Define music

Lately I have taken (and given) a little grief over the discovery and appreciation of Lady GaGa. Mostly it is all in good fun. The other day a fellow said what she does doesn’t count as music because she relies mostly on synthesizers. Rock music is drums and guitars, real instruments, he said. That got me thinking a little. I came across the idea that really, anything that makes a noise can be used to make music. Among other things, I have heard old steam whistles used to produce a tune.

It is not the instrument that defines the music. More likely the music defines the instrument. When one sound isn’t right for a piece of music, sometimes it takes invention to produce the sound the artist wants.

Instruments have evolved for centuries. What was the first stringed instrument? Was it a lyre? A Lute? A sitar? Most likely it was the string on a hunter’s bow when he discovered different tensions created different sounds. So, with the synthesizer in the back of your mind, think about when that purist lyre aficionado first encountered the piano. Can you imagine? It’s a stringed instrument, but there is this mechanical connection between the player and the strings. That’s not music. Or, remember the horrified fans who walked out when Bob Dylan went electric in a concert? Do electronically enhanced instruments produce music or something else?

How did that great ram’s horn player react when he saw a horn hammered out of metal? And how did the guy who played that react to the horn that showed up with valves on it? Or, OMG, when someone put a slide on it and came up with the trombone. That’s not music.

Great artists always take the art to greater levels and if there are new techniques or new instruments to try, they need to be tried. Modern rock music is a fusion of electronic sound anyway given the process of mixing in which different tracks and riffs and instruments and vocals are laid down at different times and then melded in the mixing process. Paul McCartney cannot play all those instruments at the same time.

The one instrument that has remained consistent over the years is the voice, and Lady GaGa certainly has one of those, plus she is a trained pianist and often plays that instrument accompanying herself. And that piano playing often is fused with the synthesizer. And, if you listen carefully on some songs, her voice is run through electronic, synthesized alteration as well. Experimenting, failing, more experimenting, success; it is all about expanding the limits to achieve the artistic goal.

Summed up in the words of Paul Simon, “Every generation sends a hero up the pop charts.” Let them climb those charts using whatever sound-making contraption gets them there.

And speaking of Delta

" ... Stop the money chase, Lay back, relax, Get back on the human track ..."

A very strange encounter. In the middle of the reception for my daughter's wedding a fellow walked up and without even introducing himself (I sort of knew who he was but we had never been introduced... I think he is fairly high up in the banking community in Anchorage). well, he started ragging on me about the failure of newspapers. Not the failure in economic terms, but apparently the failure to write the news about and in favor of things that interested or affected him. I kept trying to find a courteous way out of this, but it was like this guy had this pent up criticism for journalists and finally had one he could bring it out to. 

 Among his complaints was the idea somehow that the press had not brought out that Alaska fishermen DID receive money from Exxon over the spill and that was not made public in the awful press. That almost got under my skin. The paper I worked for published several stories about payments to fishermen when they were made, but this guy evidently missed those days or conveniently forgot them. The fact that the Exxon obligation was cut by the courts from $5 billion to less than $500 million and more than 30 percent of the people died before payments could be made apparently meant nothing to this guy. When it didn't sound like it was going to stop any time soon, I mumbled some excuse about having to give a toast or something and got away from him, wondering why the man chose my daughter's wedding to put me in the position of defending the American press.

Later it crossed my mind that i might have said something like, yeah the press has its failings but it was the banking industry that almost brought down the world's economy. How about if we report more about that?

" ... Won't you come on and sing it children. He's a stranger in a strange land."

And the connection? Lyrics from Leon Russell's "Stranger in a strange land" during his Delta music phase

A treat to beat your feet in the Mississippi mud

I am not sure what to say about this and to be honest haven't thought it all through yet, but here goes a little rambling.

June 12 I wrote about one Gulf oil spill solution I thought might work and that was letting the Mississippi River flow into the bays, marshes and bayous of the Delta to create a current to push the oil offshore, keeping it out of the wetlands. At the time I did send the suggestion to the EPA at its Gulf spill website.

A couple of days later there was news from Washington that President Obama had spoken of doing just that to rebuild the Delta after years of loss due to rechanneling and controlling the river.

After being gone from the news for a week, I learned last night that just that is being done ... fresh water from the river has been allowed to flow into the bays of the delta in an effort to hold the oil offshore where it will maybe be kept out of the grasses and where it is easier to collect than it is to clean it off blades of grass.

One problem that developed was the fresh water killed oysters in the area. Now, I have three things to say about that. (maybe four)

To begin with, if fresh water kills them, they probably are not indigenous. For another if oil intruded, they probably would have died anyway. For a third, oyster spat is readily available, people in Alaska buy it all the time from Oregon for farms here, so the population could be reinstated after the danger passes. The fourth is not as pleasant. Sometimes the individual has to be sacrificed for the whole and perhaps this is one of those times. Oil getting into the wetlands would probably be a far worse catastrophe than the loss of oysters by fresh water.

As for the idea of releasing the Mississippi water into the Delta to try to hold the oil offshore, I am not going to take credit for this. But I will accept the idea of parallel thought processes and take a little comfort in that. I just hope it works and relieves some of the threats to the Gulf Coast, and maybe in the longer term begins the rebuilding of the Mississippi Delta.

Watching this space? Are you?

Like I said more to come, but not tonight. Just hanging out before heading for the airport. But, here is the obligatory last photo at Denali Park. Climbing on the sign. Had one last year, it is in the invasion slide show to the right. This was earlier today.

just a quick update

Relatives are here traveling Alaska for a week, first stop, my daughter's wedding which was accomplished without the necessity of a shotgun, formal or otherwise. Then they had a day on a boat out of Seward and saw killer whales, humpback whales, dall porpoises and the sun. Back in Palmer tonight, then heading for Denali National Park in the morning. Much too tired to go much farther with this tonight, but you have to know one is building. Watch this space for developments now that I have the perspective officially of a father in law.

And, speaking of environment …

… I live in a strange one. It has been raining around here for a few days on and off. I say around here because it is NOT raining here. I have been wanting a little rain for the garden but not much has fallen. For example, the other night I drove all the way home in a fairly hard rain, all the way that is until about two miles from the house. At that point there was no rain and the road was absolutely dry. (A year or so ago, I wrote about a day it was raining on the house, but not at the end of the driveway.) Another night, again rain was falling, but the wind was blowing hard. There are places on the Knik River bridge where snow builds up in winter and dust in summer during wind storms. This night no dust or snow, but everywhere the wind crossed the road on the bridge, the pavement was blown absolutely dry. There were stripes of dry, gray pavement interspersed with wet. black pavement crossing the road. Talk about your blow dryer.

Great minds etc.

Not sure what to make of this, but isn't it nice to be listened to? And the president no less. You go Mr. Obama. Just four days after I wrote about the Mississippi Delta, this came across the wire. (I have never posted blatant copies of somone else's work before, but I used to work for the Chicago Tribune, so maybe I get a pass)

At any rate: From the Chicago Tribune July 16:

By JULIE CART and JIM TANKERSLEY

Tribune Washington Bureau
=
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama's announcement of an ambitious plan to restore Louisiana's wetlands promises to ensnare the administration in a long-standing political morass over how best to manage the lower Mississippi River.
The size, scope and details of the restoration plan Obama announced Tuesday are still taking shape under the guidance of Navy Secretary and former Mississippi Gov. Ray Mabus, White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said. Obama asked Mabus to assess the Gulf Coast needs and complete his restoration plan to address them "as soon as possible," aides said.
It appears likely that the environmental component of that plan will go far beyond cleaning up beaches and marshlands tainted by spilled oil, to rebuilding and restoring coastal areas that have suffered for decades from erosion, the impacts of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, commercial activities and other ills.
"Beyond compensating the people of the Gulf in the short term, it's also clear we need a long-term plan to restore the unique beauty and bounty of this region," Obama said in a nationally televised address. "The oil spill represents just the latest blow to a place that has already suffered multiple economic disasters and decades of environmental degradation that has led to disappearing wetlands and habitats."
White House aides said the environmental restoration effort will be informed by the work of a federal interagency task force on Gulf Coast restoration, which in March released a "Roadmap for Restoring Ecosystem Resiliency and Sustainability" in Louisiana and Mississippi.
The roadmap calls for "bold and decisive action ... to curtail the rate of wetland loss and barrier island erosion in the area" and to restore ecosystems.
Obama is not the first American president to pledge to remake Louisiana's wetlands. Generations of political figures have been stymied by the complexity of the issue. The Mississippi River defines the Louisiana coast, which over millennia has deposited the sediments that established the landmass in the river's drainage. That natural land-building ceased with a succession of levee and dam projects beginning in the 1930s that have channelized the river.
As a result, the Mississippi no longer fans out, dropping sediment that creates new land. Instead, sediment sluices out to the seafloor. An estimated 1.2 million acres of wetlands have been converted to open water since the levee system began.
The "taming" of the river was intended to provide flood control and improve navigation for ships to the port of New Orleans. Few elected officials want to take on powerful interests that benefit from keeping the river's man-made berms in place. Prominent among those interests are the oil industry, which has benefited from an estimated 10,000 miles of canals that have been cut through south Louisiana's marshes to allow access for oil and gas vessels.
Gulf states will no doubt put their hands up seeking funding for pet projects, which in addition to wetlands restoration might include shoring up barrier islands and dredging bays and sounds. But many coastal scientists argue that the most effective solution to restoring Louisiana's wetlands is tackling the jury-rigged plumbing of the Mississippi.
"The single issue that would top any wish list is to change in the way the lower Mississippi River is managed," said Len Bahr, coastal adviser to five Louisiana governors. "Unless we really come to grips with that, we don't have a chance (of) saving the coast in the long run. They hope all these little projects will add up to something. They are all little Band-Aids."
Bahr said every time the issue of river management was broached by scientists, powerful political forces ruled the day.
Obama did not make clear how the effort would be funded or how much it would cost, but it appears likely that the administration will attempt to force BP to foot the bill.
"We must make a commitment to the Gulf Coast that goes beyond responding to the crisis of the moment ... and BP will pay for the impact this spill has had on the region," the president said.
The oil company has put up $350 million to fund a plan to help shore up Louisiana's barrier islands with the hope that the narrow sand spits will stop oil slicks from hitting the coast. Some critics of the project, which is championed by Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, say it is a back-door plan to fund coastal restoration that successive state and federal governments have failed to address.
———
(Los Angeles Times reporter Cart reported from Los Angeles and Tankersley of the Tribune Washington Bureau from Washington.)

The long, lonesome driveway

Yesterday my Jeep broke down in Anchorage and a friend drove me home from work last night. Among the things from the Jeep I brought home was the face plate from the stereo I just installed, the kind you can take out to prevent theft, since I was leaving the vehicle in the parking lot at work.

As I was walking up the driveway with the faceplate in hand, it hit me. I had done this before. When I was a kid I had a classy Blaupunkt radio. It was portable but came with a rack and plug-in you could install in a car and have a car radio as well as a portable, beach radio. Over the course of the next few years, no fewer than three times, I had to walk up the driveway carrying the radio, having had to leave the car it had been attached to in the ditch where I crashed, or the accident scene or whatever might have caused them to become separated. Some of that life went by in a blur and I forget a lot of details, but I do remember vividly those walks up the driveway and having to explain to unsympathetic parents what had happened to the car this time. And those difficult walks carrying the heavy radio came to the fore last night as I trudged up this driveway with that fancy new stereo face plate. It was much lighter than the Blaupunkt but in a way it carried the same weight and I had to laugh at how things change but not really.

At least last night I didn’t have to explain anything to anybody.

Grass banks, wetlands and the Delta Blues

During the early days of Exxon Valdez as we watched Exxon bumble about trying to mount a response, I often thought what they needed to do was get a few skookum Alaska fishermen together, let them look at the problem, scratch their heads a little and then come up with a plan to attack the problem with the same natural savvy they use when faced with difficulty on the grounds far from where you can call for help. It is the kind of mindset I used to argue with first aid instructors about. What do they tell you to do first? Call 911. Many of the places we go there is no 911, teach me how to deal with it with what I have. Some creative ideas were developed, employ the fish pumps generally used for sucking salmon out of fish holds to vacuum up oil, logs chained together end to end can work as makeshift booms, peat moss absorbs oil.

So, the other day I watched Rachel Maddow with a couple of scientists who know the wetlands south of New Orleans and they were pretty much talking about when the oil destroys them. They also talked about how even before the spill the area was losing something like 25 square miles of wetlands/marsh every year. I remember flying over them in a helicopter several years ago and seeing some straight what looked like waterways through them. In the natural world nothing is straight. I was told they were pipelines under the water, but cut straight through the swamp grasses. That lets salt water flow unimpeded deeper inland and is one of the reasons the area is losing 25 square miles a year. Another reason I have read, is that channeling the Mississippi River behind dikes and levies prevents what used to happen over the delta which was spreading the flow over a wide area before it enters the ocean, depositing soils and nutrients carried down river from as far away as Minnesota and the Dakotas. (These days it also carries a lot of fertilizers and waste and other chemicals that might not be so good. Supposedly that creates a dead zone out in the Gulf of Mexico.)

Years ago I participated in a project to develop an oil spill response plan for the Copper River Delta and flats, an incredibly rich area on the south coast of Alaska. It has some similarities to the Mississippi, but also hosts a red salmon run from which the fish are considered the finest in the world. Along the coast at the river mouth are what are called grass banks. I suspect they are somewhat similar to the wetlands in the Mississippi Delta. What we eventually decided was we have to get the oil before it gets to the grass banks because there was no way you were going to clean in that kind of area.

With that in mind, and not much else, while I was cleaning house yesterday, I got this idea. Is it possible to open selected areas in the dikes and levies channeling the Mississippi and let the river flow back into traditional areas of the delta? If it is, an outgoing current across the wetlands might be enough to keep the oil offshore where it can be intercepted before it gets into the grasses. (As a side note, I have never believed the only oil damage is when it hits shore. Just because you can't see it in the ocean doesn't mean it isn't harming something. Just ask Alaska herring fishermen about that one.) At any rate an outgoing current over a wide area might just push the oil offshore where there is a better chance of catching it, might help clean those areas that are already oiled, and serve to add protection from a storm surge should a large hurricane blow into the area. It sounds like it could be a huge job. But, the spill is already a huge job, and as such demands huge solutions.

At any rate I sent my idea to the EPA via email last night. I did not send it to BP because my experience with Exxon and what I hear from the Gulf, they do more to discourage innovation than they do to use it. We can try a lot of things, but this needs to be understood: Once the oil is in the water, we have already lost. Everything from now on is simply save what we can.

This is so cool

When I put in the garden last year I made a small pond with a little stone-lined stream coming out of it. It was mostly to catch rainwater dripping off a corner of the roof so i wouldn't end up with perennial mud puddle. Today I looked out and there was a little bird, a juncoe taking a bit of a dip in it.


The definition of "cool"

Hygienic? Really? I'll give you hygienic

I've complained about advertising before, but this is new so read on .... (and yes, still grooving but will not call anyone li'l monster). From the day the first innkeeper or cobbler hung out a sign letting people know what his service or product was, that bunch of scoundrels drawn to advertising has looked for new and better ways to make us want, need, have to have the products they hawk. Some efforts have been cute, some insulting, some infuriating... well, that's the picture, pick an emotion and reaction and you can find an advertisement that fits it.

The ones that are bothering me these days are the ones that are meant to instill fear or apprehension because you don't have a product or service. Am I going to die if my credit score is 639 instead of 640? Is it worth $15 a month to find out what it is? Hardly. The diseases invented in order to make you worry and buy some drug you probably don't need are another in this genre. Restless leg syndrome? Please. Some drug or advertising guy trying to fall asleep and feeling a tremor in his leg thinking hey I bet we can convince somebody this is really a disease and they need a drug we can sell them. There are so many of these. But, now, here's the lead in to the one most offensive these days.

When swine flu broke out with the subsequent prevention advisory that came down, soap manufacturers were all over it. Pretty soon brand new hand sanitizing products sprouted everywhere (the one by the coffee machine at work) and we were advised to constantly be on the alert and clean our hands. I wonder how much more of that product sold since swine flu compared with before. But recently there has been a one-up product. Some creative mind decided hand (and counter and other surfaces) cleaners weren't enough. Now somebody has come up with a cleaner, backed by a fear concept, for the little hand pump on the hand sanitizer bottles. Do you know how many germs can linger on that little thumb friendly pump? Gooooood Greeeeeef.

In other words we are now supposed to wash our hands in order to wash our hands and use a cleanser with a thumb-operated plunger to clean the thumb-operated plunger on the bottle we use to wash our hands before we use the bottle we use to wash our hands. And we are supposed to worry about that. I bet I could lick that plunger for a week and not get sick.

And, what about the germs on the bottle of stuff you use to clean the bottle of hand sanitizer? It is almost a chicken and egg sort of situation. Carried out to its logical conclusion, at some point in the process you have to touch a plunger that hasn't been cleaned by a preceding product.

But think of all the sales for all those cleansers. Remember the most important sales innovation in shampoo? The one that doubled sales? "Rinse and repeat." Well, "clean the bottle you use to clean your hands" might be right up there with it. And all of it is based on a panicked fear of a swine flu pandemic that barely materialized. That's not to say health warnings shouldn't be listened to, but more to be aware how the advertising industry will jump on them and use any angle they can think of to scare us into buying their products.

I have to go now and clean a bottle of hand sanitizer so I can wash my hands to use my hand sanitizer before I step into the shower (washed down with a pre-cleaned dispenser of Lysol) so I can wash what's left of my hair, then rinse and repeat.

All this cleanser talk reminds me of a passage in John Steinbeck's "Travels with Charlie." In a motel in New Mexico or Arizona he focused on that little paper banner proclaiming this toilet seat had been sanitized. In that moment he recalled a time in the Sahara desert when a nomad offered him a grime-encrusted glass so he could take a drink from an oasis. He said as dirty as that glass was, it produced the finest drink of water in his entire recollection, and then he went on into Americans' preoccupied compulsion about hygiene. But, that leads us into a new direction, so enough for today.

Wild rose

Just because I like them and they are all over the place these days.

Driver training

Talk about an obstacle course, last night driving home was like one of those layouts with a series of pylons you have to drive around, only these moved, slowly, but they moved, well, some of them moved. The porcupine bloom was late this year but it is in full flower now. In a distance of about 8 miles had to drive around three dead ones and another four alive and moving back and forth across the center line. They wobble and move so slowly, you have no idea which direction they might head into and dodging them becomes a guessing game. Every one I saw alive was still alive after I passed so, it's all good.

That said, today was the final planting and I now have the start of yet another flower garden. Sparse like last year but I kind of like knowing individual plants without losing them in a bunch. Some new varieties this year too, so we shall see how well they do.

So, I guess that pretty much has summer under way. Gathering up stuff and orcanizing for the wedding in a little more than two weeks. You have to love a venue where the operator keeps a shotgun by the door in case the occasional bear walks into the reception. A jokester said it should be white if the wedding is formal. I suggested white was all right but only between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Ramble on and ramble on.

A fine example of Alaskans at their very best

How many times has there been an accident scene where everyone is standing around gawking, looking, but not getting involved? Yesterday a few Alaskans showed how it should be done. A small airplane, a Cessna 206, crashed into a building on a busy city street right at the beginning of rush hour. Not one, but 25 regular old people jumped up and ran to the rescue. They pulled four people from the flaming wreckage saving their lives. The story is here. Take a look at the photo gallery. In one picture you will see half a dozen people lifting an airplane wing while others reach into the cabin to pull the people out. There are flames coming from the airplane and keep in mind, that wing holds a full fuel tank. (The airplane was taking off, believed to be leaving Anchorage for Western Alaska.) Unfortunately one four year old child died in the flames. I can only imagine the people who saved the other four, thinking, wondering, wishing they could have reached that child somehow but police said the flames became too intense. The comments at the end of the story are interesting, too, many of them from family and friends of the people who were in the airplane. It was an amazing display, these people just passing by but stopping and rushing to the aid of people trapped in a burning airplane and saving lives, the kind of thing you expect from an Alaskan but also something to appreciate and never, ever, take for granted.

Originality part Deux.

A couple of nights ago we had a story about a fellow who is dying of leukemia. On his bucket list was a wish to rebuild an older Kawasaki motorcycle and run it at the local drag strip. His drag race on the bike was the featured story on the front page which means three headlines. The main two simply told the story and the third, above the picture, was to lead into the other two. This is what I wrote: "Sometimes the best medicine is a drag." Remember when it shows up on a bumper sticker, you saw it here first. And it's not an ad for medical marijuana.

Here's the whole story

Smoke screens, bad love and Lady GaGa

Fire season is full upon us now and it’s early. About 260 fires so far and 260,000 acres burned including the Farewell Lake lodge that the firefighters vowed to protect and then pulled their gear out of there to fight somewhere else. The original cabin had been there since the 30s. One fire is less than 20 miles from here and burning this way. It would have to jump the Knik River to get to this house but the smoke is all over the place. (That's the mountain in front of the house obscured by smoke.) I had to drive through it on the way to and from work yesterday.

Before work I was surfing the T and V and came across something called 19 hours of Lady GaGa and it made me a little curious. I have been aware of her and her outrageous outfits and somehow I think unconsciously I recognized a kindred spirit though I am pretty sure I have never heard a single song all the way through. So, interspersed among music videos, there was a fairly serious interview with her, done last November. No wild outfit, although a wild wig, and you could actually see her eyes, but she spoke very softly and very confidently. Over the years I have thought about and talked about with a few people, the creative process and the creative personality. Here is one. One thing a friend and I were discussing not too long ago was the sensitivity it takes to write. Her point was, considering how extremely sensitive you have to be to write, how can there be any writers with all the people in the world quite willing to criticize? So this Lady GaGa admitted to the interviewer that she often cries as she is writing her songs. That to me is artistic sensitivity. And I can understand the wild outfits in that context. My answer to it was develop an overwhelming, if false, ego and express it loudly. Hers is to generate outrageous outfits that draw critical attention away from what is really important to her and protect her sensitivity.

The interviewer kept trying to get off topic and she kept reminding him the agreement was to talk about her music. No romances, no sexual preferences, no catty remarks about other artists, she very deftly deflected those questions. One other moment struck me. She expressed an interest in Andy Warhol’s art, which seems obvious. But she spoke of looking at a Warhol in the Louvre. Get this, a wild rock star going to the Louvre. At any rate, she said the painting looked nothing like the Warhol works she was familiar with. At some point in this viewing she admitted to crying again. Then a curator explained to her Warhol painted the particular work early in his life, when he was 23. Her response at least during the interview was, wow, that’s how old I am now. I have so much more in me, I have so far to go.” This from a person who is at the top of her game and her genre already.

And, oh yes, the bad love in the title. In one song she sings I want your ugly, I want your pain and some other phrases along that line. The interviewer asked her what that meant, bringing up negative images in a song about love. And, her thought was, love is total, you don’t get to pick which parts of your partner you wish to love. You love the beauty, but you also have to love the ugly and you don’t have true deep love until you love the whole person.

Enough, I guess. I was just impressed with a very complex person who showed a fascinating creative intellect. And I bought two songs on iTunes. Ga Ga ooo la la

And the fires keep burning and life continues to be obscured within different kinds of smoke.