The End of Innocence

Hot Spring Heaven or Work Place Hell....

Once I was innocent. I could be persuaded. I believed. I didn’t particularly go for conspiracy theories. I was more of a patriot than that.

I don’t know exactly when I started to feel as if the free press wasn’t so free. I’m rather dumbfounded that some billionaire is bankrolling some candidate and is soon to decide on his own whether or not to totally fund the candidates advertising campaign. He’s already kicked in about 10 million. This is a second 10 for Super Tuesday.

One big shot with big bucks tossing 10 million dollars into the ad campaign of one candidate who can’t seem to scratch up that kind of dough any other way somehow doesn’t sound like the kind of democracy I grew up in.

What it does sound like is the reality I now live in. It sounds like this new darker version of this experiment in governance unleashed by our founders.

I meet people everywhere and of every stripe and tribe and kind. None of us feel as if the thing is like what the thing used to be like. We find the three main over the air broadcasting networks don’t prefer progressive commentators on Sunday shows. Instead the shows are stacked with folk from some other universe.

We’ve turned denial into a high art. Tobacco ‘denialistas’ have turned into today’s climate change skeptics. We go from there being a consensus regarding women’s health issues to suddenly and out of nowhere questioning whether we should be spending any money on women’s reproductive health care services at all!

I’m a street act. I juggle fire. I tell a joke. I pass the hat. I’ve lived a faith based life. I have faith in people. I’ve gone without many ordinary forms of security because I believed and still believe that what I do is part of something that is necessary and important.

But, I want to be the wild guy. I want to be the nut job. I want to be the one making the jokes. I want to stick out in the foreground and in the background? I want sanity. I want banks to be boring. I want my neighbor to have a good opportunity to have a good job.

I want good schools for his children.

It doesn’t work when what I do pays better than what my neighbor his doing. It is better for my work as a variety entertainer to be marginally functional and for my neighbor’s job in the mainstream and his remuneration and benefits to provide a good living.

Teachers, police, firemen, auto workers, garbage collectors and on and on; these are important jobs and folk should have a little something to show for their efforts.

I kind of believe in that old John Lennon lyric, and do believe that these are our hero’s. A great teacher, a skilled fireman, a dedicated auto worker, they are vital roles in our society. How anyone could imagine a world without good people doing this good work for good pay is beyond me. Like I said, I used to be innocent.

Now out at Amazon and Barnes and Noble for the astounding street show bargain of $1.00

 

Being Yourself is What You do….Nevada

A Long Way Between is the Point

The Sourdough Saloon marks a near rock bottom crossroads. North is Tonopah, south Las Vegas while west you’ll head into Death Valley.

Last night hard choices had to be made. We cast our culinary fate with the saloon. The bar changed hands two months ago and new ownership was still working out the kinks. The Sourdough is slathered in felt pen signed dollar bills. They are stuck to kingdom come, floor and ceiling, a museum of currency desecration as tourist sport.

Of course bonus throwback libertarian amenities include geezers that have come out from under a rock in the desert and bellied up to the bar with their sweethearts doing that slow motion suicide move- smoking cigarettes.

Been a while since I saw an old rail thin desert soul wearing a sweat stained Stetson. The old cowboy had got so skinny that beneath his cinched up jeans wasn’t much of an ass left. It doesn’t look like a jackpot has paid out in these parts since before the atomic test site was still in its luminous booming business.

A man dressed like Buffalo Bill Cody comes on in. He’s got one of these swollen red and purple noses. It is a storied nose. The saloon owner played Patsy Cline on the jukebox. The gent broke into a saloon monologue. He had technique too. I could not detect any discernable gap in his soliloquy. This is an unsettling oratorical device. Man like that if you don’t break the grip will filibuster the life out of a room.

We voted with our feet.Nevadafolk believe in truth. You might tolerate a big bag of hot air in some other state but not here. Here every kind and type is allowed to find their place in the world. Strength here is in the allowance a man extends to another to be who they are, the forbearance one citizen bestows to another to do things so long as that thing does not harm another soul.

A New York State of Mind explains one kind of mind and Nevada explains another. It is a never mind.

Between these outposts, these isolated boom and busted towns stretch an ocean of sagebrush and creosote bush. In between there’s heartbreak and emptiness; sometimes a coyote. Here on a thin ribbon of asphalt Nevada takes hold of a soul to test the mettle.Nevada puts you in the embrace of a sweltering summer or a cruel cold winter. It bends the will. It seasons appetite. You’ll eat wishes and drink fate. A meal like that makes a person careful about what part of what they are that they put on the stove. Nothing and nowhere is not what it seems. Might be a place you pass through or the end of the line. What’s your pleasure pilgrim?

When in Doubt and All Else Fails

The Not So Secret to Happiness

Okay, here in San Francisco the weather is doing its impression of paradise. I looked into my heart and my heart said go, just go, and so indeed going is where I will go…

Race finish

This is 2nd race pic

Posted from WordPress for Android

Inspirational Change-aroony

Empty Tanker, Empty Change

Charging ahead full steam and now out of steam. I’m exhausted. Inspiration?????? I still have some, but it is rather more like this empty tanker. I’m in need of a new load of energy…..Good nights sleep will change all of that.

Changing Ground Rules for Teens

One Hundred and Forty-Four Feet of Consortium Change The Lovely Artemis in Nantucket

It is hard to read the paper and have the headlines not change your mind. What the heck is going on? All I want to do is a show now and again, get a book published, and enjoy the good things life has to offer. I think Syria is easier to understand than a credit default swap, but then is the tyranny of a dictator all that much different than a financial sector that runs amok, blows up, reconstitutes itself and in its wake destroys the wealth of so many millions and millions of the worlds citizens? Now, on top of what appears to be revolution across the Middle East we have social unrest (polite term for revolutionary action) popping up in London, Liverpool and Manchester… It appears to me that capitalism left  unfettered, unrestrained, to its own devices will do whatever it is allowed to do to maximize its share of the opportunity. If we allow it to pollute it will. If we allow it to compensate its executives unreasonably it will, if we allow it to smash unions and diminish wages and benefits it will. It doesn’t do this with emotion, or with ideology, it doesn’t do this necessarily with any evil or malice. It simply does so by using its guidance system…profits. Giant profits beget enormous
profits. Money captures politicians, then regulators, then think tanks, then public relations firms that concoct messages that attempt to capture the people. If they can’t win with a message then they will attempt to muddy the waters, obscure the issues, raise doubts to the facts of the situation, and regroup and then once more the organization will reintroduce its new message and try again to prevail. It isn’t a black and white world. Yes, there are corporations that seem constrained and well controlled. But, when one of these really big behemoths breaks out of the cage, and many do, a great deal of a corporations goal’s are met at the expense of the will of the peoples. It isn’t binary. Do you understand? It isn’t either/or. It is a matter of good governance. We create frameworks for these institutions to function within. They don’t set the framework, the people do, through their governments. Here’s an idea! Let’s say I’m a teenager and I want to date your daughter. Instead of the parents setting the ground rules I get to. I tell you what time I’ll bring her home, tell you what you can and can’t know about what we are going to do, and when it seems like something just doesn’t seem right about all of that, I’ll
flood your house with phone calls, emails, and messengers to your front door all raising doubts about rules you thought you might enforce. It is possible I might just get away with it for a date or two, but then nine months later? I think the parents might regret having ever changed their minds, but by then it’s too late. That’s what I like about a good idea, its fool proof, why a really big idea in this day and age as come to be know as “too big too fail.”

Bankrupt Heart               The Second Novel 

“Dad,” she said with a question in her voice.

He echoed her tone, “Sophia,” Ry continued washing
the dishes, drying them, finding their place in the cupboards.

She sat down at the dining table.

Ry used the dish towel to dry his hands. He sat down
next to his daughter.

“What?”

She didn’t know the answer to her question. Finally,
she gave it up, she said, “Sharks!”

“Sharks,” It was out of the blue.

She’d become more brazen, “yeah, sharks, are there
sharks in the water?”

“You mean big sharks, man-eaters, Great Whites?”

She was growing cranky. She put her hand on her chin.
She stared straight ahead. She thought the question had merit. “I don’t know
what kind of sharks,”

Ry put his arm around Sophia. “I’m not going to die from
a shark attack.”

 “So, if the
boat sank sharks wouldn’t kill you?”

Mojave changes more

Tailgate breakfast

Posted from WordPress for Android

Mojave Changes

Slow ride across the desert today. Road trip for the last week. Heading back to Bay Area but before a short respite in the cathedral of the rocks…that will snap me out of the long pull of twelve shows in three days…

Fake Change

Sunet over Bakersfield

“The sand was cheerful and white beneath
the evening’s muted glow. A few other people were scattered along the edge of
the water. A long gleaming light of a quarter moon shimmered off the water.
Venus was low on the horizon, big and bright. The sky was overdone, a steady
constant glow surrounded by flickering stars.”

Highway Home

Nothing ever seems to change. Okay, that’s just the way it seems, but some things do change while others continue headed into old change that looks like no change at all. Writing about the emotional lives of characters in novels usually leads to sex, sex leads to pregnancy, to forming families, to births, to building lives together and on and on…. We pull the camera back and look not at the actors but at the playing field. There we see an unrelenting series of facts. One of the more interesting facts is that it seems over the last 50,000 years that we have become spectacularly good at reproducing ourselves in robust numbers. This alone must explain the terrific proliferation of romance novels. We’ve fanned out across the globe and have done everything in our power to use all this stuff. We use the fresh water. We use the fish. We use the forests. We use the air. Looking around at the moment we see that it is becoming more and more difficult to find enough stuff to keep this all going right now not to mention getting more stuff ready for the new arrivals who’ll be coming soon. Then, upon evaluating our inventories someone accuses some of us of having a scarcity mentality! How incredibly clever…I won’t suggest this as fact, but rather as a mere notion to consider that perhaps with this ever growing growth of increasing demand upon this only place we know where life is suited to our needs that we are finding the recent frictions of the last few weeks a sign that perhaps we might want to go a little slower, bring fewer of us here at a time, allowing the earth to replenish her cupboards for the next and the next…it isn’t how many we can get here for this party, its how long we can arrange to have the party last….sustainability…isn’t that a novel idea…or not.

Step Ball Change

The Dance of Love

“Right now, but one day, when the dust settles, and you get your head screwed back on, and your feet are touching the ground, you’ll wake up and maybe I’ll just be a woman, not amazing, not beautiful, not anything special, just a woman.”

Highway Home

You don’t want to get caught on the wrong foot. Trying to change your footing after you’ve gone all in is most often impossible. Might be that the action you’ve taken is irreversible and you will suffer the consequences for the rest of your life. Going head over heels for a new love interest can be an exhilarating ride. It is fun to watch a friend’s dashboard light up and watch the launch. The risks of going all in with your heart is not a bad call, but sometimes these things don’t turn out, endings can be messy, feelings hurt worse in the end than the exhilarating feelings you had on the ride up into the wild blue yonder of romance. It is the ultimate damned if you do, damned if you don’t fact of a high risk love life. Too many people place too much caution into their romance and not enough chance. So, learning to keep your feet on the ground can turn into a lonely stance, losing your footing can be risky, then again being agile, staying on your toes, ready for whatever is next, open mind and open heart, when the moment arrives, and you find yourself right there at the beginning of something new, something you want to take a chance on…I wouldn’t recommend keeping your feet on the ground. I recommend being ready to change the foot your standing on. That’s dancing from the heart…