Foolish Heart

It took an act of congress to keep Oggy working. That's not a good sign, in case you need a translation. But while we wait for the merciful end at least there is a good soundtrack I'd like to share with y'all. The movie Phantom Thread features some retro jazz piano improv for a moody soundtrack that blends into this a la carte Oscar Peterson piano solo. It was hard to figure out where one song ended and the other started but this melody sticks out and forced me to hunt it down. It's good enough to be confused with a Schubert or Schumann song but it's pure Victor Young, composer of some tasty tunes such as 'When I fall In Love". The movie takes place in the musically blessed 1950s so this song is relevant for more reasons than one. True, I am a Ray Bryant loyalist but this melody is expressed to the max by Peterson's lithe personality.

Gospel

I once drove through Tulsa, OK with a leather decked gutter punk who was travelling to Austin, Tx to reclaim his pawned tattoo kit. I stopped in Tulsa to look for work in hurricane response but the dairy queen ethic of locals-firsters chased me back onto the tired Route 66. We were treated as suspicious wanderers, politely moved from town to town by sheriffs and federal marshals after a pat down and ID check. In a land of laws the lawless have no home so we wandered south, avoiding public places, camping by rivers, bathing in wastewater treatment drainage culverts. I was as broke as a virgin prostitute so we started playing music on the streets until the police would run us off. In Tulsa we ran into a musician who turned me on to Southern Gospel. I was aiming for Texas to pay tribute to Western Swing artist Bob Wills but caught the Southern Gospel bug before I got there. Authentic mono recorded Western Swing of 1944 is my ideal music. It swings, moves, shakes, makes you want to do the freaky deeky and it often involves only two chords that are embellished to death by long-fingered, cigar-smoking guitarists with names like "Slim" and "Hank" and "Three Thumbs". Buddy Holly probably had to smuggle Western Swing singles into his bedroom in the virtuous town of Lubbock but I hear lots of Milton Brown influences in early Cricket's recordings. It's 'Western Jazz' if you want to get technical. Or you could call Duke Ellington the "Urban Bob Wills".

The stop in Tulsa introduced me to Southern Gospel as it was meant to be performed, not in the previous incarnations that I'd encountered in New Orleans rescue missions where the raspberry jam tastes like arsenic and the TB phlegm and pubic hair clogs the shower drain and attending the church service is required to sleep and the out of tune piano plinks like Tom Waits on LSD to the dozing black audience.

Years turned into years and my Gospel addiction finally introduced me to The Golden Gate Quartet Jubilee. I prefer Acapella when listening solely for meditative purposes but

Joshua Fit The Battle demonstrates the brilliant enunciation of these four vocalists that I have to feature the video. It's hard to slur the word "Joshua" into "Fit" but they do it smooth as melted butter on a slab of bacon.

It's interesting to note that I was parked in a vacant ball field parking lot, no one in sight because of the brutal heat and humidity of Corpus Christi, TX, playing Southern Gospel tunes for my own pleasure when some enforcers of Law and Justice rolled up and had me on my ass with my guitar in my mouth before I could call my ACLU rep. I always think of that scenario, playing gospel music alone in a city named after Jesus Christ, and being molested by enforcers of Law and Justice for no fucking reason, and I wonder if God isn't laughing his ass off as old Oggy stumbles around this wacky pinball game of life.

No matter. I'm not bitter at that because I've got plenty current events to be bitter about. I'm a working man. The internet has more devoted writers and narcissistic travelers who can fund their adventures with royalties selling bath salts and plastic dildos so they don't have to work. I'm not an affiliate salesman for anything. Money isn't that important because I've seen the false smile selfies pasted on the over-tan youth-corporate-shill-generation and I want no part of it. It's not art. It's not honest. A shill is a shill and their product has been done before. I'm too busy nursing my emotional wounds to type anything worthwhile so I'm not going to force it. My powers ebb and flow, my interest waxes and wanes. 

A guy got dead shot today as I passed a Dairy Queen. He was wanted in another state but the Federal Marshals decided to pop the question on the busiest street in town where I happened to be remodeling a Redwood deck. A stray bullet could've taken my neck flaps off. Sometimes they take the plate away before you're finished eating. That's life. I'm still here but no one can say about tomorrow; the fates have their own agenda, their own time frame to work with and there ain't shit I can do but aim high and button each shirt button until there ain't none left. 

The word 'fit' is slave slang for 'fought' so that should give you some clue where the tune comes from. Joshua crumbled the walls of Jericho and freed his people with nothing but trumpets. I've got plenty of excuses to keep my chains tight on; what's yours?

Tasty Piano

This tune is in a Django songbook I have so I tracked down some other recordings of it. Sam Cooke sang a ridiculous version. Nat King Cole recorded it too. Especially with super nasty guitar licks. But Errol Garner blew this away. The octave melody. I think I could listen to 100 different arrangements of this song and not get tired. Mean to Me by Dean Martin is another tune to get you started on infinite recordings. Jazz is common literature performed by the many.

Renovator

The urge to read my own writing ebbs and flows. Lately, I'm a working man so I only have an urge to read a John D. Macdonald story and go to sleep. It's 6 or sometimes 7 day weeks, 10 hours a day, baked beans or chicken pot pies for dinner, wine to wash it down then crash until 5am. No more Costa Rican beaches. No more morning visits to the Nicaraguan beach. I'm desperately trying to save money after my MRI knee debacle. I don't know much about bathroom renovations and I know even less about renovating 100 year old bathrooms, but what I know I learned in the last two weeks because circumstances left me in charge of the entire project. I don't mind being the contractor but I do have a problem balancing my OCD with a time schedule that requires everything be in the ground before the concrete truck arrives.

Tamping dirt for dollars

ADA means Americans with Disabilities Act and that's something many fortunate folks don't have to concern themselves with but a public renovation is very much defined by this act. I'm in favor of this but I also think back to 1933 and the Civilian Conservation Corp who did most of the work in parks, including dry stacking the boulder footing for this bathroom I am working in. The CCC was a work relief program started by FDR in 1933. FDR was disabled by polio and spent his whole presidency in a wheelchair. I reflect on these two details every time I'm at a National Park with CCC provenance. Putting a ramp instead of steps, when dealing with a blank slate, isn't much different. But removing historic steps and replacing them with a wheelchair ramp is a tall order. I often wonder why the original CCC folks were not instructed to design and build lodges and headquarters that would be accessible by the President who created the work relief program that was responsible for their jobs designing and building lodges. This small decision back in 1933 to start with a blank slate and build with the bipedal in mind instead of the wheelchair operating President has led to almost 30 years of renovations with him in mind. These renovations include this specific bathroom that was not remotely accessible to wheelchairs for 90 years and will soon be. Before you applaud my efforts I should point out that the landing that the bathroom is on is barely accessible to wheelchairs. The monument itself is accessible to vehicles but the trails are all too steep, even the paved trails. So, we have a kind of odd paradox that creates an ADA compliant bathroom in a place where no wheelchairs can access. This meant removing one toilet because we needed the room for the larger space of the wheelchair. So instead of 3 urinals and 2 toilets and 2 sinks the bathroom will have 1 toilet and 2 urinals and 1 sink. Everything will be accessible to wheelchairs, if the wheelchair can find a way to the bathroom through the visitor center.

I've been distracted lately, plodding through work like a zombie. I came dangerously close to 100 amps of 220v, actually spent one of my nine lives cutting through live wire that did not beep on my current finder. The Sawzall blade melted but I was unfazed. There were other details but my mind was on the Decay of Man, the multitude of moral failings in my life, the petty trespasses I've committed, the paltry paychecks that I receive. There's never a time when the future should be ignored, everything adds up, especially stone walls. They don't go away until someone demolishes or renovates them and that's a man's work, build, renovate, rebuild, demolish, take the shit to the dump, flush it away where no one can see it. We get a much-needed job from a man in a wheelchair. "Build the country a Park!" and instantly we neglect to make that park accessible to the man who gave us the job. Was it the stress of the depression that dissolved our forsight? Ok. I'll buy that. But what is our excuse today? We have food. The whole country of China is enslaved to feed our technology addiction. Shouldn't that calm us and let us sleep easy, free us to make sound choices with clear minds? no. We're more distracted than starving CCC workers in 1934 digging trenches for foundations upon which a building will be built that only someone who never was afflicted by polio can enter.

Plowing

A year ago around this time I was wandering southern Utah, wishing I could get a job in a national park and be a ranger, romanticizing the life I would live getting paid to commune with nature. Well, the reality is ten hours plowing snow through a deserted Douglas Fir forest. It's hard work and doesn't pay much and it's cold and the same Bob Dylan songs play on the radio.