When my first wife passed away, I decided to be a stay-at-home dad. My boys were teenagers and pretty independent, but I figured that a reliable presence in the home was a necessary bit of continuity for them. They did not need a parent preoccupied with career worries and responsibilities; since I was already taking time off, it seemed natural to extend that. Plus, I felt like I had this responsibility to make the effort to get into the best physical condition I could manage: After all, I was the only parent they had.
Well, now they are both seniors in college and retirement is driving me crazy. I could write about the sameness of every day, but it all comes down to wanting to feel productive. I'm volunteering for an after school program and have put in my time on the boards of nonprofit organizations. That has helped. But there's nothing like being a part of working group and the feeling that your contribution is important enough to merit being paid for it.
Aside from the volunteer stints, I haven't worked in several years and feel as if my technical and writing chops have atrophied. And, I'm profoundly uninterested in resuming an executive career. So, I've decided to pursue the retraining route, in this case via Professional and Technical Editing Certification from Bellevue College.
I signed up for the obvious starter class: Professional Editing I. In some ways, I haven't learned much that I didn't already know. As I've never been an editor, the class -- which is well taught by a very experienced and knowledgeable guy -- has been useful in helping me organize and clarify my thoughts about editing. The real challenge of the class has been the project, which has been humbling to say the least.
For anyone interested -- and if you read for more than two sentences I'll be amazed -- I chose to edit this Wikipedia article. I selected the article after a cursory glance through it: The article related to work in my past life and I felt a comfort level with, if not necessarily an affinity for, the material. Then I started working on it. Suddenly confronted with a bewildering maze of technical terminology and amateurish organization, I wondered whether I had bitten off more than I could chew. The instructor gave me a pep talk and I waded in.
And do you know what? Twenty readings and several reorganizations later, I've whipped it into shape. It's not perfect and I may not have everything right, but I've added value -- an organization and attention to technical definitions that simply wasn't there. After meeting with the program advisor yesterday, I'm feeling like completion of this program will give me exactly what I need to walk into an agency and get some contracts.
So, I'll be spending the next several months taking classes like Substantive Editing, Developmental Editing, Information Architecture for the Web, and Project Management for Technical Writers and Editors. I'm glad that the classes seem demanding: I need to be pushed, plus succeeding in them will grow confidence. Stay tuned!...
Check out Farewell to Storyville, Paul Sanchez' new album, here...
Happiness is listening to your wife play Joni Mitchell's "The River" on piano from sheet music that you just helped her download...
If you lived in NOLA, you could join the likes of Buddy Guy, Irma Thomas, and Sonny Landreth at the Crescent City Blues and BBQ Festival this weekend. Tasty in so many ways...
Friday's Choice: The incomparable Toots Hibbert -- with help from the Maytals -- sings "Take Me Home, Country Road:"
We deplore this terrible taking of a human life and trust that the left will not exploit it for political purposes.
We deplore the taking of all human life, even that of an abortionist. And just watch: The left will exploit this for political purposes.
"Evidence" suggest that Tiller performed unsafe and illegal abortions. The Kansas jury that acquitted him of just that was the tool of a liberal governor and a liberal judge.
Tiller was a baby killer who specialized in late term abortions and who committed tens of thousands of them. (Insert torture porn description of a late term abortion here.)
The elimination of Tiller the Killer was justifiable homicide, but we played no role is creating the climate for it. All we did was speak the truth.
Who?
Obama is a socialist. And the most pro-abortionist president ever. That makes it his fault.
I don't blame everyone who checks a pro-life box on the pollster's chart. I know that ambivalence is the emotion often cast onto the sidelines of this debate. But it is well past time for the anti-abortion movement to denounce those who are in the profession of inflaming passions: Those who call Obama the "most pro-abortion president ever." Those who ratchet up the rhetoric on a Supreme Court nominee. Those who cull doctors from their honored profession by labeling them "abortionists."
That anti-choice groups have created a dangerous environment for doctors who perform a legal medical procedure seems self-evident. You don't see pro-choice groups picketing doctors who don't perform abortions, threatening them and publishing their home addresses, or murdering them. The rationalization by the right-wing blogosphere of Dr. Tiller's assassination is repugnant. The left doesn't need to politicize this tragedy: The right is doing that without our help...
Wayback Machine:The Who Sell Out (Deluxe Edition), The Who. When The Who released Sell Out in 1967, it arrived during the Summer of Love as a contrarian tribute to what Dave Marsh called in his excellent essay about the album the romance of the transistor radio and to the kids who learned about new music from listening to them. Replete with commercials and public service announcements, Sell Out boomed thunderous anthems like "I Can See For Miles" on the heels of novelty songs like "Tatoo" before leading into such pop wonders as "I Can't Reach You" and lovely ballads like "Sunrise." The album captured the experience perfectly. While the term "concept album" carries connotations of pompous grandiosity, Sell Out is a concept that works from beginning to end.
My first transistor radio was about 4" x 4". I regularly removed the back of it and studied the innards. It was my link to popular music, and it had one monaural speaker that I often eschewed in favor of the single earbud that came with the radio. When I listened that way, I could turn up the radio as loudly as I wanted to. That's what music was to me in those days: Loud and monaural.
Now, Geffen Records has released a 2CD Deluxe Edition of The Who Sell Out with all kinds of bonus tracks and -- best of all -- the vaunted mono recording of the album. The mono version is the Criterion Collection of CDs: When the sound floods out of my speakers like a great flood from a bursting dam, it's like I'm hearing the album for the first time. I suppose a sound engineer could dissemble the stereo version and rebuild it from scratch with improved results, but I don't think he or she could ever capture the romance the way that the mono version does. If you are a fan of The Who, you already know that your collection is incomplete without the Deluxe Edition of Sell Out. If you're not, well, there are worse places to start. Incredibly highly recommended...
Robert Frost's Banjo reviewsStew Called New Orleans, the excellent new CD by Paul Sanchez and John Boutte. RFB's review includes a video of their beautiful interpretation of Paul Simon's timeless "American Tune"...
Friday's Choice. Greatness: The Who perform "I Can See For Miles":
"Marigny Girl," by collagist and printmaker extraordinaire Tony Fitzpatrick, graces the cover of Stew Called New Orleans, the fine new CD from Paul Sanchez and John Boutte. The pair knocked out the CD in a single session. Stew glows with a relaxed confidence, starting from the very beginning with Boutte's sterling reading of Paul Simon's "American Tune." Boutte and Sanchez trade vocals throughout, augmented greatly by Leroy Jones prowling trumpet and an occasional solo from guitarist Todd Duke. But what really makes this CD shine is not so much the material -- excellent though it may be -- as the obvious friendship and affection between the two men bulwarked by arrangements built around Sanchez' rhythm guitar. Individual CDs from both made my end-of-year Best Of list, and I can't imagine that Stew will be any different...
You can listen to tracks from Stew Called New Orleans at the Lousiana Music Factory here...
"Marigny Girl" is part of a exhibition called Chapel Of Moths: A New Orleans Project, assembled by Fitzpatrick for last years biennial Prospect.1 New Orleans. You can view the exhibit here...
Fitzpatrick has been designing Steve Earle's CD covers for nearly fifteen years:
So Arlen Specter is now a Democrat. I've always been lukewarm toward party switchers because the act usually has more to do with self-preservation than principle. Specter is no different: The 79-year old faced a stiff primary challenge from his right. More than anything -- and way ahead of principle and party loyalty -- these guys want to be United States senators. Specter has already said that he will continue to oppose the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), I hope he doesn't get a free ride in the Democratic primary of heavily unionized Pennsylvania...
To finish up your evening with a little dancing, leave the Santa Crawl for the Mid-City Lanes Rock'n'Bowl, where Big Sam's Funky Nation will hold court. Or if you'd rather hear some world class jazz, you can take the ferry to Algiers for Delfeayo Marsalis' 7 p.m. set at the Old Point and get back in plenty of time for the back end of the Santa Crawl. Le bon ton roulez indeed!...
The Treme Brass Band shows off the art of resistance, supporting a sit-in at St. Augustine's church. The church of the oldest black Catholic parish in the nation was slated for demolition until protesting parishioners successfully intervened.
If you still need another reason to visit New Orleans, the opening of the Southern Food And Beverage Museum ought to seal the deal...
How about these excerpts from William Finnegan's 2004 New Yorker profile of Illinois senatorial candidate Barack Obama:
"[Representative] Jan Schakowsky told me about a recent visit she had made to the White House with a congressional delegation. On her way out, she said, President Bush noticed her “OBAMA” button. “He jumped back, almost literally,” she said. “And I knew what he was thinking. So I reassured him it was Obama, with a ‘b.’ And I explained who he was. The President said, ‘Well, I don’t know him.’ So I just said, ‘You will.’ ”
As for Obama's supposed elitism: “He could have gone to the most opulent of law firms,” David Axelrod, a longtime friend who is now Obama’s media adviser, said. “After Harvard, Obama could have done anything he wanted.” What he wanted was to practice civil-rights law in Chicago, and he did, representing victims of housing and employment discrimination and working on voting-rights legislation for a small public-interest firm."
The same article includes this remark from a Republican Illinois state senate colleague of Obama's: " “I knew from the day he walked into this chamber that he was destined for great things,” he said. “In Republican circles, we’ve always feared that Barack would become a rock star of American politics.” Indeed...
Somewhat less insightful was conservative pundit George Will, who wrote that millionaire Jack Ryan, Obama's first Republican opponent, "keeps in moral and physical trim by going to Mass and the gym each morning." Ryan dropped out of the race after the records of his divorce became public, records which disclosed allegations by Ryan's wife that he had pressured her into going to sex clubs with the intent of having sex in public. Daily Mass is fine and all, but in this case daily Confession might have made more sense. (Obama went on to easily defeat Ryan's replacement, right-wing African-American crank Alan Keyes, who hastily moved from Maryland to Illinois to make the race)...
Will somebody please once-and-for-all explain to me just exactly, precisely, indubitably what this man (Paul Sanchez) is singing about? I don't get it...
Citizen K. Read: Louisiana Power & Light, John Dufresne
As previously mentioned, the recent trip to New Orleans included a wallet-crushing visit to the Louisiana Music Factory. The Factory is part of an amazingly vital music scene, all the more so since Katrina drove so many musicians away from the Crescent City. Everything I review here is a new release; hopefully, it provides a hint of the breadth and depth contemporary Louisiana music.
Exit To Mystery Street, Paul Sanchez. Currently No. 1 on the Citizen K. hit parade! A contagious blend of party rockers ("Hoob-a-Joob" is destined to be a New Orleans classic) and ballads of layered intent, Mystery Street is the New Orleans experience writ large: Enjoy life as it is, because it can come to an end at any time. In Sanchez' New Orleans, brass band musicians and Dixieland horns keep the feet tapping from the onset, a Mexican drinking song appears out of nowhere, then a contemplative trumpet and an acoustic guitar engage the emotions. And when he sings with apparent insouciance that "I don't care who knows/I love you from your head to your toes," he's talking about the great city itself. A wonderful CD from beginning to end. Highly recommended.
La Louisiana Sessions, Roddie Romero And The Hub City All-Stars. Think of a zydeco version of Los Lobos. Roddie Romero hasn't reached those exalted heights yet, but the ambition is there in this 2-CD set of trad, rock, blues, and R&B delivered with a Cajun flavor. The bands jumps nimbly and energetically from one tune to the next, unified by Romero's accordion and slide guitar.
If Dreams Come True, Ann Savoy & Her Sleepless Knights. Savoy sets zydeco aside for this engaging set of Parisian bistro jazz. She and her light-fingered quartet breath new life into familiar tunes by Benny Goodman, Django Reinhardt, Rodger and Hart, and Jerom Kern, among others. Bewitching, yes, but hardly bothersome or bewildering: When Savoy sings "Reaching For The Moon," she finds its ephemeral light.
Good Neighbor, John Boutte. One of New Orleans' premier jazz vocalists, Boutte show-stopping performance of Randy Newman's "Louisiana 1927" at the 2006 JazzFest updated the lyrics of the song that has become the unofficial anthem of post-Katrina New Orleans. Good Neighbor comprises covers of Neil Young and Johnny Mercer, plus 11 original songs written by Boutte and Paul Sanchez (who produced the album at the same time he recorded and produced Mystery Street). The originals include the title track, which revives a New Orleans tradition: The jazz booty-call song. Sanchez favors light arrangement supported by Todd Duke's acoustic guitar and Herlin Riley's percussion. And, really, that's all Boutte's beautiful tenor requires.
Cedric Watson, Cedric Watson. Fiddler, accordianist, and vocalist Watson brings a subtle African-American touch to traditional Cajun music. While there's nothing overt, the CD's fifteen original and trad numbers have a bit more swing here, a touch of blues there, and dabs of soul all over. The 23-year old Watson shows terrific talent, so much that you can't help but look forward to his future.
Peace, Love, & Understanding, Big Sam's Funky Nation. Big Sam, the former trombonist for The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, leads the Funky Nation through a whirlwind set of brass band jazz-funk fusion. The core group driven by Alvin Ford Jr.'s drumming powers through eight instrumentals featuring excellent solos and ensemble work before guest vocalists like Ivan Neville join them for the closing four rave-ups. These guys must put on an awesome live show, but this will do just fine until I can see them.
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