+ My Choice For President+

Here is my Candidate for President-- as a young man.

=Yankee Stadium=

In 1927, Babe Ruth hit his fabled record-setting 60th home run. The record stood for
34 years until it was broken by Roger Maris. Here's to Babe...
and to the House that Ruth Built.

September 30th 1927.

+$+$+$+

The nay vote heard around the world wiped out $1.2 trillion in stock-market wealth Monday, the first one-day trillion-dollar loss in Wall Street history--

And that ends up being MORE than the $700 Billion that was needed....

The Evil Number

There is a number more ominous than 666

and that number is

777

=The Bailout Vote in the US House FAILS!=

Now to the Senate....Very little hope that the Economic Rescue will be saved.

As of 2 Pm, the Dow has fallen over 700 points.

=Heaven Help America=

Wachovia To Be Bought by Wells-Fargo

8:20 AM September 29, 2008
Announced on the news.

=Wachovia is Nervous=

Charlotte may have to deal with its biggest hit yet dealing with the financial crisis of the country.
Citigroup, Wells-Fargo and Banco Santander of Spain are in discussions to the option for merger that Wachovia is beginning to feel may be necessary for the bank, especially if the "bailout" gets postponed well into next week.
This seems a large player in the house of cards.

What can be next now that Charlotte has had its "bulletproof' vest show a serious flaw?

Confidence is GONE

Washington Mutual is the biggest bank failure in US history. 

The dollar is very close to dead. 

The world will soon have a new leader of commerce and trade and it will not be America.

Washington and the political guys shout at each other  and like always, not one thing gets done.

This is the now---there is very little to have confidence in any more.

"....the Party's OVER..........................."

=Another Cup of Morning=

Sunday July 13th Post

This entry is a repeat= I had written and posted this back in July, it is there. I feel sad but confident that I was RIGHT...please read it again...understand
what hauntings we will all have to deal with in the future.

2008=1929

Everyone everywhere and almost totally without exception tells me that they are petrified of what seems to be happening in America. Prices are rising like they never have in my lifetime, or any one's, and this is really just a slight foretaste of the horror to come this winter. I see the financial disaster of the time when I was moving: March & April as the first equivalent of October 1929... and following that reference, as it is now July 2008, that would be the equivalent of early 1930. Again, just a foretaste...this cold winter to come will be a time when many will die in their homes and apartments-- frozen, probably not discovered for days and possibly weeks They will die with their pets, with their meager food, with everything stone-cold.. This is the state of our nation and its mood. Dysfunctional and xenophobic, a place where neighbors hardly speak and everyone has a chip on their shoulder. I will survive as Charlotte and the weather here has tussled with me before and I know what to do. The poor, the older folks up north, those without and the homeless or home-stressed--Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago-- just imagine how tragic. It will be like a small ice-age of bleak gloom and death.

-The "MOST" Unusual Musical Instrument-

Ah, I DO so wonder how my harpsichord compatriots would see this performance !

This is a very difficult music to describe to those that have never heard very contemporary forms and musical ideas...note that from 1 minute 30 seconds, the piece picks up speed, then slows, then a coda that returns to the motives of the apex.
Great composition is invention along with careful nods to what is good form.
I feel there is a dark sense of humor here as well as a horrific sense of being reminded of Bosch paintings...a bit like the movies of the Brothers Quay or Jan Svankmajer; all are creative geniuses.

THIS is not to be missed !

Hidden Benefits

Shipments of gasoline for well over a week, since Hurricane Ike hit the Texas coast and caused damage to a number of oil drill platforms, to be piped to Charlotte and the whole area has slowed to around 40% of normal levels. One half of stations have none to sell and prices are higher here than the average in the country. The "officials" indicate that this may last another 10 days.

Benefits Not Expected:
Less traffic, fewer accidents, less car break ins, lower speed on the highways so fewer fatalities there and generally less hectic and pressured drivers everywhere, including the rise in public transport use and light-rail riders--making our expensive system in actuality become a great success.

Good going people, we have also started polluting our air less !

Now, as long as society and our total economy do not disintegrate, we just might become saviors of everything, or at least SOMETHING...

Magic Wand for the Future

=PEACE PEACE PEACE PEACE PEACE PEACE PEACE PEACE PEACE PEACE PEACE PEACE PEACE PEACE PEACE PEACE PEACE PEACE PEACE PEACE=

Sound-trax For Our Lives

Dollar=God

Three Blocks From Home

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama will make a stop in the Queen City, tomorrow, Sunday, September 21, 2008.

Obama plans to hold a rally in uptown Charlotte at East 4th and South Davidson streets.

Gates open at 11 AM and the event begins at 1 PM.

$$$===JOKE

The Dollar Just Might Be a BIG Joke...

Today is more important to the change in this country than many will give it credit.

hahahah credit...

hahahah!!

What a REAL laugh !!!

A Not-So-Brave New World

Last week, You had Ten Gallons of water. 

This week, because of chaotic calamity, You have lost 9 & 1/2 gallons of the water.

The officials of the game run to You, at this intersection,

 with a nasty glass, part spilled,  of an attempt at some relief water.

This water is to hold Your thirst  for the next  Three Years.

Welcome to the End of the First Decade of the 21st Century.

=The Decade of Chaos=

Feline Ghost

Two nights ago I was sure five times in a row that Phyllis, my cat, came to curl up in the curve of the back of my knees while I was under the covers in bed. Each of the five times, I would call out for my cat and look, and she would never be there.
By the third time, I made very certain that I did not drift off back into sleep.
The ghost cat tried and settled in another two times.

This animal shakes the bed as much as Phyllis my cat.
This ghost must be a bit of a large cat!

AIG Bailout Announced

10 Minutes ago, the Government announced an $85 billion buyout of AIG.

How many more of these failures, only time will tell....

the Government can not and probably will not save everyone.

AIG Will Possibly Go Bankrupt

If nothing is done by tomorrow morning by the  Federal  Recovery System,  AIG (American International Group, Inc.) will most probably be bankrupt.

This reaches now into the automobiles as well as the already decimated banking such as loans, and related commerce.

2008-soon to be 2009-- NEW President--NEW HD-TV--NEW Economy

Pink Floyd Death

Richard Wright, a founding member of the rock group Pink Floyd, died Monday

in London.

He was 65.

He will now get to see that "Great Gig in the Sky."

Michelle Obama

She will appear on  Paula Deen's show "Paula's Party" this coming Saturday the 20th of September to attempt to sway-back the lost women's vote to vote for her husband in light of the Sarah Palin excitement coming from the Republican's Arena.

There will be a few very awkward hugs on the show I am certain.

Here is Paula with quite a bit of make-up on, one MUST admit.

Wall Street

New Update:
Dow is DOWN by 504.48 points,
the lowest drop since July 2002.

September 15th, 2008

Terrible few days on the American financial scene: Lehman Brothers Holdings and Merrill Lynch both go bankrupt and only Merrill has been "rescued" by a buyout from Bank of America, based in this city, for $50 billion. So, in a way, the Charlotte posse came to the rescue--but above all of this, is it just a big band-aid on a gushing gash of a wound in a most important part of the financial body? This is the biggest shake-up of American money institutions since the 1930s. More is to come, at noon today Wall Street Dow numbers are down over 300 points and the ripple effect is felt across the world's markets.
Winter will be the real test with energy and food prices for Americans. The bleak housing and mortgage situation is far from over and even landlords are trying to keep their tenants--sales down of properties and money is tighter for many, the tightest it has been in many's lives.
We all must bundle up, eat a cold can of beans and fewer showers to conserve our funds. Living "above our means" is now so minimal a feat and this simple has just become much more difficult.
This is not only green for the environment,
it is "green" for our pockets.

On A Door in Philadelphia

Librarians For Democracy

Manipulative questions by Sarah Palin regarding how one removes "questionable" books from a town library shelves reflects a Republican sense of entitlement to the soul of America.
They lie to themselves, they lie to us--we Americans--telling us they ARE our Keeper and Democracy is weaker because of this effort.

How dare they stand with this attitude and perception.
This will be the true unraveling leading to their political demise.

What will the Democrats do to mess up thier respective image?

Elitism, Harpsichords & Ivory Towers

I live alone and I am a composer.
I live alone, with a cat and I play a harpsichord.

I have a new very challenging online friend, her name is Kate, and her intellectual focus is so very different from my own. The challenge is not unlike getting a new music student, and as my employer knows I have a specialty interest in instructing ADD and ADHD children, I will every-so-often have a student whose perceptions are not the same as the larger population.
This brings to mind the populism of music and why I play the harpsichord.
Admittedly, I am very much an eccentric, and from my study, as well as positions as a teacher, harpsichords have become a symbolic unit of what I do and even deeper-- the Why I do what I do.
Eccentric or learning disabled, many might feel that I am just a weirdo who refuses to give up his "little hobby" concerning harpsichords. I have surmised many things about these styles of comments about my character and how I look at the world.
Kate and I are both eccentrics of a sort, but we do not really float in the same ocean. Our "boats" may be similar but they have not passed in the night until now. My mental question is: how could such differing unusual lives bring two such different persons together to discuss musical theory and the meaning of existence?
Much must be given over to chance, but there is a true sense of social destiny that refuses to go away. Alice's Wonderland has a few fields of Ivory Towers placed among the forests and croquet games of experience.
Kate is a person who "colors outside the lines" and she creates her own masterpiece--this reminds me of quite a few of the music students I have had who attack a task in an oblique and unusual way. Often enough,their efforts come to perfectly good success, although sometimes after much more time than the expedient.
Why harpsichord... one must admit, it is an unusual factor in this personal equation.
Equal it is not in the least. The reality is effective but never an equation at all. It is like the planets and their moons: always a surprise and so much new and never experienced soon to melt into the facts of existence and then philosophies that spin from these facts. Music is physics, it IS the Music of the Spheres.
When one plays an unmeasured prelude by a composer of the Baroque, there is a freedom that is immediately evident, yet most would become uneasy how to deal with this freedom. The activity of ornamentation and expression is and should always be one of creation and newness; never should it render down to mimicking a perceived "standard" and thus become a static and close-to-dead commodity. This can be applied to the measured works of composers as well, although the course one runs is less flexible with some composers. Discussions on this take a lifetime to Socratically cogitate each of the appropriate and inappropriate permutations of what can be considered "good style."
Kate does this naturally and it is a gift.
For me, this freedom is an exciting inheritance from the long-gone composers and is my window that I slip back to their times. What I play on my harpsichord approaches more the freedom of the Baroque even if only rare in successful performance. It is not stilted, it is not ever set-in-stone.

I am a floating ship passing by so distantly the great and the geniuses of the past.

Kate just showed up to the buffet....seems we will have a bite to eat together and maybe a spin or two on the dance floor.

=1957= Dancing With Appliances

>15 Again<

If it is possible I am fifteen again.

I feel like my life is sitting in front of me and the Yellow-Brick-Road of excitement is available and many Munchkins are dancing and singing...
I shall make a thigh-meat chicken soup today, add a few saltines and some very freshly ground pepper. Some good egg noodles in the broth.

Fall is knocking at the door and coolness is edging its uncomfortable self into our rooms.
15 yet again that would make it 1973....

Heaven forbid...

John McCain Sings Barbra Streisand

McCain Says...

When asked about why the Republican campaign style has morphed into a more traditional & aggressive yet still disciplined with a strong focus on honor here were his answers in an interview with Mike Scherer & James Carney of TIME magazine:

JMcC "I think we're running a fine campaign, and this is where we are."

Do you miss the old way of doing it?
"I don't know what you're talking about."

Really? Come on, Senator.
"I'll provide as much access as possible ... "

Double-speak, Not-talk, vague references.....WHAT is this and what does the man REALLY mean?

The Belicose? =POWs=Adversity=Presidency

Why I Play the Harpsichord=Lurch & Landowska

This is a time machine for me, this blog. When I play the harpsichord it is also a way of moving in time.
Many might exclaim: "Ah, yes, he just goes back into a comfortably perceived and altered sense of the past..."
Here I must point out the amount of entries I have about the current events of now, Hurricane Gustav, the rains of Charlotte, the conventions of out political parties and so on; all of these subjects are now, all are 2008.
With the speed of life going at must be agreed an ever-increasing rate, things like this blog and my harpsichords, also old-time piano music, CDs of Medieval and Renaissance music to me are a way of letting the mental clock-spring go unwound for a short period and allow it to rest just a little.
Harpsichords are not every one's taste, but neither is Ragtime or Rap or even Rachmaninoff. Not EVERYONE loves Ricky Martin. Some can not stand certain music and to those hearing it is like toenails scratched on the rough scoring powder sprinkled inside a bathtub.
There are many varieties of harpsichords and thus quite a number of differing instrument sound qualities. They do not all sound the same, as is more often the desire of what piano owners want: a sameness and a sound that can be expected and then what has become ubiquitous in the world.
This is a half-hearted plea to those that have dismissed the instrument; go find someone that actually plays one, or hopefully a few, and hear what live music from a harpsichord sounds like. Go see a concert of say a double or triple harpsichord concerto of Johann Sebastian Bach. Here you will here more than one instrument and will certainly see as well as hear the nuances of what I used to think of as "the first 'electronic' sounding" instrument.Try and understand how that brightness of sound quality alters from harpsichord to harpsichord; virginal to Italian or French compared to an English instrument. Hear other composers that have written for it: Mozart(yes, he did!) Soler, Scarlatti, Handel, C.P.E. Bach and even the earliest of Beethoven. Try out the newer (yes, composers have written for it since right around the beginning of the last century) and at least have a taste of what has been and is being done using it.
After there is the fortepiano to consider, what we know of as the earlier piano, although wooden, for the most part and looking, to many,
as indistinguishable from a harpsichord.
It is not one, it is a different beast.

Whomever you start with, Landowska or Lurch, do not just stop there, neither are the end of what the thing is. Listen to other varieties as well as different performers and composers and start to perceive the thing for what it is. Ask others also for direction at times, there are enough with insight on the subject to patiently hold your hand on the paths of better comprehension for the instrument.

Harpsichords had their biggest "boom-times" from their infancy about 1400 until their final wane around 1800. The 20th Century had enough love and champions for it to be retrieved from almost hitting the cultural dustbin or resignation as a curiosity on a museum shelf. 400 years compared to the 300 that the piano has existed means it can hold its own with provenance. It is fair to add another 100 to the harpsichord's lifespan now that Wanda Landowska and others have resuscitated to revival the old instrument.
This journey itself was a rediscovery for those that live for it, of the old ways of past centuries as well as many revival instruments that just as often are not successful musical objects as those that are. Each in their own individual way can charm, bore or even repulse. This allows the listener to be just as individual and pick and choose what he or she enjoys. Never is this a totally set "world of the harpsichord."

A Ford Model T if running would still get you to the store, just like Bach is most authentic played on a harpsichord.

The time-machine "feeling" is just an added excitement with the ride.

Compromise and Life

Ah, the Democrats and yes, the Republicans.
Will the disparate factors of our American life come together ever?
There is compromise in this country only after bitter bickering and fighting and much time in the argument itself.
One thing seems to have united our differences for a day or so: Hurricane Gustav.
The Republicans postponed to beginning of the convention in Saint Paul, Minnesota, our current President is in the Gulf states and the Democratic Convention is pooling money to send a block of it to the Red Cross or another charitable group and get it that way for help, food, medical and what will be needed.

Gustav has passed and was not the terrible tragedy of Katrina.
Behind are Hurricane Hannah,and tropical storms Ike and Josephine already.
They are on their way across the Atlantic Ocean coming from the heat of the Sahara.