeeded I would say, and most would think; I've left my home and my family. I have an education and a good job. I have new friends and old, and I have this large house. I should be happy. I have money in the bank, I'm getting a new car. I've left the countryside that I knew as a home for many many years for the prosperity of city life. I've risen above the poverty I knew as a child and that many of my childhood friends are still mired in, and I have a house thats much too large.

Its a house like the rich folks in town had when I was young. Its a house like my parents dreamed of but never did have, right now they live in a used trailer-house, on some land near the ranch that we used to own until the bank and the loan payments made it impossible for my dad not to sell out to some rich Coloradan.

I suppose they talk about me back home now and then, my childhood friends, "yah, I alwyas knew he'd do well, he was always a smart one", "got him a good job out in Seattle now, doing something with computers"; they might be right, but I wonder.

I tell my brothers to go to college, to get an education, that its the only way to get out and get ahead, but sometime I really wonder what getting ahead really is. There's more to life than leaving home, getting an education, getting a good paying job, and a house thats much too large.

As I sit in this large house I think about my education and my high paying job and I wish I was back home again. The hustle and bustle of the city life may be the place for high paying jobs, new cars, and money in the bank; but does it compare to home?

September 5th, 1983

I Believe
"I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mr. Ed. I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women.
I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative.
I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds.
I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself.
I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of casual chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck.
I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies.
I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system.
I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it. "

Samantha Black Crow from "American Gods" by Neil Gaimin

Beatles Tribute Charity Idea
This is just an idea that occurred to me, and these are my thoughts of who I'd like to hear remake some of the Beatles hits. There are certainly others that would be good.


Beatles One Take Two
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Bare Naked Ladies = Love Me Do
Gwen Stefani = From Me To You
Jessica Simpson = She Loves You
Britney Spears = I Want to Hold Your Hand
Dave Mathews Band = Can't Buy Me Love
Avril Lavigne = A Hard Day's Night
Jack Johnson = I Feel Fine
GreenDay = Eight Days a Week
Franz Ferdinand = Ticket To Ride
U2 = Help
Nora Jones = Yesterday
David Gray = Day Tripper
ColdPlay = We Can Work It Out
Wilco = Paperback Writer
B 52's = Yellow Submarine
Crash Test Dummies = Eleanor Rigby
Moby = Penny Lane
The Eagles = All You Need Is Love
Jewel = Hello, Goodbye
Alanis Morisette = Lady Madonna
Heart = Hey Jude
Beck = Get Back
REM = The Ballad of John and Yoko
Madonna = Something
Pearl Jam = Come Together
Sheryl Crow = Let It Be
Sarah McLachlan = The Long and Winding Road

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There are already quite a few Beatles covers available on iTunes and on the web, it would be interesting to compile a list of the available covers

Letterboxing
NaNoWriMo National Novel Writing Month November
KEXP Radio Online

The light from a street light on the pavement as I walk across the parking lot takes me back 30 years to a cold winter night walking the streets of a tiny Montana town on my way to my grandmother's house after grade school basketball practice. Its a different time and a different place long removed from the time I remember, but something about the scene reminds me of another walk on another night, a cold winter night. I almost expect my breath to come in great puffs of steam but it doesn't. But something is the same and it reminds me of that other time. The light shining on the pavement is the same as it shone on that icy frozen street 30 years and thousands of miles ago. The shadows cast by the gravel are the same. Piles of wet leaves mimic dirty snow. The dark corners and shadows of the buildings and cars are the same. Its not the same, its rainy not snowy, wet not frosty, warm not cold, noisy not quiet, harsh not comfortable, cruel not friendly, but the light's the same, the feelings the same, for an instant the moments the same. This rainy Seattle parking lot wipes away the years, and I'm back to the quiet of a small town street on a cold winter night. Quiet streets I knew so well.

The trees and their crooked shadows. The fences and their structured shadows. The houses.

Mrs. Bonel, her house was across from the school, she was the Avon lady, she came to our house sometimes, she and her husband were friends of my grandmother but I never went in their house. Mr Cale's house was next, he was a bus driver, but he never drove my bus. Sometimes he fixed the furnace at school. Then the doctor's house, his daughter was in my grade. Is she eating dinner as I walk by, or maybe doing her homework? The Lindstrom's, the Barnett's, the Sindel's. The Brumbaugh's, I don't know them but their son is in my aunt's grade in high school, he was nice to me. The Yancy's, I don't know them but their daughter is a friend of my aunt's, and I like her, she's pretty.

One way takes me by the Drant's house. They're old people, friends of my other grandmother, they go to church with her. Their son is a friend of my father's they fought in the war together, but he lives in another town a long ways away. Mr. Drant is a friendly, smiling little man, he wears suspenders and he might be a carpenter. Mrs. Drant is a friendly, smiling woman, she's nice but she's very large and she scares me. Then past the Clonkey's house, they're good friends of my parents, their son's are younger than me but older than my brother. The snow piled up along the street and the concrete wall in front of their house makes the sidewalk seem almost like a tunnel, I imagine my self in an Antarctic research station. I've been in their house many many times, but it would be weird and scary to knock on their door now without my parents. Next door is Mr Evanston's, he runs the clothing store, and measures my feet for new school shoes.

Then I turn the corner and pass a couple dark scary houses, but the Baptist Church hulks nearby somehow protecting me from the scary houses and somehow reasuring me, even though its dark and cold. Across from the Church is Mr. Glenn's house, he's rich, he has a wife but I don't know who she is, he own's the grocery store that we never go to. On past Mr. Kelly's house, he did something with the county farm office, he was an official, sometimes he looked at our grain fields, but I don't know why. A car might drive by, but probably not, maybe when I get to main street its close now.

Another route I might take takes me past Mrs. Steinman's, she teaches typing in the high school and her son is in basketball with me, but he's good and I'm not. Sometimes he walks with me from practice. I go straight on from Mrs. Steinman's towards main street, I cut across an empty lot to main street, and walk past the Catholic Church and the newspaper office; or I turn the corner down a dark street, past the Raddinson's house, their daughters are in my aunts' grade, they know my parents; he fixes the electricity when lightning blows out our lights. Then past a big dark house, I don't know who lives there, it should be scary but for some reason its not, maybe the lights of main street protect me, they're not too far away by now.

Then I angle through the park on the well worn path, its well packed snow now, but other times of the year it may be mud, or dirt, or dust. I burst from the darkness of the park into the light of main street, and round the corner and walk past the grocery store where we buy our groceries. The lights are bright now, and a car might even drive by. People are in the grocery store. There are voices. I cross the street. My other grandmother lives up the hill, but I almost never stay with her. I continue down the street, past the drug store, the clothing store, the post office, they're all closed by now. Then I turn the corner between the post office and the old bank. The corner that I know so well, I've turned this corner a million times on foot, in a car, or in a truck, but never on my bicycle. Its a comfortable corner, like a comfortable pair of shoes, it feels good, or like a rut that you've ridden your bike through a hundred times and know that you can hit it just right every time. Its reassuring, its a pattern that is worn into my mind, and into my soul. I cut up the dark street that I know so well, there are no cars and no street lights and I angle across the street in the dark. The morgue looms ahead threatening me, I know what might be in there, but I turn off before it can hurt me, and cut down the alley towards the safety of the back door of my grandmothers house. The alley is part of the pattern, the angle of the turn, the slope of the street down towards my grandmothers house, and then the opposite turn to my grandmothers house. I go past an old wood shed that I've never been in. I go on past the shortcut through the bushes to the back door of the show house and finally I'm at the gravel driveway in back of my grandma's house. I smell wood and sawdust, and chainsaw gas, and wood smoke, comforting reasurring smells, I love these smells. I heave a sigh of relief, I relax and hurry up the concrete steps and open the back door and slip into the house.

A horn blares, or a car squeals around a corner, or skreeches to a stop,or maybe someone shouts,and I'm back in a rainy wet Seattle parking lot, walking to my car.

The streets and houses are still there, but most of these people are gone now. Both my grandmothers are gone, strangers live in their houses.