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  <a href="/blogs-blather/blog/6042699/comment-re-sen-patrick-leahy-s-take-on-senatorial-conscience-and-responsibility">Comment re: Sen. Patrick Leahy&#39;s Take on Senatorial Conscience and Responsibility</a>&nbsp;
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  <div class="message"><span style="font-size: large;">Responding to: </span><br><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/23/opinion/senate-impeachment-trial.html" target="_blank">What The Senate Does Now Will Cast A Long Shadow</a></span><br><span style="font-size: large;"><br></span><span style="font-size: large;">Historians and politicians are quite fond of invoking the "point of inflection" within any active paradigm. There are in fact an infinite number of these. With today's 10 to 20 minute news cycle the epochal benchmarks are ever more frequent and nearer between but, as Senator Leahy points out, this trial phase of this impeachment portends to be the real doozy.  <br><br>The GOP appears to have been rather unabashedly building its one-party conscience over the last 40 years, holding party unity and fealty to the cause as its paramount credo and this moment may be the "high-noon" of this insidiously planned and sometimes clumsily implemented campaign.<br><br>No one doubts the intent of this majority Senate. It will hold its collective breath in the face of an all-pervading truth storm until every lawyerly slight of hand, word, reason and logic are manifest within an all too pro forma protocol toward their retention of legislative power.<br><br>All linguistic orchestration and improvisation, every policy construction and each manipulative gambit has more than affirmed their resolve. <br><br>There will be no change of heart or moment of moral relenting. If so it would have occurred by now. The litany of assailable optical demonstrations of this President's moral turpitude had long ago reached the critical point.  They'll stand in there, blue lipped, bug-eyed and swooning until the last gavel strikes.<br><br>A small consolation is Trump's narcissistic pathology making this more discomfiting for them. Too small.</span></div>
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    <p class="post-info"><span data-time="2019-12-23T13:03:00-05:00" title="December 23, 2019 13:03">12/23/2019</span></p>

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        <span data-share-dialog-target="title">Comment re: Sen. Patrick Leahy&#39;s Take on Senatorial Conscience and Responsibility</span>
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  <a href="/blogs-blather/blog/5055258/comment-on-the-slut-shaming-of-nikki-haley-op-piece-nyt-by-bari-weissjan-29-2018">Comment on &quot;The Slut-Shaming of Nikki Haley&quot; Op Piece NYT  By BARI WEISSJAN. 29, 2018  </a>&nbsp;
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  <div class="message">The legislative Left has--had, rather--for too long insisted on bringing a high and holy frisbee to the knife fight that the Right is unabashedly still waging, praising and perpetuating. <br><br>Since those obliquely insidious conservative Republicans are allowed to sling about all sorts of variably encoded to outright blatantly inflamed red meat to their eagerly homophilic base, then wink and chuckle later that it was perhaps "merely politics as usual" and that it's a "dirty business", why then must the Dems-- who rather naively enjoyed the civility and restraint of their last executive branch champion while he chronically opted to not be perceived as the "angry black man"--continue to play nice and trust that their postures, platforms and ideological policies must inevitably "will out" alone by dint of the moral high ground they occupy?<br><br>Those same arbiters of low ball politics then rather effectively play the shocked victim as if "they never!" would throw a punch with lower than a dignified trajectory. Please...<br><br>Lest the Pollyannas among us are neglecting to notice, our country is in the midst of a constitutional coup and it's time to take the f*cking gloves off and bravely counter-punch hard. No more Mr. Lose What We've Fought For. Let's cut to the immediate and real story, the battle at hand, and see to inflaming those in our ranks to get "fired up and ready to go" to the polls later this year, vote as many of these guys out as possible, then see to impeachment.<br><br>~JC<br><br><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/29/opinion/nikki-haley-slutshaming-clinton-grammys.html" target="_blank">"The Slut-Shaming of Nikki Haley" By BARI WEISSJAN. 29, 2018</a>   <br><br></div>
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    <p class="post-info"><span data-time="2018-01-31T22:43:00-05:00" title="January 31, 2018 22:43">01/31/2018</span></p>

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<h2 class="heading-secondary heading-blog alt-font">
  <a href="/blogs-blather/blog/4976725/why-i-m-keeping-my-sirius-xm-subscription">Why I&#39;m Keeping My Sirius-XM Subscription</a>&nbsp;
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  <div class="message"><span style="font-size: large;">Some thoughts, notions, knee jerk reactions of my own on this unsubscribe from SXM movement due to Bannon’s return:</span><br><span style="font-size: large;"><br></span><span style="font-size: large;">There are more than a couple Fox stations broadcasting on the platform, there’s the Patriot channel and others whereon much partisan and bigoted gasconade blows chronically if not harshly and steadily. It’s my opinion that many of these “broadcasters" suck at it that job. Their style is hackneyed, their elocutionary skills negligible to nonexistent and their efforts to compel are pedestrian, at best.</span><br><span style="font-size: large;"><br></span><span style="font-size: large;">I am a professional musician, songwriter and artist, have been for nearly as long as I can remember. I’ve performed at Sirius/XM, and my own recordings as well as those upon which I’ve contributed are regularly played on various channels, a few of which are adroitly hosted  with the talents of some my oldest and dearest friends. </span><br><span style="font-size: large;"><br></span><span style="font-size: large;">I’m somewhat regularly surprised when other fellow artists seem unaware of the existence of some relatively rarified informational/ talk / debate/ conversation/ interview show programming on SXM channels such as POTUS, Insight, PRX etc. Many times and to many bright folks have I enthusiastically explained that after being a faithful and enthusiastic denizen within the comparatively meager listenership of those shows that if they were indeed made available in the “mainstream” media that our country would have already taken a few more evolved, erudite and enlightened turns away from the situational chaotic mess we’re in now.</span><br><span style="font-size: large;"><br></span><span style="font-size: large;">I was in fact out for my afternoon run on a tour stop in Iowa City this past Summer, when I heard Llewelyn King (whose show, White House Chronicle is albeit a weekly PBS/NPR mainstay, but whom is a regular guest on Stand-Up w Pete Dominick (Insight), Morning Briefing w Tim Farley, and The Press Pool w Julie Mason etc.) as he was assessing insightfully how a White House should NOT be run state: “This is chaotic without historic precedence, and NO GOOD has EVER come from chaos.” I had to pull up my gait and ponder that pensively.</span><br><span style="font-size: large;"><br></span><span style="font-size: large;">I’ve been a subscriber to XM and Sirius/XM for over 10 years now and I must unabashedly state that my awareness, my social and political scholarship, and political views have been informed, formed and made more than ever robust via more than a dozen truly enriching, elucidating and opinion fortifying (and dispelling) articles, authors, journalists to who I’ve become aware through these AMAZING shows and their programming.  </span><br><span style="font-size: large;"><br></span><span style="font-size: large;">The number of authors, journalists, pundits, specialized and dedicated EXPERTS (yes, remember them?), provocateurs, satirists, inflective agents from qualified and compelling quarters are far too many to mention here if I were to try to lay out a litany of pathfinding champions that have no better nor more accommodating formats in the post Suskind, Pine, Cavett, King (and now Charlie Rose) age of interview shows. Stephen Kinzer, Matt Taibbi, Eric Segal, Aaron Carroll, Chris Frates, Jennifer Bendry (actually, the Weekly Round Table on Julie Mason’s Press Pool show on POTUS has more unfettered and factually formed opinions than ALL the network Sunday shows combined. Anyone who would like a direct line to the worlds and wiles of straight up honest to goodness investigative journals need only prevail upon the Twitter feeds of the hundreds of adroit and arcanely savvy and skilled minds heard on the multitude of these impartially dispassionate shows.</span><br><span style="font-size: large;"><br></span><span style="font-size: large;">I thought it was a joke when I tuned in two mornings ago to hear callers say, on the seminal StandUp! with Pete Dominick show, that they were unsubscribing due to Sirius XM’s gift of a platform to this “monster”. The reason was that they “had to stand for something” and that this was the only way in which they could have their “voice heard”. Again, this was on a show called Stand Up! and they were voicing their opinion on live radio. Oh, well anyway…</span><br><span style="font-size: large;"><br></span><span style="font-size: large;">...I agree that Bannon's an asshole, but he most certainly isn’t alone. I can tune him out—and usually should and do. BUT, if I were to want to tune in to inform myself of the particular tack and spin being employed by him to his dim minions on any given day (ever read Don’t Think Of An Elephant by George Lakoff?), I would be able to call and challenge he and them directly, or at least do it live and in real time.</span><br><span style="font-size: large;"><br></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br></span><span style="font-size: large;">Over 16 years ago, when XM &amp; Sirius were slowly birthed as the Gemini twins of the new satellite broadcast technology whose eventual demise was speculated and trumpeted by forecasters and detractors  (XM Satellite Radio's first broadcast was on September 25, 2001, nearly four months before Sirius) there remained terrestrial radio and a slowly emerging 'new-normal’ which we now know as media streaming.</span><br><span style="font-size: large;"><br></span><span style="font-size: large;">12 years later in 2013, the survival of the companies relied on their merging, and since then Sirius/XM has slowly come literally out of the blue, out of the red and into the great black as a cash juggernaut of an established economic model with 30.1 Million subscribers.</span><br><span style="font-size: large;"><br></span><span style="font-size: large;">During its touch and go years, though before the merger, both companies were hemorrhaging dollars,. After the merger, one life-saver was the acquisition of Howard Stern’s show. It had already garnered solid millions of faithful listeners. It’s been arguably claimed that Howard and his show which many consider jarringly sexist and otherwise offensive to many, was indeed was one of a few stalwart assets that kept it all going during those formative subscriber-base building fiscal years. </span><br><span style="font-size: large;"><br></span><span style="font-size: large;">There was one 6-month period of my life when I listened to terrestrially broadcast Howard Stern show (and was sporadically entertained by it). After one or more profoundly offensive allusions therein, I made a point not to continue listening. I see that his show is still carried on SXM, just as Fox carries Sean Hannity and Co. (not to mention White House Briefings) and well, I feel this is not a zero sum gain.</span><br><span style="font-size: large;"><br></span><span style="font-size: large;">I could reiterate the obvious, stomp my feat and say no, no, no to anyone who is participating in any way in the accommodation or propping up of a truly evil person, but since we’ve been seemingly waltzing at times blindly with the devil himself in so many broader realms in myriad fashions, I choose to stoke up on as much compassion-based knowledge and implementable insight that I proudly receive, ingest, digest and make manifest with my own tools of persuasion therein to make small differences in my daily sentient life and creative art. I choose to stay engaged, informed, enticed, interested and eager to learn and be proven wrong from time to time while arming myself with fact-based insight and arcane data with which to debate folks who’ve proudly imbibed and are eagerly regurgitating their various flavors of Kool-Aid. </span><br><span style="font-size: large;"><br></span><span style="font-size: large;">I’m keeping my subscription to Sirius-XM. It’s worth every penny. Plus, they pay broadcast performance royalties, which is more than I can say of terrestrial radio. What a country. I do love it, though. </span><br><span style="font-size: large;"><br></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br></span><span style="font-size: large;">https://mediamatters.nationbuilder.com/donate2017</span><br><span style="font-size: large;"><br></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br></span><span style="font-size: large;">  </span></div>
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    <p class="post-info"><span data-time="2017-12-14T02:32:00-05:00" title="December 14, 2017 02:32">12/14/2017</span></p>

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  <a href="/blogs-blather/blog/4933342/to-my-best-friend-mike-i-love-you-and-miss-you">To My Best Friend Mike. I Love You and Miss You.</a>&nbsp;
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  <div class="message"><p><br><span> </span><br> </p><figure class="table"><table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align:center;"><a class="no-pjax" href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1-Mx6543Uio/WgvS4F-rMWI/AAAAAAAAB_I/_kgbIroHq50BijLRavLiJ-WNPhz9joOcACLcBGAs/s1600/image1-4.jpeg" imageanchor="1"><img src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1-Mx6543Uio/WgvS4F-rMWI/AAAAAAAAB_I/_kgbIroHq50BijLRavLiJ-WNPhz9joOcACLcBGAs/s640/image1-4.jpeg" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" height="513" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td style="text-align:center;">Backstage at Maloney Hall, Catholic University 1975</td></tr>
</tbody></table></figure><div class="separator" style="clear:both;text-align:center;"> </div><p><span>November 15, 2017</span><br><br><br><span>Dear Mike~</span><br><br><span>Today is your birthday. I’d be calling you today, and probably sending you a video or something that I thought was funny, maybe it'd make you laugh. If you were having a “good” day, you may even call me first. You’d loudly make a stentorian declaration that was joyous as it was absurd about another year in a long life. Anyone who knows you can fill in that blank.</span><br><br><span>That’s what’s easy about this: so many folks loved you and knew you. They’re closing their eyes, probably wiping them, right now because yours was a personality that was easy to conjure, easy to love, easy to celebrate. They’re hearing right now, because yours was “the big voice, that leaves little choice”. You’ll always reverberate. I’m happy for that.</span><br><br><span>But I’m also very, very sad. Because you were my best and oldest friend in this world until you left.  Yes, our close families know us and love us…but 12 year old buddies? Forget it—we knew SO MUCH about one another, for SO LONG.  </span><br><br><span>I never apologized for our regressive adult goofball behavior because why should I? There was too much information there for us NOT to return to high school, where I think we may have been at our happiest. Everything after—what we did and didn’t share—was too copious a lot to be hauled into every moment. It was the world we were all are forced to confront, and not always easy. It very seldom is. </span><br><br><span>There’s something I never told you, Mike. I didn’t because I hadn’t realized this truth until after you were gone. You may have nonetheless known on some level being so smartly observant and sensitive to others’ feelings.</span><br><br><span>But I'll explain: From the earliest time I can remember until right before my father's death, I was a fairly happy kid. My parents and my siblings made me feel special, the world was playful and interesting and I felt that I owned some special gifts that, when shared, might make people feel good. Folks seemed to enjoy themselves and made a big deal when I would play and sing or perform in musicals. It seemed I felt that I “knew my calling” pretty early on.</span><br><br><span>You had a similar childhood! You were bright and brave (braver than I) and most grown ups and other kids, found you entertaining, helpful, and fun to be around.</span><br><br><span>But you and I had yet to meet. I was in Fredericksburg playing in my first bands, operettas and talent shows. You were more or less doing the same sorts of things in Springfield. </span><br><br><span>When I was nine years old, though, my Dad became ill and battled for a long while. My younger sister's and my ages were enough to compel the older others to shield us from the harsher aspects of that reality until the very end of that fight. I didn’t hear that he “wouldn’t make it” until the day or two before he passed, and my sister didn’t until after he did. </span><br><br><span>Life then reeled and grew complicated in ways not before known.  </span><br><br><span>Times were particularly tough for our mother. Another good soul and timely consoling friend to her met an untimely death, we had a frequent prowler at our house, and a fellow assigned to me from the Big Brothers Association turned out to be a pedophile who indeed kidnapped another young kid the following year after we moved to DC. And the Civil Rights/Viet Nam era was raging with its injustices, assassinations, riots and transformative madness. That eemingly cyclical now. </span><br><br><span>When we moved to Washington in Jan ’69, staying in my grandparents’ house in NW my sister and I were the “new kids” at a parochial school in the neighborhood. Most of the kids weren’t very welcoming to the kid who some “thought was a hick” for his “southern accent”.  The big deal “boogie woogie” boy from Falmouth seemed personae non grata. I was more than ready for a happier next chapter to begin for me and my decimated family. </span><br><br>That's where you came in, <span>Mike. We still hadn’t met, but soon I would SEE you for the first time.</span><br><br><span>You were in the Spring Musical production at Bishop Ireton High School, which enjoyed a sterling reputation for high quality productions. My cousins Steve and Tim Sheehy were in the pit orchestra, and since I’d be a freshman there the next year, and I was holding out hope that all this wasn’t more mere hype.  </span><br><br><span>We drove to Alexandria, and my mind raced the entire way. The show was Mame, and you played Patrick Dennis, the kid. I had been in a couple of school shows, had seen a few, but THIS was the BEST I’d ever seen, the music sounded top notch, the singing, the acting…and YOU were spectacular. You sang and danced, acted believably, projected zeal and killed it. It was a true thrill! </span><br><br><span>I learned that you were an 8th grader but so blatantly and perfectly qualified for the role that they skirted the rules a bit. You'd be a Freshman there the next year. This high school thing seemed promising. I had an anxious excitement for the near future for the first time in too long a time. </span><br><br><br><span>We finally moved to our new house in Alexandria for which we’d left Fredericksburg, and the first day of high school arrived. You had to be there somewhere, but there were so many kids everywhere, I thought perhaps we’d be lost to one another among the masses of long hair, ties, corduroys and desert boots.</span><br><br><span>It was on the second day of school that I heard a commotion up ahead in the main foyer of the school. “Aw, MAN…” a familiar voice crowed, “…come ON, you guys…gimme a break!”</span><br><br><span>Wild laughter erupted from the gaggle of older guys who had—for the second or third time—just batted all of your books out of your arms and onto the floor. “What?? Little Cotterrrrr!?” one taunted. “Get your brother to help!!” Tommy, your brother, was a Senior whom I’d soon later see straddling the bannister at the top of the stairs and winging a hefty book pretty damned hard down the stairs at someone. I'm not sure if it related to little brother's episode, but I like to think so.</span><br><br><span>It was chaos amid the rush of boys headed to their next class. You didn't push back, strike out or call names, but merely let them and that pass until you had the time and room to finally pick up your spilled stuff.  </span><br><br><span>I helped you, and you thanked me. I told you that I’d seen you in </span><i><span>Mame</span></i><span> the prior Spring and that you sure were great. “Aw man, REALLY??” you said and introduced yourself. I did the same, and said that I had been in shows, too. But you wanted to talk about music, said you had a classical guitar, but wanted a nicer steel string one. I mentioned that I too played, and you said, again “REALLY? You play? Man, we should have a duo!”</span><br><br><span>That’s how I remember it, Mike…it was that quick. The next day we played and sang together, and it was as if that was always the reason that we had come there. At the time, a new experimental modular scheduling was being tried--students could arrange their classes and schedules to foment huge blocks of continuous “study” time, which was time NOT in class. A,B,C,D,E &amp; F days. Your schedule coincided with mine on E, “togetherness day” you said, and we’d hang and sing and play wherever we could find a space or stairwell.</span><br><br><span>Mike, you and I and most folks looking over our shoulder at this letter know everything that happened after that, since then and what it meant, the cool places and folks to which our friendship would lead, but I never thanked you for being the first person to turn the page in a few really bad, sad and seemingly interminable laboring chapters of a kid's life to the next happier, more exciting and rewarding chapters that led all the way to this moment I’m gratefully appreciating right now. </span><br><br><span>If you don’t mind, I’d like to share something else about you with everyone:</span><br><br><span>When we graduated—after so many adventures both personal and professional throughout our high school years—and college--that great slowly lowering boom of the adolescent-- loomed above us like a great interrupter of all our most verdant dreams. You would be going to Catholic University and I to Miami University in Florida. We lamented the interruption and our separation, but held out hope that my Miami University deal with my mother wouldn’t work out and I would be back in the Spring to pick up where we left off—doing shows, writing songs, occassionally opening for big acts in big halls by ourselves and with Bill &amp; Taffy and others. Mostly, Cotter &amp; Carroll would resume and not falter in DC.</span><br><br>I didn't dig <span>Miami U. There were no clubs in Coral Gables, merely a juke joint a few miles away that had 50 cent 7 and 7s on Wednesdays. I spent most of my time playing piano, singing and writing by myself in cramped campus rehearsal rooms. Oct 26th was circled on my calendar, when I’d be joining you and Bill &amp; Taffy for their set at DAR Constitution Hall, opening for Jackson Brown. That was a magical evening. Jay Winding, Jackson’s sideman gave me a shot in the arm rap that THIS was what I should be doing, that college wasn’t for everyone, and that I’d have time to get back to later. Things would pan out, one way and another. I decided that night that I’d return from Florida after the semester, one way or another.</span><br><br><span>After repairing back to Miami and in the worst kind of funk, I thought that I might not last until then. About a week later, Bill &amp; Taffy phoned to propose an idea: come back to DC, but stay in school by enrolling at nearby Catholic University. And, would I be interested in rehearsing a few songs as a group—a singing group. The group would be Bill, Taffy, Margot Chapman and me. I said sure, are you kidding? </span><br><br><span>No, they weren’t, but I was asked to not mention it to anyone for fear that word might get out too soon, and that could be a bad thing for a few good reasons. I reluctantly agreed.</span><br><br><span>You were so excited, and I was too--I was coming back, and we'd both be at CU, no better. </span><br><br><span>But there was more to this picture than I could divulge and that was difficult, awkward and I thought somewhat unfair. My promise would be broken within a week on the night I showed up at your door at Spaulding Hall dormitory with a bottle of Stoly. </span><br><br><span>I explained it all, sheepishly, shamefully and contritely. It wasn’t that Cotter &amp; Carroll would be handcuffed from doing our thing, but this other thing was very much on the platter, too.</span><br><br><span>“Oh…” you halted for thought. I sat and watched your eyes dart about with your high-velocity thoughts and braced for understandable anger, disappointment and indictments of my betrayal.</span><br><br><span>“Wait a minute, so, you, Bill and Taffy and Margot—that hot chick from Breakfast Again?—that’s kind of cool, huh!?”</span><br><br><span>“Yeah, I guess”, that aspect was indeed exciting I supposed and concurred.</span><br><br><span>“Wow…” Another pause…here it comes, I thought.</span><br><br><span>—“Man! I can’t WAIT to hear THAT, man! That’s gonna be FUCKING AMAZING!”</span><br><br><span>I sat amazed and grateful and a little less ashamed for my silent period of non-disclosure, but mainly I realized what a true friend is. You were more psyched than I, about something that would ultimately mean the end of our duo. We would always play gigs, you and me, you and Margot, me sitting in with your band and vice versa, but it never crossed your mind that our friendship was threatened. I was prepared to lose and lose again, but you flipped the polarity switch masterfully. This was a GOOD thing. It was a win-win. I had never admired anyone more than you at that moment.</span><br><br><span>Your “up” side was the most buoyant lift that I could ever imagine. </span><br><span>It was a constant, a lighthouse that was always on and spinning above a churning coastline.  Nothing could deter or reset your positive compass, your proactive enthusiasm. We started with the simplicity of doing something we loved that we could trust would always be there, and ended by having the thing that was simply always there. Love and Friendship.  </span><br><br><span>Mike, I was aware early on of your chronic attenuators, how you could be profoundly hobbled during those emotional valleys, but you muscled through them countless times. I hope folks will remember and appreciate just how many times you soldiered through the darkness so bravely.</span><br><br><span>A few years ago, when the two of us were going over some parts in a dressing room before John Jenning’s fundraiser finale, you were so tenuously there—I looked up from the page to see an expression on your face that I thought was surely your goofing at me like so often, only to realize that you were desperately reaching to the bottom of your stores of stability for a gasp of fuel and strength. I know if it weren’t that particular reason for which we were all there--for John--that you wouldn’t have been. You would have been in the place where “misery doesn’t know better times” until a sunnier day dawned. </span><br><br><span>You were BRAVE, Mike.</span><br><br><span>And you had so much love for your friends, for your family. We all know how utterly ironclad your resolve was when it was time to be there, when we really needed you. </span><br><br><span>I just need to know that somehow you’re aware of your profound meaning in my life. I need everyone else to know, as well. The day we met was Day 1 of the rest of my life. I wasn’t at all certain that things would ever start to work out, then you were there. Like a lighthouse. A life preserver. You’re my oldest and dearest friend and I’m just now beginning to contend with your being gone. I miss you so so much, and I know it’s going to get worse before it gets better. I hope I see you later, somehow, some way.</span><br><br><span>My last conversation with you was on July 1, and we talked about all sorts of things. Mostly you were just erupting with joy and enthusiasm over your Summer with Georgia, her studio project and how wonderful a person Lisa was. You told me how much you missed sister Christine, how she lured you lovingly over to her house and laid books on you all the time. Gratitude gushed from you that night. No one appreciated good will more than you, Mike.</span><br><br><span>You exclaimed again that you “never talk on the phone this long with anyone!” and we laughed alot and loudly. </span><br><br><span>Then you told me you had just finished an “amazing” book—James Agee’s </span><i><span>A Death In The Family.</span></i><br><span>“That’s one of my favorite books of ALL TIME”,  I spat. “Meredith had seen it somewhere and thought I might like it and, wow...”</span><br><br><span>“It’s UNBELIEVABLE.”  We spoke of it being brilliant, how it managed to decode the shock of an untimely death through the eyes of a child. I mused of how the brakes failed on the car in the story, how the accident left nary a mark but a just a slight cut on the bridge of the victim’s nose, as I remembered. </span><br><br><br><span>You chimed something abruptly that was at first garbled.</span><br><br><span>"Huh? What?"</span><br><br><span>“A Cotter pin!! It was a COTTER PIN!” You loudly exclaimed.</span><br><br><span>You couldn't stop. “Do me a favor…read just the last ten pages—it’s amazing—just read the last ten pages.”</span><br><br><br><span>Happy Birthday, Mike. I wish you could come back, even for a day. Visit us in a dream, OK? We're waiting. </span><br><br><br><span>~Jauntzy, Stinky, Sfinkter, etc.</span><br><br> </p><figure class="table"><table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"><tbody>
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<td style="text-align:center;">From the BI-Word, March 1972</td>
<td style="text-align:center;"> </td>
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</tbody></table></figure><p><br><br><span> </span><br><i><span>Some scrawlings if I'd the chance to speak at Mike’s Memorial:</span></i><br><br><br><br><span>We wake each morning to gravity. We usually don’t consciously address it—we merely rise, get up somehow, greet and get at a day wherein we’ve mostly learned to ignore the utterly inescapable and inexorable force—that constant reminder that the center of the earth wants us.</span><br><br><span>We do it, day after day, managing somehow to find a reward. We’re fortified with purpose, dedicating efforts large and small until we get to it— a sigh, a laugh, some measure of gratification, a prize, a wee measure of a larger elation. We defy that gravity that hasn't ever and will never let go. Its tenacity is ancient, its origins a distant cry of unfathomable forbearance.</span><br><br><span>It’s quite possibly the first worldly in utero sensation we have. It’s our oldest companion, friend and foe, gravity.</span><br><br><span>Some find aid in spliced in skewed perspectives, making the challenge ahead seem more approachable, do-able, </span><i><span>manageable</span></i><span>.</span><br><br><span>We feel we’re in a vessel upon rough waters, and the deck is coated with renegade rolling marbles. Or maybe tumbling rolling tubes which won’t rest until they come to rest. Where gravity puts them. We clamor sometimes desperately toward something to which we can cling—a rare slab of stability where we can regroup and refresh. This ride is even thrilling, maybe…perilous…we don’t worry about the landing but …</span><br><br>…w<span>e grow and come to realize that the vessel is just an illusion. We are and have always been completely submersed </span><i><span>in</span></i><span> the water.</span><br><br><span>We rise, fall, gasp, hold our breath, become completely submerged…all the while the current carries us.</span><br><br><span>Like the naturally wise adult salmon, we feel reason for battling upstream against inexorable currents toward our natal homelands. Some do it regularly and some early on realized that they would need to remain close to their beginnings. </span><br><br><span>Whether a boat, a fish, a bird, a man we, as Neil Young puts it, “collide with the very air we breath”.</span><br><br><span>We make bolstered runs up against the same wind we need to fill our sails, to lift our wings. We swim upstream to survive, in the very water that will sustain us and our offspring.</span><br><br><span>The moments where we can merely relax and enjoy the ride seem few and far between.</span><br><br><span>Our futures are nagging entities in need of building, planning, providing and tending. The future steals much of the present, wouldn’t you agree? And many of our concerns, cares and conundrums reside in tidy compartments tucked well within the family home on the back side of that welcome mat. </span><br><br><span>Our friends, our families, our fellow humans are in need, and we draw many lines to sort out what and for whom we choose to see.</span><br><br><span>There are those that find their calling within the framework of rescue, companionship, care giving—the immediate alleviation of another’s pain and suffering, are they are lucky. They have the instant gratification of immediately improving the well-being of another. </span><br><br><span>Alas, there are those among us who aren’t personally rewarded by an altruistic spirit. They don’t get a rush, only an inconvenience.  </span><br><br><span>What Mike and I had in common, a frustration of sorts, is that our spirits, regardless of the gifts and tools that we bring as entertainers, are usually gifts of joy, mollification, relief, inspiration. We also love doing it while we’re doing it. We bring a release, maybe some elation, some healing if we’re lucky, and we dig it while we’re doing it. A win win. </span><br><br><span>If only it were that simple. Art reacts, it reflects, it even thankfully deflects…rock and roll, it doesn’t solve our problems, it just allows us to dance all over them for a while. The hard realities and the hard work still stare at us coldly when we return to the churn.  </span><br><br><span>As much as he may have appeared to be the typical exemplary middle class fence painting lawn mowing suburbanite male (which he was, in at least those respects) Mike didn’t believe in the paint by numbers life.</span><br><br><span>Whatever conventional conforming Mike managed was voluntary, perhaps discretely begrudging. He was polite and considerate of others’ feelings, respectful of others’ RIGHT to have their own beliefs. BUT, one large ethos of our friend, what he DID NOT believe in: passing himself and his beliefs off disingenuously. Mike was not a hypocrite. He loathed hypocrisy, yet he did not loathe the hypocrite. He understood THEIR plight. That was their “cross to bear”. But he was highly unnerved when one expected him to go along with the motions, the ceremony, the pageantry of and about something he truly knew in his heart he DID NOT BELIEVE.  </span><br><br><span>And when a scabrous policy on high reached indiscriminately down to affect the under-privileged, the under-served, and the under-informed, well…we know how Mike felt about that.  </span><br><br><span>He was of this world, but his boyish enthusiasm for the weird, the wild, the wonderful was couched in an old soul’s discerning insight into a much deeper philosophy. </span><br><br><span>Cognitive dissonance and dishonesty came into play only when he needed, as most do, to camouflage shame. Shame for himself or his family and friends.</span><br><br><span>In his affairs, his relationships, his dealings, I never knew Mike to be underhanded or deceptive out of avarice or spite. </span><br><br><span>In this way, and in so many others, Mike was so very brave. He was brave to choose to always be true to his heart. He knew how much work that would require. The currents he would come up against that truth within and without. </span><br><br><span>So many of us need to adhere to some existing code to help us determine our paths, decisions, battles. We turn to sacraments, commandments, societal and familial expectations. That’s our culture, and it includes multitudes of other cultures big and small, heirloom and nascent.</span><br><br><span>I think Mike was up against those deliberations constantly, for he thought for himself. That should make us all more appreciative of those times when he went the extra mile, or yard or footstep to be where he knew he counted most. To be there for someone else. To put in the good word. To refrain from a personally derogatory one. To be a cheerleader. A fan. A friend.</span><br><br><span>To not be petty. To see to the other side of a sticking point and move on. Michael looked to see the diamonds in the rough. That's ironic, but true. Between the two of us, I heard scads more pep talks from him than he heard from me.</span><br><br><span>None of us have any of the sure answers, only some vague ones. That money changes everything. That it’s better to have it than to need it. </span><br><br><span>We hold each others' answers in our hearts. It’s better to love than to hate. It’s better to try to see someone’s perspective, or at least respect that one’s perspective, whatever it may be, is inarguable. At least try to understand. If Mike and I were Jem and Scout in To Kill A Mockingbird we’d have spent more time than they did on Boo Radley’s porch. </span><br><br><span>Mike’s Spiritual Creed: Be good for goodness’ sake. These approaches are better. Not because we give them 4 out of 5 stars, but because we should give them 9 out of 10 nods. We should affix them like pocket watches in folds nearest to where there is the least sunshine. We should WORK to be BETTER. Then we’ll ALL be doing better, a little closer to all doing well.</span><br><br><br><span> </span><br> </p><div class="separator" style="clear:both;text-align:center;"><a class="no-pjax" href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sNHkZJiQnnE/WgvmtjVgbMI/AAAAAAAACAE/td8BvYO9WnUa8eqLcpzJ0Uj3jwb82h1zwCLcBGAs/s1600/Agee296.jpg" imageanchor="1"><span><img src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sNHkZJiQnnE/WgvmtjVgbMI/AAAAAAAACAE/td8BvYO9WnUa8eqLcpzJ0Uj3jwb82h1zwCLcBGAs/s640/Agee296.jpg" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" height="532" width="640" /></span></a></div><p><br> </p><div class="separator" style="clear:both;text-align:center;"><a class="no-pjax" href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-76s3DfmAz-0/Wgvmucdj5UI/AAAAAAAACAI/k3dfTceGQLMdb-d4q5oEqdfCdNXAELU7wCLcBGAs/s1600/Agee298.jpg" imageanchor="1"><span><img src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-76s3DfmAz-0/Wgvmucdj5UI/AAAAAAAACAI/k3dfTceGQLMdb-d4q5oEqdfCdNXAELU7wCLcBGAs/s640/Agee298.jpg" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" height="526" width="640" /></span></a></div><p><br> </p><div class="separator" style="clear:both;text-align:center;"><a class="no-pjax" href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BwpjFUL8zBM/WgvmwL8O0GI/AAAAAAAACAM/J4mKsr2eVpAHQI3W4GYk9y2m3rcbihoaQCLcBGAs/s1600/Agee300.jpg" imageanchor="1"><span><img src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BwpjFUL8zBM/WgvmwL8O0GI/AAAAAAAACAM/J4mKsr2eVpAHQI3W4GYk9y2m3rcbihoaQCLcBGAs/s640/Agee300.jpg" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" height="540" width="640" /></span></a></div><p><br> </p><div class="separator" style="clear:both;text-align:center;"><a class="no-pjax" href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Fb3CJatZNfI/WgvmwnlGIAI/AAAAAAAACAQ/Sk5k4k5IECEVrzT22bgq6V8RWFI_410VwCLcBGAs/s1600/Agee302.jpg" imageanchor="1"><span><img src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Fb3CJatZNfI/WgvmwnlGIAI/AAAAAAAACAQ/Sk5k4k5IECEVrzT22bgq6V8RWFI_410VwCLcBGAs/s640/Agee302.jpg" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" height="528" width="640" /></span></a></div><p><br> </p><div class="separator" style="clear:both;text-align:center;"><a class="no-pjax" href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yoLyH4AFbOM/WgvmxvFXuvI/AAAAAAAACAU/kJGV3fVnadUndZD4ZcZLEHqT-mre9IJIACLcBGAs/s1600/Agee304.jpg" imageanchor="1"><span><img src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yoLyH4AFbOM/WgvmxvFXuvI/AAAAAAAACAU/kJGV3fVnadUndZD4ZcZLEHqT-mre9IJIACLcBGAs/s640/Agee304.jpg" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" height="518" width="640" /></span></a></div><p><br> </p><div class="separator" style="clear:both;text-align:center;"><a class="no-pjax" href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3Q1tG9v8MDU/Wgvms3V4g0I/AAAAAAAACAA/87a5RnNEYHwwJiJDFi-R9JB4An0oUgbbgCLcBGAs/s1600/Agee%2B306.jpg" imageanchor="1"><span><img src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3Q1tG9v8MDU/Wgvms3V4g0I/AAAAAAAACAA/87a5RnNEYHwwJiJDFi-R9JB4An0oUgbbgCLcBGAs/s640/Agee%2B306.jpg" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" height="532" width="640" /></span></a></div><p><br> </p><div class="separator" style="clear:both;text-align:center;"><a class="no-pjax" href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xyh61rU5mj0/Wgvmyw6o6vI/AAAAAAAACAY/mOyH-ekdmGUzF5c1aqE7dS0_Ke0x6VcuQCLcBGAs/s1600/agee%2B308.jpg" imageanchor="1"><span><img src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xyh61rU5mj0/Wgvmyw6o6vI/AAAAAAAACAY/mOyH-ekdmGUzF5c1aqE7dS0_Ke0x6VcuQCLcBGAs/s640/agee%2B308.jpg" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" height="513" width="640" /></span></a></div><p><br> </p><div class="separator" style="clear:both;text-align:center;"><a class="no-pjax" href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-69ut1cBMo8A/Wgvmy8Vf0RI/AAAAAAAACAc/WXRxrwyEfBoSK4bAyh1pKkrw7Je8ILFhwCLcBGAs/s1600/agee%2B310.jpg" imageanchor="1"><span><img src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-69ut1cBMo8A/Wgvmy8Vf0RI/AAAAAAAACAc/WXRxrwyEfBoSK4bAyh1pKkrw7Je8ILFhwCLcBGAs/s640/agee%2B310.jpg" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" height="640" width="392" /></span></a></div><p><br><span> </span></p></div>
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    <p class="post-info"><span data-time="2017-11-15T02:07:00-05:00" title="November 15, 2017 02:07">11/15/2017</span></p>

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        <span data-share-dialog-target="title">To My Best Friend Mike. I Love You and Miss You.</span>
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<h2 class="heading-secondary heading-blog alt-font">
  <a href="/blogs-blather/blog/4480571/for-and-of-our-beloved-friend-john-jennings">For and Of Our Beloved Friend John Jennings </a>&nbsp;
</h2>

<div class="post">
  <div class="message"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rRHls-qiMks/WDUR7dm0KsI/AAAAAAAABkU/mAtb4Jky9rExcb1tL-JTVKcTet5lJVVWQCEw/s1600/John%2BJennings%2B2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rRHls-qiMks/WDUR7dm0KsI/AAAAAAAABkU/mAtb4Jky9rExcb1tL-JTVKcTet5lJVVWQCEw/s1600/John%2BJennings%2B2.jpg" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" /></a></div><span style="background-color: white;"></span><br><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br></div><br><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b>For Our Buddy John Jennings on his Birthday</b></div>(I never got around to formally reading this at our friend’s Memorial Service 1 year ago today):<br><br><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">OK, then..it would appear--somewhat reasonably--that the vast majority of the good folks here today would consider themselves "middle-aged".</div><br>Those who subscribe to the tenets in pre-conceived dispositions of "ageism" would probably impose the particular year middle-age begins…whether it be 30, 40…50....<br><br>My mother-in-law is presently 92 years old. What she would consider to be her middle-aged years I don't know. I do know that when she relates stories from her younger years she does not begin "back when I was middle-aged".<br><br>My son demurely mumbled to me somewhen around his 33rd birthday that he "doesn't feel very young anymore". <br><br>I once attended the funeral of a wonderful woman who had  died at the age of 101. Ripe, old? I suppose those adjectives are fair.<br><br>In light of the loss of my Father as a child and my Mother as a young adult, I declared to my companion that the occasion of her funeral after 101 years was somewhat refreshing since she had “made it to the finish line”: lived a long and multitudinous life. A joyful occasion, really!<br><br>My friend quickly countered, “No it’s not. She didn’t want to die!”<br><br>The point that most of us would gladly take life over no life at any point within a life. John and I chronically invoked the famous scene from Unforgiven wherein the blubbering young cowboy posse initiate is shakily confronting the emotional aftermath of his first killing.<br><br>Clint Eastwood says, "It's a hell of a thing killing a man: take away all he’s got and all he’s gonna have” to which the kid says, " yeah but I guess he had it coming, huh?"<br><br>"We've all have it coming, kid”, utters Clint. <br><br>At some point in our lives we look up to notice that we've been lucky enough to be around long enough and work at one type of thing along with a small group of people. And within that relatively cozy group, we’ve made life-long and cherished friends.<br><br>Weeks, months, years, decades pass and bonds are formed. Each unique. Some stronger or weaker than the last or next, a course with peaks and valleys as we forge ahead like a plow horse until the day you realize that you've known a particular soul for longer than most others in your life, you've spent more time with that person than you with your own nuclear family before you flew from the nest toward adulthood. <br><br>And with these souls, if things went so rightly, you managed to create and accomplish some mightily profound feats. You’ve healed, entertained, taught, learned, served and earned your worth as you together gained and sustained. <br><br>I firmly believe that all of our years here are formative ones.<br><br>Those hours add up and—lo and behold—you have a true brother or sister. They know you—and you know them— extremely well. Sometimes it feels too well!<br><br>The things you done, the places you've been, the experiences you’ve shared…together…realtime…over a long time. That history. Is anything more precious?<br><br>At one point during one of our many late night powwows (in our 20s and 30s— the fires were usually stoked by any number of mind altering substances, and in our 40s and 50s they were stoked with experience, jaded retrospect and hard-fought wisdom. The latter being every bit as—no make that more—intoxicating then the former) John confessed and professed a deep and abiding commitment : "Jon, I've known you since you were 19 years old and we are now in our 40s”. Regardless of what you may have ever said to me, about me or done to me and whatever I have ever said about or done to you, well…(taking a long thoughtful John pause) we're still here and I am highly rewarded with this relationship. Man, I am all in until the end of the line.” <br><br>It's interesting to me that John and I very seldom spoke in any sort of granular detail about what we did within the context of shows, recording sessions and such.<br><br>But we certainly talked about most all else.<br><br>John loved bandying on about any art whatsoever. His polymathic intellect new no bounds, and that made it especially difficult for the unsuspecting and quixotically reluctant new acquaintance to escape the compelling clutches of John's charmingly amiable, expertly convincing, informative, elucidative and engaging manner. John was pretty danged irresistible.<br><br>On a tour flight to Boulder, Colorado John was seated next to an attractive(ly) off duty flight attendant. He chatted her up for the entire way, as usual, and by the time we had landed John had not only made a new friend but had garnered an invitation for himself and a few of us others to meet her and her pilot husband for a late morning &amp; early afternoon training session in a full-scale FAA grade 747 flight simulator. The ones in which the guys up front did their training.<br><br>It made total sense, this sort of encounter, and John’s associates would see this type of thing again and again:<br><br>A stranger, a friend of a friend at a party, a bandmate, a travel mate…hearing perhaps the voice first…gentle, genteel, that of a broadcast announcer who may always make it home to read the bed time story to the kids. His voice was velvety, lyrical, laced with experience, compassion and empathy. Perhaps prior to that, or concurrently…she’d see the eyes. John’s eyes were extremely easy on the eyes. And they were extremely intelligent eyes, and that—coupled with his overall demeanor and sympathetic ear—were indeed windows into an exceptionally beautiful soul. <br><br>He had that woman at “how ARE you?”, and the following Tuesday John and a few others were at the controls, trying not to crash.<br><br>John would later glowingly report on the splendid field trip, how he was rather impressed with himself to be the only one in the group to NOT crash the simulated jumbo jet.<br><br><br>In an interview with Bill Holland, John states that in his younger years, one of his less than admirable behavioral traits was that “he could be manipulative”.<br><br>I’m venturing to guess that was born from an early life discovery of his spellbinding way with people. We all know that many folks found themselves wanting to impress John, longing to please John, as doing so rendered them pleased with themselves. <br><br>John somehow managed on many occasions to show, and/or share that he was indeed pleased with—well, proud of— himself, and he did that in a becoming way. It was undeniably evident and, hell, you had to agree with him.<br><br>Yes, John was more than aware that he was extraordinary, with the self-assuredness of a phobic person who time and again has rediscovered his more than adequate tools for survival: a multitude of natural abilities and gifts,…intellect, compassion, hard fought and heartfelt worth…<br><br>We all know John was one of those rare individuals to whom the skill for tasks difficult and tenuous for others would come relatively easy.<br><br>It was John's way to somehow manage a disarming humility, fronted with a winkingly disingenuous modesty when he would remark that guitar playing was something that came "pretty easily" to him. <br><br>He must've been aware just how much that could piss off at least a dozen other guitar players we know, yeah? <br><br>John knew—and would privately share— which other players amazed him or “gave him a run for his money”. You all know who you are. Maybe not. I’ll tell yaz later. He probably told you already. John would say, “I don’t want to talk out of school” pretty frequently.<br><br>John knew how to do a lot of things and knew how to do them well without a whole lot of help from others. It was because of this that, when the rare situation arose wherein John asked for your help, it would certainly bolster your confidence, up your seeming (“conscious and unconscious”) aptitude and your self-esteem, for we all knew of his prickly discernment of everything practical, artistic or just plain trivial, how fussy he could be.<br><br>We all know that horn players can be bawdy, string players may be meekly sensitive, drummers can be crude, bass players smooth—always get the girls, piano players are somewhat snobby and aloof, but guitar players… by and large are…a fussy lot.<br><br>And John was fussier than most.<br><br>He wasn't always outspoken about his opinions of things, no wait…yes, he usually was…but that was usually when within small groups of people and definitely when it was just the two of you chatting. <br><br>Here's the thing – John would matter-of-factly state this—he was good at "getting" people... that is to say: he was a great judge of people... he could pick up what made you tick and do it pretty damn quick, enough to make you sick…figure out your trick, make you feel like such a  d***. <br><br>He “could think faster than you could ever run, run, run…”<br><br>That  could be a bit nerve-racking sometimes.<br><br>John could dish. For the most part his dishing was about music and art – let's just say music, because he was first to disclaim with a global "what do I know?… however" of literature or movies. but being a musician songwriter – brilliant songwriter – and a record producer, he felt he had the license to spill some acid for the benefit of a brighter more evolved scene on folks’ behalf from time to time.<br><br>Politics, current affairs…NOW we’re rocking’. John would chronically contextualize his sociological points with “let’s not worry about me…my politics are so left of left of left, they are OFF the table the radar is on…"<br><br>As an artist, that license is extremely healthy: the exchange (sometimes heated) of ideas, beliefs, concerns and consternations that apply to our communal belief that in our artistic endeavors we should primarily focus on creating something that matters. As an artist he felt that and strongly. As a producer, he was primarily concerned with the piece, that the track, the project on which you were working well, was “working”. He excelled at that.<br><br>There was a calm and sure-handed approach to all his projects, which fostered a reassuring and angst free (for the most part) collaboration with many songwriters and artists. There was something about John that, if you allowed it to work, and didn’t fight it, could make you feel verrrry good about yourself. And that’s verrrry good, when recording yourrrr record.<br><br>John didn't like young bands very much. In fact, I don't think he took naturally or affectionately to youngsters much at all. When speaking of young bands that invite their friends to fill up a pub once a week, or a band of other-than-musical professionals: lawyers, doctors and dentists who throw together a band and play at the country club every now and then... John could be pretty merciless. He resented their “air time”, and he was outspoken about it.<br><br>I would say something like “ah what the hell, live and let live, live and let play” or some such shite, and John would say "no I don't agree with that because they're out there taking up air meant for the the rest of us." Somehow I didn't see this as an elitist statement, I saw it as the way John was committed himself to seeing to  music and art getting the respect they deserve. If you were merely noodling on the guitar during an idle chat, there should still be a modicum of deliberation behind every half-minded lick. In other words: When it came to making music, John didn't fuck around.  That's not to say he didn't have any fun, he had buckets of fun. In the studio he had a way of being so totally low-key...as many an adroit producer aspires to be--that he somehow got great performances out of folks most of the time. Laid back, praising, ENJOYING himself…enjoying others.<br><br>I think he loved being the first person to say, let’s take a break…this’ll be great…and we’d repair to the porch for chocolate and a smoke and conversation having absolutely NOTHING to do with the work at hand.<br><br>John was intense without appearing intense. When he was working.<br><br>When he wasn’t working John appeared intense. Not in a bad way, (unless really bugged “Jaking” as a close friend would say) but in a thoughtful, sometimes lofty way, as if his hyper-awareness rendered  most situations and conversations to be something with which he was either familiar, or one whose aspects and concepts he’d once easily grasped, or could easily grasp again. He bored easily.<br><br>He could come off as jaded, pre-occupied, cynical, skeptical, sardonic. Also whimsical, fantastical, and oh so funny. <br><br>Just when I’d be thinking or grousing internally that John had a bit of a superiority complex, he would say something so disarming, so self-deprecating, so…humble, that I’d feel guilty for thinking he was any other way. <br><br>He was taken aback, truly…whenever I’d compliment him on his economy, sensitivity and approach to piano parts. OK, I merely praised his part, and it seemed to stop him in his tracks.<br><br>When he’d make some of the best and wittiest remarks, resulting in my wincing and tearing with laughter he’d say, "Oh my God, Jon…you’re laughing at MY joke? Damn!" <br><br>John’s ego was huge, but it was dwarfed by his enormous heart.<br><br>Being friends with John meant seeing the world through the eyes of John, and that wasn’t always an uplifting experience. <br><br>You had a much better shot at rosy-ing up your outlook by listening to Marilyn Manson, Morrissey or something, but… we all know how it was to be greeted by John: Never a "hey how are ya”, or “hi” it was more than often “(your name here) how ARE you!”<br><br>When asked how HE was doing he would glow with aplomb..”I have NO complaints.” “All the better for seeing you!”<br><br>John held fast onto pearls of wisdom, and would readily recite them.<br><br>As fussy, particular and bristly as John may seemingly be, he was an overall zealous celebrant of life and love. Love was most important in a life filled with “just details”.<br><br>John was very strong. "Strong like bull”, he would say. He was more self-reliant than most folks. He was intellectually strong, and for someone who had serious bouts with phobias and neuroses he was a remarkable exemplar of high emotional IQ. John dealt with all people in a most civilized fashion, but when holding fast to his principles, his tenacity was cement-solid. …whatever the aspects behind any contentious issue, he had thought about them a great deal. <br><br>John had strong opinions, and so do I, and it was remarkable that we remained friends in light of the fact that when we had opposed views, they were diametrically such, but those instances usually had nothing more crucial than Kubrick’s framing, Cukos ethos, Solti, Visconti or Debra Winger’s performance in Mike’s Murder.<br><br><br>There was the accident wherein the sky actually fell on he and Tamara.  A big tree, actually.<br><br>Mere months later John would be arriving to his gig, Holiday lights coruscating on the apparatus screwed into his skull and affixed to his torso, a device ironically called a ‘halo’…and exclaim gently and firmly “I am the luckiest person I know.” <br><br><br>But years later as John and I walked the corridors of NIH after his second cancer surgery—one day afterward, actually—he was his usual optimistic, highly philosophical self, praising Tamara, the network of folks supporting him, his top-drawer doctors. Grateful, humble, shuttling, scuffling, hobbled, strapped, poked, and tubed…he was upbeat.<br><br>But at one point, in that way we all know of John, he stopped, turned to look me straight me in the eye with a semi-beseeching rise in one eyebrow, and said, “Don’t get me wrong. I AM aware of and appreciate the gravity of the situation.” <br><br>As much as John enjoyed spinning yarns from the old days (show business does tend to generate many entertaining, funny, interesting tales. I can’t imagine why... it’s not inhabited with many entertaining, funny, interesting people) he was anything but a backward glancer. He cared not for rehashed, post-game analysis, or even discussions of past productions. He was ever and already onto the next thing. “Way down the road”…John would say….”I’ve moved waaay past it” he would say to someone longwindedly contrite after an argument.<br><br>John liked and lived to move forward. <br><br>In the end, as I believe he was for most of his life, John was a realist. Albeit one with the intellectual and spiritual gifts enabling him to pull cheeky hope from the jaws of a most dire situation. John was a true romantic, an egoist (with one ’t’), but he did not frivolously romanticize, and I know that he cared for and about others very deeply. He respected those with heart, and he supported, encouraged, advocated for and so many times facilitated those who had something important to say. <br><br><br>Life was important, and it was important to John to make sure it stayed important. Dwelling, resenting or recounting the past was wasted time. He once said, “One day I’ll sit on a porch with my old chums and do the 'remember when’ thing. But for now I’m going to keep going." <br><br>We often talked about future projects—our own and others’. “We’ve always got potential”, he’d say…quickly, tersely…as smooth as John’s voice was, and as long as he may have taken in any discussion to formulate what he was about to say (you know, with his hands raised as if to say, ‘hold up…I’m devising the perfect most convincing way to make my point here’)…when he finally said it, he’d say it FAST. He was a fast talker. There was an autobahn of neurotic alacrity between his brain and his mouth. One would not delay the other.  <br><br>John always had a lot on his mind, and not usually in a worrisome way. His brain was full, and so was his heart…and he was always happy and proud to give you generous pieces of both.<br><br>Bless his soul. <br><br> I hope and I pray (yes, regardless of one’s beliefs concerning demiurges and deities, I believe in that great collective energy of prayer…) at any rate, for it would make me feel better to know, that somewhere along the arduous and rutted road of John’s last journey that his brilliant mind, his gifts of wisdom, his talent for devising ways forward conspired to reward him with a clear discernible vision that made some sort of sense, offered solace, laid the warm hand of grace…calming him with the knowledge that it was alright to “move way past it”. <br><br>That it was OK to keep looking forward toward whatever is next.   <br><br> John left us with so much to ponder, to enjoy, to carry and he inspired so many with so much.    <br><br>Some of my favorite John sayings:<br><br>Remarking on digital manipulation of recorded performances:<br>This was intoned within the discussion of bars being ever lower, “It is now possible, to make a purse from a sow’s ear” <br><br>On Capital Punishment : “If you want someone dead, just be patient and you WILL get your wish.”<br><br>Missing a cue in the studio: “Sorry. I was hanging out like a kid at the 7-11 on that one.”<br><br>Relationships: “Even the best relationships are not always mutually rewarding. But all relationships must be rewarding enough to make you want to continue maintaining them.” <br><br>On touring, and spoken while sitting on opposable benches: “I love playing music, and I love all of you, don’t get me wrong…but I can think of lots of things I’d rather be doing than this right here.”<br><br>“Topiary Donkey with a Dick.”<br><br>Now for a famous jingle we'd never tire of recalling and reprising:<br><br>Bye for now!<br><br>THE SOFT SOFT DRINK<br><br>Milk’s the soft soft drink, it doesn’t burn foam or fizzle<br>Doesn't snap doesn’t sizzle when you want to wet your whistle<br>Its the soft soft drink that’s good for you it'll make your <br>Whole insides say ‘thanks’<br><br>Makes your teeth grow strong starts a belly celebration<br>And a muscle jubilation, people all across the nation<br>Drink the soft soft drink for a vitamin sensation<br>Drink the soft soft drink drink milk<br><br>Milk’s the…<br>soft soft drink it doesn’t shout about its flavor always on its best behavior<br>When its food you wanna savor<br>Its the soft soft drink that’s always been the favorites<br>It’s the soft soft drink drink milk! <br><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HNvD0YQjKSc/WDUR7fB8YdI/AAAAAAAABkQ/HDLSdBL1UfUtd-6rQWLiV-q3CDtrdxj_ACEw/s1600/John%2BJennings%2B1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HNvD0YQjKSc/WDUR7fB8YdI/AAAAAAAABkQ/HDLSdBL1UfUtd-6rQWLiV-q3CDtrdxj_ACEw/s1600/John%2BJennings%2B1.jpg" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-h1qsHBFDAG0/WDUTfj8R1wI/AAAAAAAABkY/khnvZcpshlQO58TsawGj1GZX58YDZnJ1QCLcB/s1600/JC%2526JJplo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-h1qsHBFDAG0/WDUTfj8R1wI/AAAAAAAABkY/khnvZcpshlQO58TsawGj1GZX58YDZnJ1QCLcB/s320/JC%2526JJplo.jpg" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" height="179" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br></div></div>
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  <a href="/blogs-blather/blog/3969357/on-public-discourse-moral-re-examination-offended-sensibilities-court-rulings-and-emblems-of-the-c">On Public Discourse, Moral Re-examination, Offended Sensibilities, Court Rulings and Emblems of the Confederacy in Leesburg, Va</a>&nbsp;
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  <div class="message"><br><br><br>As Americans, as a Nation, we stand unified in our belief that each and all have the right to express their opinions proudly and openly, especially when doing so opens heretofore obscured pathways to a deeper understanding of our collective humanity during broad discourses such as these; vigorously reassessing an ever progressing and changing identity. <br><br>As a Democracy, we ideally look toward and rely upon a majority representation of our majority personality. There are many compelling forces in this broad “heritage” argument. I hear confidence and resolve from folks holding nearly sacred the recognition of those (especially our ancestors) who “died for their beliefs”. <br><br>As a native Virginian (Fredericksburg, Northern Virginia and until recently Leesburg) I'm proud of our multi-faceted history--rife with admirable and remarkable personalities manifest in myriad trajectories, often times in contradictory fashion. That any may have died "standing for something" doesn't automatically meet my personal standards for veneration. History is rife and rancid with all sorts of agents displaying hideous conviction.<br><br>Leesburg has indeed and repeatedly been a bed of revolutionary passion. Loudoun County earned the colloquial status of “Breadbasket of the Revolution” during that war, for its formidable agricultural support of the Continental Army as it feverishly fought to extricate its citizens from the demeaning and crippling clutches of a far-away and tyrannical regime.<br><br>The colonies—united—won that war. We became an officially independent nation, the United States of America. For months, years, decades and centuries we progressed as a young nation navigating, negotiating a brighter, fairer and ever more promising future for each and all. Relative to other "great” nations of the globe, we today still remain a young one.<br><br>No one can accurately predict when one established era's characteristic practices, social mores and moral standards will seemingly—suddenly—tumult into another with its laws, practices and traditions slightly more effectively reasonable, rational, righteous, enlightened and otherwise evolved. <br><br>The "War Between the States” was a bloody and divisive conflagration, when certain States within our unified nation attempted secession from  the majority collective thus allowing themselves to adhere only to their own codes and economic methods, one of which is now clearly recognized as a cruel, demoralized practice, that of keeping and utilizing human beings as livestock. <br><br>It is fact that many of our honored “forefathers” were slave owners, but during all that while an ever flowing enlightenment was by degrees reaching many enough shores to gradually become a mainstream. Those cultures—multiple generations of them—slowly gave way to change much as a frightened uprooted child slowly learns that a new home can be better, even while holding the memory of the old home near.<br><br>Of course, acceptance moves and grows by degrees as well. It requires dialogue both external and internal. <br><br>Recently, in the wake of "rulings" (we've been inoculated to steel ourselves as a reaction to that word) it’s irrefutable that this slow conversion is requiring this conversation, even within the considered climate of many a jarred sensibility. Perhaps we’ve evolved to a farther point where all of these opinions, reactions and detractions can be civil (writ large), constructive, non-violent (literally and literately), and made (and heard!) with patiently open minds and compassionately open hearts. We are compelled to examine ourselves as private and public entities, and do so privately and publicly. <br><br>The comedian Jerry Seinfeld recently stated (perhaps within another context, perhaps not) that "pain (like stubbing your toe on the edge of furniture in the dark) is knowledge rushing in to fill a gap in knowledge. The pain is a lot of information really quick." In that sense, intransigence is our enemy, both as an end result and as a practice fostering more unpleasantness along the stubborn way.<br><br>As a unified Nation, we won the Revolutionary War.  Later, as the Confederacy begrudgingly struggled to deny this union, they lost the Civil War, a long and ugly conflict whose legacy, by virtue of its origins of regional solipsism and nationalistic self-loathing, is one of which, as an American, I’m not proud. <br><br>But we move on and we change…little by little. Whether they be flags or statues, we hold on to icons and emblems as commemoration of history. Some have become somewhat perverted vestiges of our times and culture, even while they gaze back on those that are past. <br><br>On the one hand, we feel strongly that the Confederate facet of our region’s identity should be recognized and taught. On the other, its arguably most salient historical mantle is slavery--universally deplored. Any nod to icons standing for this cause of the Confederacy risks being perceived as approval even celebration.<br><br>I personally find it rude to question and argue others' clear reasons for taking a valid and expressed offense. The offended sensibilities of our fellow Americans, and Leesburg/Loudoun citizens (especially those of African ancestry) should be of paramount importance and utmost consideration. Even so, many may hear protests against the location of statues and such to be but from a weak-kneed chorus of politically correct whiners. <br><br>I say let the cognitive dissonance flow like a robust and widely drinkable wine. In vino veritas.</div>
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<h2 class="heading-secondary heading-blog alt-font">
  <a href="/blogs-blather/blog/3969358/logan-3-12-15">Logan 3.12.15</a>&nbsp;
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  <div class="message"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Logan 3.12.15</b></span><br><br><span style='font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;'>Lithe, Lean, Slender<br>Nearly skinny<br>Minder rubber ‘round her wrist<br>Tine-like fingers quickly<br>Get to a banana<br>One, two, three strips divvy down<br>Disappear into rapid devour<br>All business<br><br>Sip, chew, sip<br>Paper cup not managing<br>Only but a peel<br>Where to conceal, the heel of a shoe?<br>Out of place, too small a space<br>Drape a perfect arch across the leather brief<br><br>Diamond ring, headlight lit<br>Promise just past the knuckle<br>Fiddle the wrapper of a breakfast bar<br>Barely two bites, she’s fed<br>Put it in the peel, on her case<br>At her feet<br><br>Perhaps this Spring she’ll stand<br>Speak vows and her words will float <br>On a haze of heartfelt devotion<br>He’ll think for a while<br>That she looks too thin</span><br><span style='font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;'>They'll sort that out </span><br><span style='font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;'>Like trash in a cup<br><br>Which attendant scoops and whisks away</span><br><span style='font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;'>Leaving her perfect nails </span><br><span style='font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;'>To start sifting through<br>Emblems and wee bits news on a wee screen<br>Back to my book, all business<br>And we’re all up and off to Miami</span><br><br>                                                                                     <span style='font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;'>~JC</span></div>
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    <p class="post-info"><span data-time="2015-06-09T12:10:00-04:00" title="June 09, 2015 12:10">06/09/2015</span></p>

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<h2 class="heading-secondary heading-blog alt-font">
  <a href="/blogs-blather/blog/3969359/the-carnage-of-capitalism-with-comment">The Carnage of Capitalism (with Comment)</a>&nbsp;
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<a href="http://www.nationofchange.org/carnage-capitalism-1408372121#comment-302218" target="_blank">THE CARNAGE OF CAPITALISM </a>(click for Article)<br><br>Comment:<br><br><br><div class="content">Stephen Kinzer's ("The Brothers") rather  unsettling account of  precedent setting patterns and policies established during and  following World Wars 1 &amp; 2 after several unabashed decades of  corporate/government unholy allied practices in the name of  "healthy commerce  at all costs" accurately conveys how that dynamic paradigm was formulated, developed, implemented  and yes, 'fostered' with post-war policies beginning with the Dulles brothers (Allen Foster and John Foster) and their dealings while in and out of the law firm of Sullivan  &amp; Cromwell and on into their positions as Secretary of State and CIA  Director, respectively.<br><br>While much of their verified cronyism and  back-room/insider dealing would be abjectly unlawful within many of  today's revised  legal parameters, they nevertheless set the tone of monied  exceptionalism into the 30's, 40's and 50's and for decades to come.<br><br>Subsequently, in the late 70's and 80's when global finance, currency  trading, bundled debt, leveraged stocks etc. became their own  lucratively nascent and nepotistic  industry--but one without any real  manufactured product other than increased (or squandered) wealth  itself--the proverbial mule was let kicking and sprinting out of the  proverbial barn. The wild beast has begotten generations of legions  which will be extremely difficult to discourage, round up or recall.<br><br>This manipulated wealth has become a colossal engine which drives  everything from national elections to the mega-industries of medicine,  education, correctional facilities (many now corporate run), bundled  corporate run HOAs (existing nowhere near the neighborhoods of their  concern) big pharma and its R&amp;D, food, energy, resource policies,  FOREIGN policy and operates hand in hand within a new normal that  brazenly ignores--in fact proactively embarks upon the dismantling  of--any codified humane consideration for our common welfare.<br><br>Other than vapid and hyperbolic image hawking for the benefit of  consumer market eyes and ears, there seems to be little  corporate  recognition of future consequences or real regard for the imminent and  irreversible environmental damage about to be forever leveled upon our  planet. That we still must tolerate climate change deniers while the  tipping points toward catastrophic events are becoming alarmingly nearer  than ever anticipated is truly disturbing. It all but ensures with  abrupt seriousness that these events must indeed come to occur before  those voices that tout their mythic nature are considered ridiculous  enough to be muted, and coordinated efforts shall become crucial for  survival in the face of undeniably vivid developments.  We shall  scramble as best a threatened and terrified species is able.<br><br>Along with an ever increasingly smaller and insulated power peak, the  classic democratic process is hobbled, evidenced strongly by the recent  identity crisis within the Right's conservative big tent, as well as  the recent inefficiency of the Left's no longer potent moral high  ground. The hopes, dreams and plans of the common citizen are rendered  adrift and at the mercy of the unmerciful with any plausible  representation frozen as an amber bound gnat within long-term  legislative paralysis.<br><br>Argue the political particulars if you must, but the optics of the final outcome will be quite out of our control.</div>
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    <p class="post-info"><span data-time="2014-08-19T01:31:00-04:00" title="August 19, 2014 01:31">08/19/2014</span></p>

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</article>  <article class="post blog-article full-item post-full" data-controller="zoogle-video" data-action="message@window-&gt;zoogle-video#handleVimeoPostMessage">
    
<h2 class="heading-secondary heading-blog alt-font">
  <a href="/blogs-blather/blog/3969361/jc-interview-for-ciyh-com">JC Interview for CIYH.com</a>&nbsp;
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  <div class="message"><span style="background-color: #ffd966;"></span><br><a href="http://lrnblog.posterous.com/renewing-interview-jon-carroll" target="_blank"><span style='font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;'><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: large;">           </span>Jon Carroll Interview with Concerts In Your Home</span></span></a><br><br><span style='font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;'><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: large;">                               </span><img src="https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc7/387878_10150407176628182_4252694_n.jpg" class="size_orig justify_inline border_" alt="" height="320" width="244" /><span style="background-color: #fff2cc;"> </span></span></span><br><br><span style='font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;'><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: #fff2cc;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #4c4c4c; font-style: italic;">Describe your most memorable house concert experience.</span><span style="color: black;"> </span></span><br><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">Always a challenge, as there have been so many but, HEY…Memorable…right? Remarkable…yeah?</span></span><br><span style="font-size: small;"> I  recently played T.Edwin Doss and his wife Patricia’s Rocky’s Run House  Concerts, which is a splendid venue right on Lake Anna which is just due  SW of my boyhood town of Fredericksburg, Va.</span><br><span style="font-size: small;"> My sets can, if the  chemistry is just right, take on an interesting narrative arch, as  various songs of mine are chipped off the mother lode vein of my own  childhood and past experiences. Not all, but some of the major corner  stones are, as most writers will attest.<span style="color: black;"> </span></span><br><span style="font-size: small;"></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">Well, that particular  night the faces filling my view from the stage became a miasma of  familiar retrospect, as more than a few of my childhood buddies, the  brother of an ex-girlfriend, and the parents of our best playmates from  next door (they still live there!) all were there beaming, nodding and  swaying to the beat. It was quite dreamlike, but also so jovially  companionable due to their knowing of all the landmarks and characters  that were mentioned, it was as if everyone was given a decoder ring at  the door!   </span></span><br><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><br></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"></span><br><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #4c4c4c;"><i>What's your best opening line? (from one of your songs, or one of your favorites)</i></span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"></span><br><div>
<span style="font-size: small;">I LOVE great first lines. Folks comment frequently on the first lines of my song Land That Time Forgot, which are:</span><span style="font-size: small;"> “I’m an old man eating dinner somewhere in Wyoming<br>Got my false teeth working on a microwave medallion”</span><br><span style="font-size: small;"> I  was unsure of that line, the whole song really, until a fellow writer  buddy of mine suggested I try putting it all in the first person, which made  all the difference, for it as a song and as something to sing. I thank him  every time I see him.</span><br><span style="font-size: small;"> First line by other…Paul Simon:<br>“We were married on a rainy day. The sky was yellow and the grass was grey<br>We signed the papers and we drove away. I do it for your love”</span><br><span style="font-size: small;"> Sorry for the bleak themes…I’m not mainly that way…but I do love the images and the setups, though…!</span><br><span style="font-size: small;"> OK….”I  may go out tomorrow if I can borrow a coat to wear  Oh, I'd step out in  style with my sincere smile and my dancing bear”—Randy Newman  (I feel  better, now..you?)</span>
</div><span style="font-size: small;"></span> <br><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #4c4c4c;"><i>What song is most likely to make you cry? (if you were the crying kind)</i></span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br><div><span style="color: black;">I’m very much the  crying kind and that fact proves to be a challenge, since singing and  becoming overcome and blubbery are a nasty combination. There are  different songs that can/will do that. Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne: …“They  are leaning out for love, and they’ll lean that way forever” or his Song  of Bernadette…Joni’s Case Of You… There have been a few embarrassing  moments (unnoticed by others, I pray) during Mary Chapin Carpenter’s  shows (I’ve played with her for decades now) when it gets a bit  difficult to see the keys. Amazing writing will move you as it should.<br></span></div><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #4c4c4c;"><i>How many miles did you drive last year?</i></span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"></span><br><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">Jeez, including  tourbus…not fair…but scads. I drive a lot, too and I’d say roughly 9,000  miles. I do my solo shows plus mini-tours with other folks such as Eric  Lindell and Peter Wolf. Sessions in other cities…adds up.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><br></span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #4c4c4c;"><i>What is your favorite thing about house concerts?</i></span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"></span><br><div><span style="font-size: small;">The wondrous, unified and collective experience. I’m not one to put  things in between me and my audience. Not alcohol, drugs etc. And the  intimacy that proximity brings can be extremely powerful. The mutual  respect and understanding in a tuned in room can really dissolve many of  those classic barriers that come with the standard mise en scene. It  really becomes less of a set or tableau piece, and more of an exciting  adventurous dance. A real collaboration!</span></div><div></div><span style="font-size: small;"></span> <br><div><span style="font-size: small;"><i>If you could no longer sell your music on CD, what would you do differently?</i><br>I  would record each show and burn USB wristlets sold cheaply on the way  out. Plus including a code for downloading something current and  exclusive.</span></div><div></div><span style="font-size: small;"></span> <br><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #4c4c4c;"><i>When is the last time someone critiqued your song, suggested a way to make it better, and you agreed?</i></span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"></span><br><div>
<span style="font-size: small;">That’s an interesting question that makes more sense than what some  might think. I’ve worked on several stage plays, and cowrote some  musicals, and the staged readings are a valuable resource as the  audience, as well as the actors reading/playing the roles, weighs in  after with opinions, sharing responses, and offering suggestions. I find  that performing songs brings another initial response from the  listener, and their sharing of that response includes some nuanced but  none too oblique messages within that the writer can pick up on. How a  fan even refers to the song can be quite telling. Sometimes, in the  course of a conversation, it becomes clear whether the person got the  hook, or maybe missed it altogether. Some folks remember the scenery  along the way, with the destination not being all that important. So be  it.</span><span style="font-size: small;"> The response of an audience in real time is the thing that turn  the most knobs for me as a writer. A song that you’ve honed and  fashioned for tortuous hours can become altogether a different beast  once your performing it in front of an audience. The universe changes in  performance, and, in that manner, the audience is constantly and  covertly critiquing and making suggestions. I do enjoy post-show  talkback sessions, though. In the theater, they can be quite valuable.  After a house concert set, there’s usually a chance for that sort of  give and take. It also gives people a chance to ask about Afternoon  Delight.</span>
</div><span style="font-size: small;"></span> <br><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #4c4c4c;"><i>Have you ever watched yourself do a full concert on video? If so, what did you learn?</i></span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"></span><br><div><span style="font-size: small;">Many times. The overall kneejerk reaction is to slow down, and  that’s usually a correct move. I have a lot of energy when I perform,  and some of my songs have a rhythmic pulse that, as a piano or guitar  player having a drummer laying down the tempo will help to relax. Having  someone riding shotgun, so to speak. In a solo situation, taking a deep  breath and centering is always a good idea. As long as I’ve done this,  it’s still an important part of the warm-up ritual, that is, settling  down!</span></div><div></div><span style="font-size: small;"></span> <br><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #4c4c4c;"><i>Is there anyone you like to go to for songwriting help or advice? If so, who?</i></span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"></span><br><div>
<span style="font-size: small;">Wow. I usually turn to great literary writers: Bellows, Malamud,  Fitzgerald, Munro, Amis, Welty, Trevor, Greene, Conrad, Mortimer, Banks,  Singer…any writer who writes like a writer. There are a lot of mundane  lyrics out there, and to be fair, the way words, melody, rhythm and scan  juxtapose in song makes it a different carnival ride altogether. The  great songwriters that float my boat, Van Zandt, Cohen, Crowell,  Mitchell, MacMurtry, Carpenter, Webb, Newman, Waits &amp; countless  others…tend to have one thing in common: they transport the listener.  Music and song have a power that great film has, that is to create a  story universe outside of the here and now.</span><span style="font-size: small;"> If I’m stuck, it’s usually because I’m unsure about what I’m actually wanting to say, not on how to say it.</span><br><span style="font-size: small;"> Don’t  get me wrong, I’m not above throwing out a lifeline, but that usually  happens when sitting there collaborating on a song with others.  Honestly, I’m not one to call up another writer and yell help. I don’t  think it’s pride, I just figure that they’re busy enough with their own  damn songs!</span>
</div><span style="font-size: small;"></span> <br><div><span style="font-size: small;"><i>What is the best stage name of all time?</i><br>I dunno,  how about Tom Jones? Liberace was pretty cool. Elvis Costello hits on  multiple cylinders. Boris Karloff. Karla Bonoff. Tommy Tune. Iggy Pop. I  still want to know how The Edge gets called to the counter at the DMV.</span></div><div></div><span style="font-size: small;"></span> <br><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #4c4c4c;"><i>Car you drive vs the car you'd most like to drive</i>.</span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"></span><br><div><span style="font-size: small;">Honda Odyssey Van vs nice RV towing a coupla V-Twin cycles.</span></div><div></div><span style="font-size: small;"></span> <br><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #4c4c4c;"><i>What percentage of your songs are about love relationships?</i></span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"></span><br><div><span style="font-size: small;">30</span></div><div></div><span style="font-size: small;"></span> <br><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #4c4c4c;"><i>You can bring back any dead artist, and be their apprentice for a month, who do you choose?</i></span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"></span><br><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">Toss-up between  John’s Lennon and Mercer, with the deal being they stay alive after the  month’s up. Even if working with me kills ‘em. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><br></span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"></span> <br><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><i>You can recruit anyone in the world to manage your artistic career, who is it?</i><br>The Tom Hanks character in <i>That Thing You Do</i>.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><br></span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"></span> <br><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #4c4c4c;"><i>You can work with any living record producer. Who do you choose for your next project?</i></span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"></span><br><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">Tough one, but I  suppose Phil Ramone, but I did already…but I was 18. No fair. He  was one of those producers though, who was so very very musical and  creative, that the players played and the singers sang extra special  great on his sessions. One of the most respected and accomplished  producers of our time.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><br></span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"></span> <br><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #4c4c4c;"><i>You must personally destroy every instrument you own, except one. Which do you keep? Which do you destroy first/last, and why?</i></span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"></span><br><div><span style="font-size: small;">Not to take the cheap high road less than loquacious way out, but I  don’t want to destroy anything, much less something that brings joy. I  have separation anxiety. I get misty when checking out of a room I’ve  had for three days on a tour. I still have my first drumset, my piano  has been mine since 1977, my Wurlitzer Electric since 76, I won’t get  rid of my Roland Juno 60, get the picture? Now, I’m sure other folks  around me might have a hierarchy of plans. I think I’ve even heard them  plotting deep into the whispery night.</span></div><div></div><span style="font-size: small;"></span> <br><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #4c4c4c;"><i>Top item on your bucket list.</i></span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"></span><br><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">Seeing the Bosphorus Strait. It’s been an elusive dream.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><br></span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"></span> <br><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #4c4c4c;"><i>Cat, dog, or goldfish?</i></span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"></span><br><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">Are you kidding? I  tour. But I love it when there’s a dog around, even on the bus. I once  slept with a Golden Retriever. Perils of the bottom bunk!</span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><br></span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"></span> <br><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #4c4c4c;"><i>Writing               retreat. You can go anywhere in the world for 2 weeks,  where         do you     go?  One instrument, one suitcase - what do you   bring?</i></span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"></span><br><div><span style="font-size: small;">You’d think I’d might have already gotten around to this, but the  Northern Neck of Virginia feels like the floor of my soul to me. For  some reason, I’ve always been attracted to those little square office  compartments at the top of grain elevators and mills, too. Just a  typewriter will do. Loved that Alex Haley would book passage on tankers  and merchant marine vessels to write. That’s the idea!</span></div><div></div><span style="font-size: small;"></span> <br><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #4c4c4c;"><i>Plan B, or no Plan B?</i></span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"></span><br><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">Been doing this too long, it contains multitudes and it’s always brought new gifts and new incarnations of more Plan A, eh? </span></span></div><br><span style='font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;'><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: #fff2cc;"> </span><span style="background-color: #f4cccc;"></span> </span></span></div>
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    <p class="post-info"><span data-time="2013-02-05T21:11:00-05:00" title="February 05, 2013 21:11">02/05/2013</span></p>

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</article>  <article class="post blog-article full-item post-full" data-controller="zoogle-video" data-action="message@window-&gt;zoogle-video#handleVimeoPostMessage">
    
<h2 class="heading-secondary heading-blog alt-font">
  <a href="/blogs-blather/blog/3969362/letter-to-lawmakers-pandora-bill">Letter to Lawmakers--Pandora Bill</a>&nbsp;
</h2>

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</style><![endif]--> <br><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 14.15pt; margin-left: 297.65pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style='font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;'>Jonathan Carroll<br>_____________</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 14.15pt; margin-left: 297.65pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style='font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;'>_____________</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 28.35pt; margin-left: 297.65pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style='font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;'>November 26, 2012</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 28.35pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style='font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;'>The Honorable Mark Warner<br>United States Senate<br>475 Russell Senate Office Building<br>Washington, DC 20510‑4601</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 28.35pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style='font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;'>The Honorable Jim Webb<br>United States Senate<br>248 Russell Senate Office Building<br>Washington, DC 20510‑4604</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 28.35pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style='font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;'>The Honorable Frank R. Wolf<br>House of Representatives<br>241 Cannon House Office Building<br>Washington, DC 20515‑4610</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 28.35pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style='font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;'>Re: Oppose the "Pandora Bailout Bill"</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">I am a lifelong musician, artist and writer/composer and have had personal experience with the issues stated below which have direct import into the legislation in question below.<br><br>I have lobbied for fairness in the Broadcast Performance Royalty legislation, and, like all else like me, have been beat to the punch in your offices by the profoundly well-funded NAB, which preempted many of the efforts by front loading many inaccurate and misrepresenting scenarios, hoping to shift the focus --and culpability--from broadcasters to the labels themselves, even to the songwriters, who happen to have a much fairer deal historically, even citing only the most profoundly successful acts (a very small percentage even in the industry’s heyday) whose names are recognizable enough for them to be salient spokespersons for this cause, as greedy, spoiled and Pollyannaish.<br><br>Recently there have been deals made between some new labels (with already successful acts who are enjoying high sales and exposure via many new delivery systems, such as Pandora) which falsely cite "parity" as the end all justification for lower rates. In reality these lower rates HAVE NEVER been fair or justified. The new digital services, such as Pandora who launched in 2003 and formed, developed and tweaked its business model with a library supplied FOR FREE by label and non-label and artists alike, before starting to pay the MINIMAL fees only within the last few years. <br><br>These recent arrangements are unique deals by companies that can uniquely benefit from them as they have a large digital presence, not a template for universal extension to all broadcasters. <br><br>Since Napster woke the industry up in the 90's--too late, I might add---many within the industry have been scrambling to catch up since the new paradigm has been established, with all its ever-changing shifts and adjustments with the status quo. If you look at the % drop in music sales during the last 15 years, you will see the decimation of a once healthy and thriving music industry brought about by its tardy response to the digital revolution. <br><br>But please consider the fact we had just recently become encouraged that there could be a final legislative resolution for Broadcast Performance Royalties after a much much longer period of time<br>during which the United States enjoyed the dubious company of Qatar, North Korea, Rwanda and China as countries who HAVE NEVER paid fees for terrestrial broadcast performances.<br><br><br>I write to express my strong opposition to the so-called "Internet Radio Fairness Act" (H.R. 6480/S. 3609) and to ask you not to cosponsor the bill. If the bill comes up for a vote, I urge you to vote NO.<br><br>Pandora and broadcasters support this bill, claiming that fairness and parity are needed. But the bill ignores the greatest inequity in music compensation -- the lack of a performance right to compensate performers when their songs are played on terrestrial radio.<br><br>And the bill isn't fair to the creators of music whose work makes up the content of Internet radio. This bill would slash payments to artists by hundreds of millions of dollars. Under current law, artists and music creators receive from Pandora payments for the use of their performances based on a fair market, "willing buyer, willing seller" standard. Pandora's special interest bill would slash those payments to a below market, government-mandated subsidy rate. With the music business shrinking to half the size it was ten years ago, working class musicians wait for these royalty checks every quarter to help make ends meet.<br><br>Despite crying poor to Congress, Pandora is expected to clear more than $600 million in revenues next year, and is valued at more than $1.5 billion. This isn't about fairness, it's about lining stockholders' pockets. Musicians should not be deprived of the income that they deserve to subsidize Internet radio.<br><br>Congress shouldn't pick winners and losers on the Internet, and shouldn't force artists and music creators to pad Pandora's wallet. <br><br>Historically, recording artists have already the deck enedemically stacked against them.<br><br>This bill is a giveaway to Pandora and I urge you to oppose it.</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 28.35pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><br></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 14.15pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style='font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;'>Dear Senator Warner:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 14.15pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style='font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;'>I am writing to express my strong opposition to the so‑called "Internet Radio Fairness Act" (H.R. 6480/S. 3609). I urge you<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>not to cosponsor this bill and to vote "NO" if the bill is brought up for a vote.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 14.15pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style='font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;'>Although this bill claims to be about fairness, in reality it is nothing more than a bailout for Pandora to increase shareholder profits by taking money away from artists and music creators. Under the law, Pandora and other Internet radio services must pay a statutory royalty rate that represents the fair market value of the music they use to build their businesses. The "Internet Radio Fairness Act" would cut the royalty standard to a below market rate that amounts to a government‑mandated subsidy. Music creators will be paid less while corporate shareholders are paid more.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 14.15pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style='font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;'>Pandora's estimated value is over $1.8 billion. It can afford to fairly compensate the hard‑working artists and professionals who make a living by creating music. Instead of providing another bailout for big business, Congress should provide real radio parity by requiring terrestrial broadcast radio to compensate music creators just as Internet, satellite and cable radio services do.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 14.15pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style='font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;'>Please oppose the "Internet Radio Fairness Act." There's nothing fair about robbing music creators to pay for Pandora's profits.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 56.7pt; margin-left: 212.6pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 7.1pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; page-break-after: avoid; text-autospace: none;"><span style='font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;'>Sincerely,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 212.6pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style='font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;'>Jonathan Carroll </span></div></div>
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