MIKE'S BOOMER BLOG

President Obama: Hypocrit or Evolved Thinker?

2011-03-29T05:24:00.000-07:00

How does an idealistic, highly intelligent President come to do things that just a few years ago he spoke strongly against? Is this hypocrisy or just the normal “evolution” idealistic and principled people sometimes go through when confronted with another reality, one they didn’t know existed when they first formulated their principles?
The following is from Yahoo News:

FACT CHECK: How Obama's Libya claims fit the facts (from Yahoo News)By CALVIN WOODWARD and RICHARD LARDNER, Associated Press, 3-29-11

OBAMA: Seeking to justify military intervention, the president said the U.S. has "an important strategic interest in preventing Gadhafi from overrunning those who oppose him. A massacre would have driven thousands of additional refugees across Libya's borders, putting enormous strains on the peaceful — yet fragile — transitions in Egypt and Tunisia." He added: "I am convinced that a failure to act in Libya would have carried a far greater price for America."
THE FACTS: Obama did not wait to make that case to Congress, despite his past statements that presidents should get congressional authorization before taking the country to war, absent a threat to the nation that cannot wait.
"The president does not have the power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation," he told The Boston Globe in 2007 in his presidential campaign. "History has shown us time and again ... that military action is most successful when it is authorized and supported by the legislative branch."
Obama's defense secretary, Robert Gates, said Sunday that the crisis in Libya "was not a vital national interest to the United States, but it was an interest."
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OBAMA: "Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different. And as president, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action."
THE FACTS: Mass violence against civilians has also been escalating elsewhere, without any U.S. military intervention anticipated.
More than 1 million people have fled the Ivory Coast, where the U.N. says forces loyal to the incumbent leader, Laurent Gbagbo, have used heavy weapons against the population and more than 460 killings have been confirmed of supporters of the internationally recognized president, Alassane Ouattara.
The Obama administration says Gbagbo and Gadhafi have both lost their legitimacy to rule. But only one is under attack from the U.S.
Presidents typically pick their fights according to the crisis and circumstances at hand, not any consistent doctrine about when to use force in one place and not another. They have been criticized for doing so — by Obama himself.
In his pre-presidential book "The Audacity of Hope," Obama said the U.S. will lack international legitimacy if it intervenes militarily "without a well-articulated strategy that the public supports and the world understands."
He questioned: "Why invade Iraq and not North Korea or Burma? Why intervene in Bosnia and not Darfur?"
Now, such questions are coming at him.

MY ideas:
What does Obama now know that he didn’t know when running for office? Probably a lot. But I would love to know just what “facts” changed his perspective on these issues and made him look like a hypocrite in the “Fact Check” above.
Four years ago Obama spoke out against the President going to war without Congressional approval. Now he does exactly that. Why? He said in his speech last night that he learned it took President Clinton a full year to get Congressional permission to intervene and stop the tens of thousands slaughtered in Bosnia, and he couldn’t wait that long again. Yet this article doesn’t mention that. Why?
OR- Did he learn that indeed the US went to war in Iraq over access to oil? I have yet to actually SEE any article from a respected news organization that makes that claim. You would think that, if that statement were true, some legitimate writer would have found the proof and written about it somewhere. I’ve searched and it just isn’t there. Just recently on Facebook I defended our country’s decision to go into Iraq after a group of British writers there accused us of doing it mainly for the OIL. Could Obama now believe our national interests include access to (Iraqi and now) Libyan oil? That, perhaps, without their oil our industries might fail to produce products? I do not know what Obama knows, but I sure wish I did. Then I might understand his apparent hypocrisy. What changes such a good man’s mind? He has got to now be privy to facts we simply are not allowed to know, facts that would change any thinking man’s mind.

TEACHING GUITAR and STUDIO IMPROVEMENTS

2011-02-07T06:14:00.000-08:00

It's been quite a long time between posts here, so thought I would bring it up to date. In the past year I have finally fully retired from "school teaching"- but I teach guitar now. More about that later. I have found more time to concentrate on using my little music studio. Lately I researched budget sound absorbtion methods, found the materials (Owens-Corning 703 specialty fiberglass, etc.,) wrapped six multifrequency absorbtion panels with speaker grill cloth and hung them in strategic places- namely over the vocal recording microphone, over the drums, and placed one panel in the corner to absorb bass buildup there. They function just as well as their expensive brethern with wood frames, but at a LOT less cost. I'm proud of them.

I've also added a good vocal recording microphone after fighting for over a year with my AKG C-3000 vocal mic and it's tendency to capture too much sibilence- or "ssss" sounds- in my recordings. My choice (for now) is the Kel Audio HM-2D pictured above. It has a strong midrange and is recommended for male singers, with a lot less tendency to capture the "breathiness" and sibilent "ssss" sounds of more sensitive vocal mics. The Kel only cost $200 direct from their Canadian factory, and it's not the quality of a Neumann U87 ($5000) but it will do until I can afford better.

I am now up to 12 songs recorded, edited, mixed, and posted on my band's web site- http://www.mikeandthewavemakers.com/. Feel free to listen and offer citiques of what you hear. I'm always interested in improving what I'm doing and know I am a real rookie when it comes to DAW recording techniques and mixing. I have a friend who has a professional music studio and who will probably remix all my material before he also "masters" it for reproduction into CDs for sale at a later date. So what you hear now will hopefully be greatly improved later!

About four months ago I decided to teach guitar. Best decision I've made this year! I spent many, many hours online researching teaching guitar, methods, problems, materials needed, etc. I bought two second hand bar stools (without arms to scratch guitars!), another music stand, and a guitar teaching "program" from a fella in England that seemed to do a good job in writing an all-inclusive program for learning guitar. I put a page on the band web site describing myself as just an average guitarist (I don't even read sheet music!), but with 35 years of public and private school teaching experience and 45 years guitar playing experience. I have no problem "connecting" with average students, ones that don't have serious attitude problems. I make over twice the money per hour than the "private" educational system I last worked for ever paid me, and I really enjoy teaching guitar! I have not advertised my guitar teaching except for a simple sign hung outside the studio, placed in my yard, but only visable from one direction on the road. I could remove some vegitation and increase the sign's visability, but really don't want that many more students anyway. I'm happy with 6 or 7 students and do not want to teach "full time!" I teach a few on Friday afternoon and a few more on Saturday and I'm done. Sweet!

If and when my students work their way up to "Intermediate" status, I'll steer them towards another teacher, one that might teach them more music theory than I teach, more advanced methods of play, etc. Right now I seem to have a bunch of "happy campers"- students that are engaged with practicing and playing guitar, and having fun while doing so. I've only found two drawbacks to teaching guitar: my fingers sometimes feel like sausages after a hard rehearsal with my band on Friday night, so teaching my first students on Saturday morning is, umm, interesting. And I can't make progress with a student that won't practice! I am a very goal-oriented teacher, always have been, and hate being forced into reteaching the previous lesson to a student that simply will not practice much at home. I had to threaten to quit teaching one little girl, a 10 year old with a sweet singing voice. I explained that she was wasting her mom's money and my time, in addition to slightly hurting my reputation as a guitar teacher (since she wasn't improving much.) She responded to my threat by practicing more, not enough to improve at the pace I think she could, but an improvemant over not practicing at all.

Another student is making just average progress, but enjoying it greatly. His father brings him and sits in my studio control room where he waits for the lesson to end. While sitting there he listens to almost everything that happens in the music playing room that adjoins it. He can even view much of the lesson, as there is an 8 foot window between the two rooms. After four or five months of doing this, he signed up for lessons too! I say this simply because here was an intelligent, observient fella that experienced his son enjoying music, knew exactly what he was getting himself into because he had witnessed every lesson, and he chose to start lessons too. Cool!

Three Songs Available for Downloading FOR FREE!

2010-02-23T15:14:00.000-08:00

2-23-10
I have been struggling for the past four months with learning Cakewalk Sonar Producer Edition software for digital audio recording. Simply put, it is the single hardest thing I have studied since college, 40 years ago. I'm winning the battle, but it ain't easy. My band and I have recorded 3 songs as of now, and I have spent over 100 hours editing and polishing them for your pleasure. They are not our best material. I'm saving my best songs for when I really know what I'm doing.
When I first got Cakewalk's Sonar Producer Edition 8.0 software, I had to call their technical support almost every day for the first 3 weeks to help me solve problems, things I simply could not do with the music recording software. I have to admit those young men who answered my questions were great on almost every phone call. I had other sources of information: I bought Scott Garrigus's book, Sonar Power, and would look through its 800 pages for an answer; I have the Help file that comes with Sonar- extensive, but frustrating to use; I have the owner's manual that comes with the software, but it's a joke in its brevity!; I have an old friend with the same software, but get tired of pestering him with emails (http://www.brucebartlettrecording.com/) or simply couldn't wait for an answer in my email; and lastly I have the online forum of Sonar users, but those folks can be rough on a newbie like me. I opted for the 20 minute waits incurred with each phone call to technical support. I learned to just put the cell phone on speakerphone and set it down while I found odd jobs to do in the studio.
As of now, February, 2010, I have learned approximately half of what Sonar can even do. There's lots more to learn! This is one very deep and powerful program for audio recording!
But the three songs are up on our band's web site with upload buttons for the few that might want to put the songs on their computer or iPhone or any MP3 player. Head on over to http://www.mikeandthewavemakers.com/ , and when you've listened to the songs on the Audio Gallery page shoot me a short message telling me what ya think of this material and the message in the first two songs. I am usually very proud of my song lyrics compared to the mostly junk lyrics I hear on the radio these days. I am only an average singer and an average guitarist, but I think I write good songs. Not great songs like Billy Joel or John Prine, just good songs. But I will get better, I promise!
Thanks-
Mike

Mike and The Wavemakers: A Long Overdue UPDATE!

2009-08-20T10:29:00.000-07:00

Ya, everybody has excuses. Fact is, I've been busy putting together my little music studio, writing songs in it, rehearsing with Debbie, then playing bass for some pals in downtown New Bern. In fact, the bass playing strengthened my left hand to the point that it started feeling normal again, after 2 years of numbness and weakness. Even the muscle twitching in it has almost stopped! The combinations of time, chiropractic adjustments, and playing bass had pretty much healed me.

It was time to start a new band, but a band with a major difference: All my life I have had to play OTHER PEOPLE'S SONGS- called "covers" in the business. I tried to choose covers I liked, and I would throw in a couple of my songs just to guage audience reactions to them. I decided this time I wasn't getting any younger and it was time to put together a band NOT dedicated to making money, NOT playing covers. It was time to have a band play my songs and hope a few people liked what they heard.

Ask any true musician: this was a major decision. Most musicians are in sore need of income. They have a wife and kids needing that mortgage payment every month. I am mostly retired now and feel I can get by on less paying gigs and therefore less money. But I needed fellow musicians who believed the same way AND who believed in my music!

One night six months ago a guitarist, a drummer, and myself on bass were playing at a downtown music venue in New Bern. After the guitarist finished his set of songs, and since so few people were watching, I asked him if I could play his guitar some. "Sure," he said. I didn't know if I could pull it off or not. I hadn't played in front of anyone on guitar in two years. But after the first song ended, I knew I could do it. The bass player was doing just fine over there to my right, and the drummer was good-to-go. So I launched into a couple of my original songs. They felt good as well. Hmmmm. I was starting to get ideas. I finished a few more songs and we took a break. The manager came over and offered us a job playing there on the spot. He liked what he'd just heard. So did I.

I turned to the bass player, Randy, and said, "Are you interested in playing bass in a new band I'm puttin' together?"
Randy said, "Sure!"
The drummer was eager to play too. We started rehearsing with Debbie on keyboard the next week, Sunday nights from 7 until 10 pm. It went on that way for 3 months, adding more and more songs.

We soon auditioned another drummer and were nicely impressed with his skills. His name is Tom, and he has added greatly to our overall sound. He's rock steady, yet quite sensitive to tempo changes and styles. He runs a Presbitarian church campground nearby, and he can be trusted in Debbie's bathroom. We had a few more rehearsals, all successful, and added a few more songs. Now we were ready to call ourselves a band. But what name would we choose?

I swear, one of the most tormenting, frustrating things a band can do is to choose a name! This is especially hard to do in modern times, what with access to the internet and easy availability of knowledge of bands that already have the names you desire for your band!!! I mean, come on! What band wants to try and take over a name of an existing band that already has two albums out and is sucessfully playing? So the long hunt for a band name began. I've had to do it before. It ain't fun writing down possible names, researching them for hours, only to find they are an established band. This time I narrowed it down to around six vetted names and presented them to the group at a rehearsal. I told them to just think on it. Some names had more potential than others. The following week we unanimously decided to call ourselves Mike and The Wavemakers.

I made the difficult decision to throw-in the "Mike" part simply because I was the band's leader and singer and songwriter. The last was the most important. I feel I have to start promoting my songs soon, before I have to quit music from old age (or my hand acting up again!) I have to get those songs out there to be heard. I want folks to ask, "And who is this 'Mike'?" Hope it doesn't sound egotistical to you. It's logical to me. I wrestled with the idea a long time before doing it. I am acutely aware of my limitations in singing and playing guitar. But those limitations simply don't exist when it comes to my songwriting. I'm no Billy Joel, John Prine, or Jimmy Buffett, but I can write a pretty good tune. And I'll only get better, I promise!
Thus it was that Mike and The Wavemakers was born. Check us out at http://www.mikeandthewavemakers.com/
Thanks. Until next time-
Mike

VINTAGE HOFNER 500/1 "BEATLE" BASS GUITAR FOR SALE

2009-02-13T07:59:00.000-08:00

I have a vintage (1983) Hofner 500/1 "Beatle" bass guitar for sale. This is a beautiful instrument in the RARE natural finish and it is in excellent condition, with no checking, no cracks, no deep scratches, and all original parts!

I traveled over 5 hours from my home in Virginia down to Sand Hills, NC, to look at and purchase this beauty. It was well worth it! The 500/1 Hofner bass was made famous by Paul McCartney of the Beatles when he chose it to play with the band.

The instrument is hand made in West Germany. BUT the unfinished body and neck, plus all the hardware were sold as a KIT! The owner was responsible for finishing and assembling the bass, made easier by having a bolt-on neck. I think the first owner hired a professional to do the finishing work, as it is flawless.

This was probably the only year in which Hofner sold this kit, making this a rare find indeed! I had to do some pretty intensive research to find a dealer who actually sold these kits. Many Hofner collectors have never even heard of this kit Hofner, and I have proven to them that it is all original Hofner and not a copy. In brief, I emailed Hofner USA about information on a Hofner 500/1 with a decal on the headstock and a metal neckplate on the back. The General Manager of Hofner responded that he never heard of such a Hofner. I next went to Elderly Instruments and did the same, with the same results. Next, I went and emailed Gruhn Guitars, and George Gruhn said to write Carl Grefenstette, owner of Pittsburgh Guitars, an expert on Hofners. Carl immediately recognized the photos of my Hofner I sent him and wrote me a letter of authentication (LOA) that goes with the bass. It wasn't easy proving that I have an original and very rare Hofner!!

Apparently my research came to the attention of some Hofner collectors in England who have an extensive website of Hofners and company history. They emailed me asking for permission to use the photos I put up of my Hofner, saying it was a very rare Hofner and photos of that model did not exist. I think they, like me, were glad to have proof that such a model actually DID exist! The photos are here on their website: www.vintagehofner.co.uk/gallery/bass/bas72.html

It is very light weight, is shaped like a large violin, and has its famous acoustical properties- a sound that can only be described as a blend of an upright acoustic bass and an electric bass guitar. This tone is perhaps best used in playing lighter rock, Christian, bluegrass, folk music, or for players with shorter fingers. I tend to play mostly a harder rock and blues music style, already own a 1966 Fender Jazz bass, and thus do not need this one. Plus, I need the money to buy professional recording equipment. Otherwise, I wouldn't sell any vintage instrument.

The one real advantage of owning a collectible vintage instrument is that it will certainly increase in value over time. A new instrument will lose value for many years before it (if ever) begins to slowly climb in its value. This Hofner is rare and valuable already. Add to that its beautiful natural finish and you have an even more valuable guitar! It is absolutely stock, original parts, and nice hardshell case in very good condition.

I did remove the slightly warped "mother of toilet seat" pickguard because I wanted to show off its gorgeous natural finish, but the pickguard is in the case waiting for its next owner to reinstall it. The strings are high enough above the body of the bass that I didn't have to worry about a player digging his pick into the wood.

The only real flaw in this instrument is a discoloration on both sides of the neck just below the headstock. This was the result of my using a cheap utility room "U" shaped hanger to hang the bass on the wall of my music room years ago. The hanger was coated in rubber and the rubber reacted with the finish on the neck. It's not easily noticed, being up very high near the headstock, but it does slightly hurt the value, I realize. I have never checked, but assume a decent luthier could easily refinish this small area for a low price if near perfection is desired.

I have lots of photos of this Hofner bass over at my Multiply site: http://www.bricescreek.multiply.com/ Please take a look and read the ton of comments I wrote about the Hofner. Then do your homework and research Hofner 500/1 "Beatle" kit basses with original parts and original case on different sites like eBay. Try and find one in this natural finish. They are very rare! I can attest that finding a KIT Hofner is almost impossible. Then, if you are serious about knowing more, please call Mike at 252-474-3990. Thanks for looking.

Asking price is $2000. I will consider most offers.

Learn to Play Guitar

2009-01-20T08:04:00.000-08:00

Topics Covered:
- Hobbies - Their Value
- Make Music Your Hobby
- Making the Big Decision: Guitar Or Keyboard ?
- ( Or Drums or Bass? )
- Deciding Between an Acoustic and an Electric First Guitar
- Finding Your First Guitar
- Starting Out
- Practicing

I'm a believer that almost everyone should learn to play a musical instrument. Doing so has added much to my life and my enjoyment of life, not to mention my understanding of the music around me and my appreciation for it. There is a body of scientific evidence that playing an instrument challenges the brain much in the same manner as doing puzzles, etc., and consequently improves brain function long into adulthood and old age. Don't know about you, but I need all the brain enhancement I can get!

Furthermore, if you sing along, the evidence is that you get about the same exercise as a swimmer would. Now, I'm not so sure about that statement's validity, but I know I sure sweat hard when playing and singing hard at a microphone, almost as much as most drummers with whom I've performed, and those dudes can work up a good sweat doing a one hour set of songs.
I've also noticed I do not sweat nearly as much if I'm not singing, only playing guitar. Heck, I've even worn sweatbands on my head while performing, especially after I saw Mark Knopfler (of Dire Straits) do it in front of thousands of screaming fans.

Everyone needs a hobby. Too many (men, usually) retire from a lifelong career to find life can be boring. Many seem to die soon after retirement, I've noticed. You can only mow the yard so many times a week.
So I recommend every man and woman, boy and girl - find a hobby. And being the "practical male" that I am, I recommend you choose a hobby whereby you can potentially make some spare change.
Woodworking is a great hobby for that. So is music.

And "spare change" it is! I've always said music is a great hobby and a lousy profession. Case in point: My son, age 33, has his college degree and his day job. But his one true love is drumming, ever since I taught him basic drumming on a full kit at age five. Playing drums gave him a fulfillment that school, playing tennis, work, and even girlfriends couldn't give him. The kid is good, damn good. He even moved to the "live music capitol" of America (Austin, Texas) so he could thrive in his "night job" of playing with a band. He finally teamed up with some talented musicians (of which there are plenty in Austin) and their resultant music is more than commendable, it's very good! And what is the payoff after two years of playing with these talented fellas, solo and group rehearsals, investing heavily in equipment, etc.? They play for FREE most times. Some nights they might come home with 25$ each for their work. Some gigs actually require the band PAY to PLAY, in order to get the exposure in front of the audience. This practice of a band having to actually pay money to be allowed to play was started in L.A. years ago because of the sheer number of bands clawing for the chance to play music . The practice is spreading, I fear. With music, it's not usually what you know, but who you know in the business that might propel your band to the next level. It's usually all a matter of luck or timing, not talent. Sad, but true. Talent helps though, no doubt. Music's a great hobby, but a frustrating profession. So take it up as a hobby, and if it turns into more than that, it's gravy.

I've tried learning keyboard (synthesizer/piano) and it is harder to learn, in my opinion. If you think you might really be a songwriter, then keyboard is probably the better choice, what with all the beautiful tones, emulations of real pianos, organs, strings, etc. that a good synthesizer can deliver at a modest cost. You can now-a-days do anything - ANY sound you want! - on a good synthesizer, except for the human voice. And Stevie Wonder does even that on his $150,000 Synclaviar! With the addition of a sequencer, a synthesizer can play every instrument needed on an album! Real pianos may have ONE good sound, but they simply weigh a ton, and they are slowly disappearing for that reason. Songwriters should seriously consider learning to play a synth, one with semi- or fully weighted keys, tons of computor memory, a sequencer, and a lot of backing by the company and third party suppliers. You can get a used Korg O1W FD for $200 on eBay, but do your musical purchase research for most instruments and amplifiers on HarmonyCentral.com. It has tons of user reviews.

So why choose guitar to learn? As I said, it's easier to sound proficient on guitar, easier to learn the basics. I tried the adult beginner piano book, and after 3 months of boring drills and scales gave it up. But, back in 1965 at age 15, with an old Sears and Robuck Silvertone guitar and a $7.50 Beatles songbook, plus 4 weeks of practice, back in my bedroom (with my door firmly shut by my father!)- I managed to learn almost every song in that book. I was on my way to a lifetime of "pickin' and
grinnin'."

I'll get slammed for sure if I don't mention learning drums or bass guitar as choices. I've played both for over 25 years, and can summarize each easily:
In my experince, drums are the easiest instrument to learn, or at least learn well enough to quickly get started in playing an instrument. You can be playing drums in a week, IF YOU CAN REALLY LISTEN TO THE MUSIC- THE DRUMS, AND IF YOU CAN DANCE. Seriously, if you can't dance a little, sit down. Drumming is basically dancing with your hands. Then you add your feet. It's just easy to listen and copy a facsimile of what another drummer is doing on a song, especially if you stick with it. Drums are easy to learn if you can dance a little.
But you can't easily write a song on drums. They have their limitations. Not a whole lot of melody in drumming. What you hear with drums is what you get.

Drums are LOUD! (Do I hear a "Duh!"?) Even moderate volume drum practice can bother family, roommates, and of course neighbors so much, it has to be the foremost reason to not choose drumming as a hobby. If you live out in the country with nothing but cows around you, like I did when I got my first drum set, go for it!
Drums just feel good when you play. Drumming can be excellent exercise IF you're playing at live playing volume levels. I've broken a sweat many-a-time playing along with Bob Segar and the Silver Bullet Band. Try keeping up with them for 45 minutes straight!
But drums take up a lot of real estate in your house and your car. They're harder and take longer to set up, if you play out much. The drummer in a band is inevitably the hardest worker in the band, the first to arrive and the last to leave.

Bass guitar is fun too, with the added bonus of hearing a perhaps more melodic rather than mostly percussive sound in your music. But bass is hard to practice alone, at least to me. If you choose bass, you'll force yourself to play with other musicians faster than most any other instrument, because of that problem of difficult practices alone. Of course they make little black band-in-a-boxes now, like the Boss JS-5 JamStation, that you can play along with in hundreds of styles of music for around $300. I'd say something like that might cure those bass blues. Check it out. Some newer bass amps might have a similar device built into the amp, like some guitar amps have.
You'll need a decent bass guitar. Again, I recommend getting a vintage bass that will increase in value, unlike a new bass that depreciates quickly. Next best choice is almost any fair price on something like a Fender P Bass or a Fender Jazz Bass from Musician's Friend.com or any other reputable dealer. Basses are simply not as delicately built as six strings are, and luckily you can just order a bass from a reputible dealer, sight unseen usually, and it will turn out fine. I wouldn't order a six string guitar sight unseen. I'd want to check it out first.
In summary:
Seems bands are always looking for bass players, so I guess they are more in demand. Drummers, it seems, are everywhere. Mainly, I want to write songs, and you just can't do that on drums or bass. Here I have to mention that I once saw on T.V. a bass player competition of some sort that blew my mind. The contestants played Chopin and Bethovan sonattas on 5 and 6 string basses with such talent and beauty I was amazed. It turns out that quality bass, and perhaps any instrument, is what you make of it, what you make it do, what you coax out of it, and what you put into it.

THE FIRST GUITAR
So, what does it take to get started on guitar?
A decent guitar and motivation to learn how to play it. That's all. Here is how to go about it:
Find a decent guitar by deciding first how much you can afford. If you are serious about learning guitar and have the bucks, I recommend a vintage guitar, a collectable with years of playing on it and a "good vibe"- a feeling of being loved in its wood. A collectable vintage guitar will actually INCREASE in value each day you own it. So, if you outlay $400 to $700 for this instrument, you also just made an investment that will acrue value over time. If you buy almost any new instrument, it will decrease in value the moment you walk out that store's door with it. It's now a used instrument, just like buying a car. Choosing a vintage guitar is a topic beyond the scope of this piece, so I won't try to cover it here. But I will tell you to do your research on the topic before parting with your hard-earned dollars. There are fake vintage guitars out there. Always bring a real guitar "expert"- someone who has been playing for years- with you when you go to look at guitars.

If, like most, you want to get started on guitar as cheaply as possible, then your best bet is a used, inexpensive guitar, the cheapest being one stored in YOUR Uncle Bill's attic. Check with family to see if they want to keep that dusty guitar in the family and will consider giving it to you.
Next, I recommend friends or acquaintenances with used guitars. They may have bought one, tried taking lessons on it, and given up. Now it's used and priced accordingly, usually around 50% of what the owner paid. That's how I got my second guitar, stored under a friend's bed. I still have that 1967 $40 Harmony guitar, and love it more than any other I have owned.
Like most cheap guitars at that time, it came with no way of adjusting the neck for playability, and when the years of my abuse took its toll and the neck bowed so much the steel strings became unplayable, I put nylon strings on it. It has a wonderful, soft, warm tone and is so easy to play with no finger pain that I recommend anyone frustrated with finger pain from playing switch to nylon strings, unless they can endure the pain until they build up callouses on their fingertips. I know the guitar wasn't "designed" for nylon strings. I don't care. Sure the spacing between the strings is narrower than the standard "classical" guitar, but I find that a benifit, not a detriment! It's more like the spacing on the rest of my standard guitars.
I heard a fellow guitar player at my weekly jam session say recently that he got three decent guitars that week from pawn shops, all available because of the downturn in the national/worldwide economy. If you've got the cash to spare, now is a good time to shop your local pawn shops, it seems.

One more point. IF you think you might be "playing out"- in a room larger than your living room, or on a professional or semipro level, GET AN ACOUSTIC/ELECTRIC GUITAR. These guitars can be plugged into an amplifier or PA system with ease and produce great sound, but they don't have to be plugged in to work just fine. I much prefer the plugged in sound of my Martin accoustic/electric to the sound of my near vintage Martin D-35 with a microphone on it. An acoustic/electric will only cost a few dollars more than the same guitar without the electronics, so strongly consider this option. Some even have a guitar tuner built into the electronics. Now you're actually saving money because I strongly recommend you get a guitar tuner with the purchase of your guitar. The old days of tuning with a pitchfork tuner or pitchpipe are done, thank goodness! A $20 digital tuner will help you sound so much better on guitar that it will actually increase your practice and playing time over playing on an out-of-tune guitar. Get a tuner.

Why do I recommend getting an acoustic guitar over getting an electric guitar? On the first night of owning my first electric guitar (a 1964 Fender Stratocaster) I actually tried to give it away to a friend going out my front door. He was probably leaving because of my awful sounding playing. I was playing through a used 1965 Fender SuperReverb amp that I still own, and playing with no effects, other than a little reverb. I could fairly play an accoustic, but my electric playing sure couldn't prove it: It sounded horrible! Every mistake was amplified and louder than "to what I'd become accustumed", the acoustic guitar. In my opinion, it is much EASIER to hide mistakes with an accoustic, if for no other reason than at least you are not amplifying bad sounds! Fortunately, my friend knew I had had a couple beers and refused my offer, thinking it "was the alcohol talking." No, it was my sheer exasperation and shock at sounding so poorly. I now know a local guitar teacher that prefers his new students start on an electric guitar. Why? Because it is easier to play most electrics; the strings are usually set down lower. AND many modern, even inexpensive, small amplifiers come with lots of effects built into the amp! This can have the sound modified nicely with chorus, reverb, and subtle distortion to the point that a beginner can sound pretty good. He has a good point there.

It didn't used to be this way. Back in the day, just 30 years ago in the '80's, you got a cheap amp, as big as you could afford, then you bought 3 or 4 effect "stomp boxes" to plug into it to get your sound, up to sometimes 20 effects! I switched when the technology did and went with the newer, "all-in one stompbox"- the ubiquitous Digitech RP1. This added up quickly in extra expense. Plus I've lately given up using it because of the NOISE it adds to my guitar signal. I like a cleaner sound. Thus I developed my attitude about starting with a simple acoustic guitar. Times have changed, and maybe I need to change with them.

You decide then based on the volume you might need (but know that my Martin acoustic/electric can keep up with all but the loudest electric guitars) or the image you may prefer to convey (as electric players are viewed with scorn by some bluegrass, gospel, and even some country purists,) and obviously consider the musical style you prefer. Again, bring a true guitar player with you to help you pick out your guitar! He or she will check the guitar's neck for straightness, the string height above the fret board for playability, and the overall versitility and usefulness of the instrument. If it's an expensive guitar, then the tone of the sound will become important. One rule I've learned: a good electric guitar will sound good unplugged as well as plugged in. There's no need to plug in every electric guitar you have a passing interest in. Just play it unplugged and if it sounds really good that way, just wait until you plug it in! That's how I bought my '81 Gibson Les Paul Heritage guitar. I played 30 Les Pauls at a huge guitar dealer show, and I never plugged one in. The one I chose was the dealer's private instrument, used in his band playing days. And the action of the neck is incredible! It's a keeper.

While you're at it, go ahead and get a case for your guitar. I didn't and had to wrap my guitar in blankets, etc. whenever it left the house. It got scratched and beatup some. Find a case commersurate with the value of the guitar you place in it, and use it a lot. Either it's in the case when not being played, or hung it on the wall (out of direct sunlight- especially if it's an Ovation!) using a guitar hanger from the music store. Do NOT use garden/ garage tool hangers with a rubber coating making contact with your guitar. It WILL come off on the guitar I found.
Keep good guitars away from kids and not so good pets. Always unplug any electric or acoustic/electric before hanging it. I tripped over a guitar cord once and pulled my friend's Stratocaster right off the wall to the floor. Never again!

Now that you've found your guitar, it's time to decide just how to go about learning to play it.
You have a few choices:
#1 Take private lessons. They range from $40 per half hour down to $10 per hour around here. The $40 per half hour rate is at a local music store that has 4 or 5 small classrooms within its walls. The $10 per hour rate is for a fella that just opened a very small music store in a rural town 30 miles away from here. He needs the money more. There are poor, average, and excellent teachers, so ask lots of guitar students for their recommendations! Most teachers will want you to learn scales, it seems, no matter what instrument you want to learn. A few will teach you actual songs, thus motivating you more. It all depends on the teacher. An advantage of having a teacher and a set schedule is that you will practice more, knowing you will be "judged" soon by that teacher before he or she allows you to progress further. Most people don't like wasting their money, so they practice. Another advantage is that a good teacher will keep you from learning something that later has to be unlearned- bad habits. I used to make a G chord by using my thumb. That took two years to unlearn! Another reason for getting a teacher is that a good teacher will teach you how to practice by yourself so that you utilize you time wisely. It's easy to "wander" away from actual practice when you're having fun.
#2 Learn from a correspondance course over the internet. I know this is available now, as I have looked into it a little. The system I found was for around $50 a month. I have a LOT more to learn about this system before I will recommend it. They say you can send them sound clips of your playing, but it all sounds too "distant" for my tastes.

#3 Teach yourself. Ya, that's what I did. I can't say it's the preferred method, but it was the cheapest by far. Here's how I did it: Go out and get a "fakebook"- a songbook collection- of your favorite music. It will cost now around $25-30 for the songbook. Make sure there are pictures of the actual cords you will be playing and not just the cords' names (letters) above the lyrics. Your guitar playing buddy can look at the cords and determine if they are too hard for a beginner. If not, and you like the music, and you have a copy of most of the songs in the songbook so you can listen and learn from listening, get it. You'll enjoy playing the songs you like.

#3 Have a friend teach you. Even a beginner can teach another beginner. Plus it's a lot more fun than playing alone. The key to making progress is to make it a regular, weekly get-together with a new song added each time.

The best learning experience I ever had on guitar was back around 1972 when my neighbor and buddy, Bruce, would come over with his six string electric, plug into my amp and play bass on the top four strings while I practiced my interminably bad lead solos over and over to his patient bass playing. This went on for months. What a guy! I owed him bigtime! Before I moved away I found an old Fender Mustang Bass guitar, bought it and gave it to him. You should have seen the look on his face when I told him it was his. He still plays it today. Bruce is a geuius audio sound engineer that worked for 26 years for a certain major audio/ microphone company before they let him go in this recent economic turmoil. He is the author of 8 audio recording textbooks, one of which is in daily use in many classrooms in U.S. universities. He's written over 800 articles on audio recording techniques! He helped develop and design Garth Brook's headset microphone, yet they "had to let him go." The lack of loyalty to dedicated and talented employees by their companies is appalling. Sorry I'm off topic, but I'm not paid for this. I get to rant a little.

Approximate Costs:
----------------Low end------- High end
simple, used guitar free-up to $100---- $300
new vintage guitar $300 ----$1,000 and up!
new acoustic electric $300---- $700 and up
guitar tuner $20 ---- $80
guitar case $25 ---- $200
fakebook/songbook $25 ---- $40
couple guitar picks $1
used amplifier $100 ---- $300
new amp w/effects $250 ---- $600 and up

The Bottom Line:
So you can get started for around 170$ for a used guitar, a case, tuner, songbook, and a couple guitar picks. You don't need a strap. Standing is for performers. Any armless chair or stool will do for sitting and playing. In general, you get what you pay for. Not always. Just ask the guy that was given his grandaddy's old Gibson J45 guitar!
Have fun and you'll practice more. This generally has the effect of making you improve. (Do I hear another "Duh!"?) Next you'll get the inevitable compilment anyone who improves should get and obviously, you'll play more. The cycle begins. You get it. It feeds off itself.
Kind of like reading books. You learn more vocabulary as you read more, thus you comprehend more of what you read, causing you to enjoy it more, so you read more, and on and on. Get your cycle started soon, and start playing.

TURNING 60- Age Happens!

2009-01-12T06:07:00.000-08:00

My mother said to not tell anyone that I turned 60. So you didn't hear it here. OK?

My thoughts on aging:

Turning 30 was not even noticed. Turning 40 WAS noticed, but easy to ignore. At 50 I paid attention; by then I had to use glasses to read and remove splinters from fingers. I hate losing "close" vision more than anything. I now keep inexpensive reading glasses in most rooms of our house and in the studio I just built. At 50 it didn't take much exertion for my body to protest; simply mowing the grass did the trick. Body parts wear out just like car parts do, I've learned .

I turned 60 on January 2 this year (2009)- and it seems others noticed it more than I did. Ya, my hair is whiter, my vision a bit weaker-though I passed my driver's license vision test with no glasses, and I've developed a compressed nerve root in a neck vertebra, causing some intermittent numbness and cramping in my left (guitar playing) hand. Otherwise, I'm not too bad off. I've been lucky so far, I guess. Real lucky. There are plenty of folks out there with serious medical conditions at my age.

So what am I doing right? Not much, really. I still (usually)enjoy doing chores, especially outside chores, being in the sunshine and the wind. I like setting goals and achiving them, both small and large.

I am a believer in Vitamin C and its ability to help slow the free radicals that race through our bodies and age us after age 25, about the year I started taking Vitamin C. I had read some about Dr. J. Linus Pauling, the inventor of synthesized ascorbic acid, who won the Nobel Prize for its invention. I learned that it didn't matter whether you take the pill version of Vitamin C or got it more naturally through different foods like orange juice, the body absorbs it all the same. It seems orange juice has about 50 milligrams of Vitamin C per "juice" glass, but you can easily get 250 milligrams in a single Vitamin C pill. At the cost of orange juice it was a no-brainer to take one pill per night. I chose bedtime to take my vitamins because many, like Vitamin C, are water soluable and are thus excreted soon after consuming liquids- like morning coffee! If you want a vitamin to be more effective, then my logic says to take it just before you begin a long period of rest with no liquid intake.

My current nightly vitamin regimin:

500 mg Vit. C - for the whole body, especially if you smoke!

1000 mg Omega 3 fish oil - for the heart and brain function

2000 IU Vit. D-3 - for the heart and mood

81 mg baby aspirin - for the heart

That's it. No medicines, so far. Like I said, I've been lucky. The Vitamin C has been a staple of my diet for 35 years, with few lapses. The baby aspirin has been added ever since 10 years ago when I started stressing over my students' passing their end of year tests and started having angina/chest pains. The heart specialist gave me the stress test and full heart imaging with the radioactive dye and concluded I was normal as hell. But the doctor did suggest I start taking the baby aspirin each night, that it wouldn't hurt. I've had no heart problems since retirement from teaching. I cared too much, I guess.

There has been a flood of positive research lately regarding the enormous value of adding Vitamin D to your diet. Sure, you can get all you need by getting in the sun WITH EXPOSED SKIN and no suntan lotion for 15 minutes per day, times 3 days per week. Some weeks I get plenty of sunlight. Other weeks I simply don't, especially in winter. Vitamin D suppliments have been shown to improve mood and heart function. It's hard to overdose on it, but easy to overdose on sunlight. (I've had 15 pre-cancerous "sun-spots" removed so far, some cut, some frozen.)

And, of course, fish oil has long been known to help the heart.

I've only been taking the fish oil and Vitamin D for less than a year. Got to admit my mood had seen some improvement.

I am relatively conservative regarding my belief in the theraputic value of vitamins. I'd love to get all my vitamins through my foods, but I don't believe our "normal" American lifestyles give us that much access to enough natural sources of vitamins. We tend to overcook and overprocess our foods. Suppliments do help some. I think almost EVERYONE should take a little Vitamin C every day, and add a baby aspirin nightly starting around age 50. The next one to consider would be Vitamin D. There's simply too much strong evidence that it helps the heart and mind.

And what am I doing wrong? That's easy: I am still a smoker. Simply put, smoking cigarettes is the biggest mistake of my life. I started smoking after I figured out I was not going to play college football, and I badly needed a way to stay awake all night to study for college tests, midterm exams, and finals. I found cigarettes and lots of coffee did the trick. I've never been the sharpest pencil in the pack, and studying all night enabled me to make the same grades or higher than my brighter roommates who rarely studied. (Of the four of us in one dorm suite, only two graduated, and it took Woody 5 years to finish his degree. But Woody was a very popular man on campus, and partied like one.)

The problem came when I graduated and found just why today's scientists consider nicotine addiction just as strong as heroin addiction- and just as hard to quit. After using cigarettes as a crutch for four years of college, I was and am still an addict.

Every year of teaching high school I told my story above to my students in hopes of deterring even one of them from starting smoking. All the other teachers I knew who smoked NEVER broached the topic with their students. My students told me repeatedly that I was the most honest teacher they ever had.

Ya, sometimes honest to a fault.

Quitting smoking is twice as hard when your wife or husband smokes. The process of quitting has to be timed perfectly to when both spouses want to put the cigarettes down, a hard task. Of course you CAN quit seperately. My mom quit long before my dad. It just takes incredible willpower, the kind I don't have. If I'm around a smoker while trying to quit, I'll bum a smoke. Or steal one- if it's my wife that's smoking. Sure am glad I never fell in love with alcohol, like so many have.

I recently came across the following:

"Someone had to remind me, so I'm reminding you too. Don't laugh.....it is all true...Perks of reaching 50 or being over 60 and heading towards 70!

01. Kidnappers are not very interested in you.

02. In a hostage situation you are likely to be released first.

03. No one expects you to run--anywhere.

04. People call at 9 pm and ask, did I wake you?

05. People no longer view you as a hypochondriac.

06. There is nothing left to learn the hard way.

07. Things you buy now won't wear out.

08. You can eat supper at 4 pm.

09. You can live without sex but not your glasses.

10. You get into heated arguments about pension plans.

11. You no longer think of speed limits as a challenge.

12. You quit trying to hold your stomach in no matter who walks into the room.

13. You sing along with elevator music.

14. Your eyes won't get much worse.

15 . Your investment in health insurance is finally beginning to pay off.

16. Your joints are more accurate meteorologists than the national weather service.

17. Your secrets are safe with your friends because they can't remember them either.

18. Your supply of brain cells is finally down to manageable size.

19. You can't remember who sent you this list.

And Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night."

You got to have a good attitude about life in general and aging in particular. 'Nuf said. Have a good, happy life. Trust me: It goes faster the older you get!

Another Dream Realized: 11-08 THE STUDIO- Part 1: BEFORE CONSTRUCTION

2008-12-07T08:09:00.000-08:00

After four months of long, hard planning, research, and labor, the music rehearsal studio is finished. Debbie and I bought this home because it had all the qualities we had searched for 5 years to find. One of those was a space where we could write and rehearse music, hopefully without disturbing neighbors. Our home on Brices Creek came with an outbuilding that has two adjoining rooms -each approximately 12 feet by 20 feet-with a door and large, long window connecting them. Long ago, 1950's? -the middle room used to be a hair salon, as evidenced by a nice, professionally constructed wood sign I found up in the building's attic- Marietta's Hair Salon. I knew I could later convert this storage space into our little studio, and four or five months ago I set out to do just that. I'm no contractor, not even a carpenter. So this was not an easy job for me. Up until now, the hardest construction work I'd ever done wa demolition of a two story log house that had a two story frame addition attached to it. I worked hard preserving and numbering those logs, carefully removing all the house's windows and boards, so they could be recycled. And I've done a lot of remodeling and smaller construction project over the years. But the studio was the longest and hardest physical work I have ever done. I lost ten pounds and regained a lot of strength in my arms, back, and shoulders. But now it's done! And this week I wrote my first song in over a year and a half while sitting at my old teaching podium by the window there, lookin out at beautiful Brices Creek. Looks like all that searching, planning, expense, and work paid off.

ALL THESE PHOTOS CAN BE ENLARGED BY CLICKING

Above are a couple photos of what I had to start with- a shed had been attached to the middle (salon) room. Note the small door cut into the back wall to allow goats or calves to bed down there. The cedar post near the right corner was the support for the shed roof, later extended a couple feet more when a newer roof was added, and the whole room enclosed in (sub)standard framing, with a very small garage door added to one end of the room. Then they poured a concrete floor and cut some of the cedar posts after pouring the slab. (I wore out a drill by grinding down one of those old posts!) I guess previous owners stored small fishing boats in there, as parking a car in that tight of a space would be impossible. I had the two garage doors removed and two sliding glass doors put in their place. A rushed decision, it turned out to be my first mistake. Too much noise escapes in and out of this room because of the inexpensive (300$) vinyl sliding glass doors (SGD). Wish I could have afforded at least one, good, "soundproof " SGD instead of what I had installed in the studio. The other SGD is for the shop room, and as such works fine there, allowing lots of light.

Update: more views of the completed studio can be seen at my band's website here:

www.mikeandthewavemakers.com/band_photos

NOTE: THERE ARE LOTS MORE POSTS AND PHOTOS REGARDING HOW I BUILT MY STUDIO. JUST CLICK "OLDER POSTS" BELOW.

THE STUDIO: Part Two-A: DURING CONSTRUCTION

2008-12-07T07:46:00.000-08:00

I had to close up the wall as tightly as possible that seperates this room from my neighbor. Since there were so many gaps between the old barn boards, I filled them with "Great Stuff" foam. This shot clearly shows the cedar post that used to hold up the shed roof. I used a chainsaw to flatten the inside of the post so I could nail to it later.

THE STUDIO: Part Two-B: DURING CONSTRUCTION

2008-12-07T07:45:00.000-08:00

There was a considerable 20 foot long gap between the "shed" roof and the older main room's roof that I filled by adding plywood, and then backing it with foam and a layer of batt fiberglass insulation. This had to be done slowly in 2 foot increments because I had to reach behind each section of plywood in order to push the foam and then the fiberglass against the plywood. Note the corregated steel at the bottom of the photo? The entire middle room is covered with the stuff. Made for challenging methods of nailing and screwing to it.

THE STUDIO: Part Two-C: DURING CONSTRUCTION

2008-12-07T07:44:00.000-08:00

Here is the installation of some different insulations used in the room. Additionally, I blew around 20 inches of fluffy insulation into the attic of the middle room, using a Lowe's rental unit. Also, note the putty formed around each electric fixture in both rooms. This product is supposed to be

for fire prevention and to stop sound from entering/escaping to room. Also not shown is the radient barrier (foam and foil insulation) I first added to the rehearsal room's walls and ceiling. I highly recommend a radient barrier for EVERY room construction job, new or rehab! I could immediately tell a difference in the room's temperature swings just with the addition of radient barrier.
All in all, the walls now have seven layers on them: (from outside going in) Vinyl siding, plywood sheathing, radient barrier, foam or fiberglass, mass loaded vinyl, and 3/4 inch sheetrock. Wish I had added another layer of sheetrock with "GreenGlue" between sheets to absorb more sound vibrations. Adding weight (mass) is the cheapest way to soundproof, and sheetrock is not expensive, just labor intensive.

THE STUDIO: Part Two-D: DURING CONSTRUCTION

2008-12-07T07:43:00.000-08:00

It cost $1000 to buy mass loaded vinyl for the rehearsal room, but I bit the bullet and did it. Loads of web research showed that a newer product that actually has the heavy vinyl layer sandwiched between two thin sheets of sheetrock was probably the best choice, but getting it from Raleigh to here proved to be too expensive. Another choice was Green Glue that you apply between layers of sheetrock. This too is a fine choice, I think. And the extra layer(s) of sheetrock will stop bass sounds better than what I have. But I opted for mass loaded vinyl (MLV), the time proven sound reduction product that was invented 50 years ago to replace lead sheeting used to soundproof radio and sound studios for many years. At one pound per square foot, MLV is heavy. My son, Michael John, and Debbie had to help me hang it from the ceiling, probably the single hardest part of the construction. RENT A NAILGUN IF YOU EVER HAVE TO DO THIS! The chalk picture of the goat on the MLV is mine, I admit. It's here just to remind me that I started with a glorified goat barn.

THE STUDIO: Part Two-E: DURING CONSTRUCTION

2008-12-07T07:42:00.000-08:00

Next, after the MLV was up, was sheetrocking the entire room. For this I used the thick-3/4inch- rock on all the walls, and the easier to hang 5/8inch rock on the ceiling. Had to hire a fella to help me hang the ceiling, but it was worth it. Debbie utilized her amazing spacial skills in helping me measure and hang pieces of sheetrock. Notice the "boss" is busy supervising!

THE STUDIO: Part Two-F: DURING CONSTRUCTION

2008-12-07T07:41:00.000-08:00

The next step, of course, is to finish the sheetrock. Fortunately, this is the one area of construction where I have had some training and experience. My career as a sheetrock finisher only lasted a couple months, back around 1972, until my boss tried to "sell me" his girlfriend for the night. That's the day I quit.

Once finishing work was done, I painted the whole room.

Deb and I attempted a form of "knock-down" ceiling texture to hide defects there. I mudded in the ceiling, Deb followed along behind making circular patterns with a long handled stippling brush, and after curing a few minutes I followed her with a wide blade mud knife, knocking down her patterns. It made for a thickly textured ceiling that pretty much hides any flaws, but the MLV's weight on the thinner sheetrock used in the ceiling caused a "pillowing" effect. (Notice the "bulges" in the ceiling?)

I added two ceiling fans with light kits to keep hard working musicians cool. Notice they have short blades? That's because the ceiling is slanted- and I could hang them up higher, and because guitarists tend to lift their guitar's necks up in the air when taking the guitar with strap on or off. Maybe they won't get hit!

I custom cut the floorboard trim pieces and finished them. Because of the waviness in the walls I had some big gaps between the trim and the wall. This was cured by stuffing fiberglass batt in the gaps and covering with caulk, then smoothing the caulk and touching up the walls a little.

THE STUDIO: Part Two-G: DURING CONSTRUCTION

2008-12-07T07:40:00.000-08:00

NEXT CAME THE MIDDLE- OR (OUT OF) CONTROL ROOM

The middle -or control- room also came with its own 8 foot long window that connected it to the adjacent shop. Back in the day the room was a hair salon, the propriator would open the two long windows- one on each side of the little business- by raising hinged shutters on each window. This allowed cooling breezes to flow through. I filled the middle room's window with paneling and caulk, then foam board faced with foil/aluminum. But that still left a 4-5 inch cavity to fill. So I built sound traps/ bass traps out of plywood, thick carpet foam scraps, very thick foam rubber found in a roll, and fiberglass on the edges to give it form, all covered with a bright red fabric I also found in the attic. I liked the color so much I painted the door and room's refrigerator the same color! After finishing the two sound attenuators, I had another long piece of plywood, some standard foam, and fabric left over. So I built a large sound attenuator and hung it over the "bar" area. (I soon moved it to behind the drums.)

I added a small air conditioner (with a pretty noisy and useless ability to serve as a heater) to where a small window once had been. I had a friend come over and help me install three electric outlets. I had already hired an electric company to safely install five wall outlets, a motion sensing outside light, a GFI outside outlet, two fan/light ceiling boxes, and a circuit box to the rehearsal room ($500).

Also added to the middle room were carpet and a good, thick pad for the uneven concrete floor. I also installed ceiling tiles.

Then I added two sets of track lights to the ceiling.

I realized I needed a better source of heat, so I got a flat panel heater that could go on the wall and installed it. It works great! I put a piece of sheet metal between it and the wall because that tongue and groove paneling is probably 60 years old, dry and quite flammable.

THE STUDIO: Part Two-H: DURING CONSTRUCTION

2008-12-07T07:39:00.000-08:00

WINDOWS

In the top photo you can see the new vinyl floor I added. People keep entering the room and saying, "Is that real tile...?" as they bend to touch it. Nice (Armstrong) stuff that has a cushion built in and won't curl up at the edges. I drilled a 3 inch hole through the wall under the window in case I ever want to run microphone lines, etc. in to the middle room, thus using it as a control room during recording. Added an oak threshhold to the sliding glass door area.

INSIDE WINDOW
Remember, there is a window seperating these two rooms. I could of left it open or closed the space with glass, one or two layers. I chose plexiglass/acrylic for three reasons: it was safer than glass at that height (2 1/2 feet above the floor,) it was cheaper (by now I was chewing right through our budget,) and I could slide it open if I ordered two smaller (4 foot) pieces instead of one (8 foot) piece. Herein I made another mistake.

But I don't have a lot invested, just the panels, their handles, some white quarter-round trim pieces, and some sweat.

Acrylic panels scratch easily, like when you clean them or open them by sliding them past each other, etc. They typically last 8 to 10 years. And they don't stop much sound. Not nearly as much as a thermopane glass window. And, to make them even LESS tight, I made these as a split window to allow heat and A/C to travel to the adjacent room. Lots of sound sneaks around the edges of this window area. But I can always replace these later with glass, and caulk it tightly. I also angled them slightly, immitating a "studio" look. (Probably an affectation I could skip when replacing them.) I'll factor in my decision whether heat and A/C lessens when I close the window. If it does, I may stick with the split design, only I'll go with a factory made unit that stops sound well.

As long as I had to frame in parts of this interrior window, I added a long, narrow "bar" out of a spare 2"X12" board I had. To this was added another couple inches of trim on the inside that makes this little "bar" 14 inches wide and usable. A few coats of stain and polyethelene and no drink circles!

OUTSIDE WINDOW

The outside window was another thing entirely. It sits the same length as the others (8 feet,) but it is higher. I had just read of a bass player putting the headstock of his bass right through a "soundproof" recording studio's window. So here I went with shatterproof plate glass. Again, economics drove the decision. Since there was already a nice, antique, beveled plate glass in place, probably part of an old (1920's) folding door, I added another layer of plate glass. I had to build the frame for it; the cheapest way was with 2X4's with lots of angle bracing. I lined the inside edges with good closed cell foam, and slowly placed the shatterproof glass in the frame. It has 12 brass screws to old it in place and brass handles to pull it out if it ever needs cleaning inside. So far it has worked great. Nice moneysaver too.

PART 3 - A: THE FURNISHED AND QUITE FULL STUDIO

2008-12-07T07:38:00.000-08:00

WELCOME TO THE STUDIO !

It was finally time to move into my new space. It took me a week to get everything inside, again only working part-time. And another week to hook everything up and start fine tuning the place. Finished on Election Day 2008. An omen?

TOP PHOTO

Here is the outbuilding. The two studio rooms are on the right, and the shop is to the far left.

SECOND PHOTO

Enlarge this one: See the shelf I screwed to the top of the interrior window trim and secured with three lengths of chain to the wood wall above it. It's strong, so it can be loaded down with three sets of speakers and lava lights!

This could be a control station when mixing sound. Right now it affords a great view of the musicians and allows air to circulate into the rehearsal space.

THIRD PHOTO

Here are a couple recliners we held onto, knowing we could use them in here one day. The "window" sound absorbers I built are covered with netting, shells, and lights. Above that is another shelf and a large, folding cassette box with a couple hundred cassettes, plus. Great listening position.

BOTTOM PHOTO

Deb reeeaally enjoys the studio!

THE STUDIO: Part Three- B

2008-12-07T07:35:00.000-08:00

DECORATIONS

TOP

The top picture is of a small shark being swallowed by progressivly larger sharks' jaws. I'd love to get a 3 foot jaw!

Moral: There's always somebody better than you, so make the best of your speed!

MIDDLE

My son, Michael John -or MJ as most folks call him- made this from an old, special chunk of timber, a porthole window, and a clock. I had to put in a photo of him in Hawaii.

BOTTOM

Debbie had to put a Groucho Marx spin on a toucan carving! Hilarious!

THE STUDIO: Part Three- C

2008-12-07T07:33:00.001-08:00

Behind the "wall" of speakers is a ton of storage. If we ever have a yard sale, I'll be able to move the speakers out of this room. A matching red refrigerator sits under the A/C unit.

To the right is the door containing a small, antique glass window; it connects the two rooms.

THE STUDIO: Part Three- D

2008-12-07T07:25:00.000-08:00

WELCOME TO THE REHEARSAL ROOM!

Top Photo

Drums, baby! And congas, bongos, sound absorber on wall, a few bells, and the sweetest ashtray you'll ever hear!

Second photo

Rack mount units for recording, miking, effects and amplification. The monitor speakers are the only ones being used in the studio right now. The red refrigerator is in the background.

Third photo

Parrot Ice (Paradice- get it?) neon sign, old mirror, and Hawaiian koa wood ukalele. Under them is the "bar" with its window half open and Debbie on the other side.

Bottom photo

A long view to other end of the room, this shows the two sets of red drapes Deb let me get for the sliding glass door, and the shorter sets she folded up and taped to fit beautifully on the 8 foot window to the left. In the right corner is one of two light boxes on stands that I designed and filled with dimmers and lights after my students built them, back in 2004, the year I retired. These two boxes latch together to form one rectangular metal box that's easy to load in a truck.

In the middle-back is Deb's synthesizer, amp, and headphone mic.

Then the guitar amps, guitars, mic and stand, foot effects.

And in the foreground is the bass player's mic, with the bass amp and speaker cabinet out of the picture.

THE STUDIO: Part Three- E

2008-12-07T07:20:00.000-08:00

I wrote my first song in over a year and a half just this week, sitting at my old English teaching podium in my new studio.

This is the view out the window while I work. Had to include a sunset shot of the Albin, up on her lift. Thanks for viewing. Please feel free to comment.

2008-07-09T11:24:00.000-07:00

March 30, 2006

Hi. I thought I'd try this, at least until some fool uses my info. to steal my identity. Although I've got to wonder, just who would want to be me? (Ok, I mean "really" be me!) I've not had an easy life and surely don't have much money to show for 31 years of teaching. Now I'm newly retired from my 60 hour work weeks teaching English. I barbecued my briefcase after I finished my last day at school. (see photo) Don't misinterpret this: I loved teaching and the kids. I loathed the long grading sessions I endured for way too many years. Time to try something new! Time to reinvent ME!

2008-07-09T11:18:00.000-07:00

Entry for July 08, 2006 -Global Warming

Today's newspaper contained an editorial by John Stossel, "Scientists Use Scare Tactics to Get Money." (July 8, 2006) He offers VERY little proof of his thesis and uses sentences like "...melting Arctic ice won't raise sea levels any more than the melting ice in your drink makes your glass overflow." He basiclly claims scientists are overstating facts, twisting data, to produce increased funding for their projects regarding global warming. Just two weeks ago articles appeared in all the major publications saying MOST scientists now agree that global warming IS taking place, the oceans are rising as glaciers melt, we can expect more violent storms and increasing wildfires as a result of the now obvious warming taking place. Did Stossel forget that glaciers are not icebergs? Icebergs sit IN the water (like an ice cube in a glass)- but (melting) glaciers do not. They reside on land, can be miles wide, miles deep, and miles long, and those suckers are melting at unpresentated rates, in many cases disappearing for the first time in thousands of years. Huge chunks of ice the size of Rhode Island in Antarctica are breaking off and not reforming. Greenland's ice sheet that covers most of the island continent is disappearing fast.
Guess where all that water is going! Yep, our oceans will rise. The question is: Just how far will water levels go up? Most areas can tolerate an inch or two, but much more than that will have deleterious effects as presented in Al Gore's movie- "An Inconvenient Truth", and we will lose major cities, etc. My house sits sixteen feet above the ocean's level. Am I worried? It may not happen in my lifetime, but who wants to lose a legacy they want to hand down to a child?
The awful truth is we do not yet have the scientific ability to accurately predict just HOW hot we will get, HOW much glacial melt to expect, and HOW much destruction we can realistically expect from the increase in the oceans' water levels. This is all new territory for science.
Looking for a career that might make a difference to mankind? Choose environmental science, or some related field. Help us understand our world better and to come up with solutions to our ever increasing problems with managing it.
Most industrialized countries are now reporting populations in decline as fewer and fewer babies are being born, (except the U.S. whose population is expected to stay fairly constant.) Who knows? This reduction in global population might offset some of the pollution we are experiencing that is causing the world to warm. The cure might be taking place right now and we're unaware of it. Less people equals less pollution, plain and simple. Granted it is possible for pictures to lie, but it is harder. Type in "Antarctic melting" into Google, but make sure you click the option for Google images. Look at what is going on right now. "The sky is falling" in the form of melting glaciers

2008-07-09T11:12:00.000-07:00

Time to Put Together a Hurricane Kit -July 18, 2006

I'm writing this mostly for my few friends and family, in hopes they will be prepared for the troubles ahead. No "Chicken Little" here. These events are most likely to happen.... and happen soon. What's $100 to $200 -if it means being prepared for your very survival? And IF these events do not happen, you'll have some extra food to eat and camping gear to utilize. In other words, you'll have little to lose IF you prepare now. If you choose to do nothing, well, the least to expect is extreme discomfort. The worst would be death.
OK, guys, it's hurricane season, and we WILL probably get hit - either T.J. in FLA, or Diane and Tate on The Outer Banks, or myself here in New Bern, NC. Hell, at this rate, even Brian in Maine had better pay attention. Global warming is fueling bigger hurricanes. It might not have the power of a Katrina, but when 4 to 6 "major hurricanes" are predicted to hit the US this season, we'd better pay attention.
And I am not just worried about the weather. We only have a matter of a short time before avian flu hits. The scientists say it will definately occur. There is no IF...it's a question of WHEN, this year or next. Think of the Spanish flu that killed 19 million worldwide in 1910. This will probably be at least that bad. Do some online research, as I have done, and you'll agree that we each need to start getting ready for the oncoming avian flu. We're talking about staying IN OUR HOMES for at least 3 weeks, and lots of reliable sources are saying to be ready for at least 3 MONTHS! Worst case scenario is a couple years, with the resulting lack of food, medicine, etc. Those folks ARE perchance too alarmist with their talk of buying lots of planting seeds, good bicycles, etc. and being prepared for defending your home from hungry intruders for a period of a year or two! That's the "Mad Max" scenario.
Now I'm going out on a limb: I PREDICT the problems currently occuring between Israel and Lebanon will soon be FAR larger than a local war. Lebanon is a shell of a country with no real government of its own, and is overrun with Hizbullah terrorists supported entirely by Syria and Iran. Their goal is the total downfall of Israel and the return of all Palestenian lands. The Hizbollah terrorists that kidnapped the Israeli soldiers were taunting the Israeli army, knowing how they would respond. They want a larger war! So Israel responded with attacking as many Hizbollah headquarters and related sites as they could. The problem is that Hizbolla is CONTROLLED MOSTLY BY IRAN (and to a lesser extent Syria). You get the picture? To really stop Hizbolla, Israel HAS to go after Iran. Now we have a regional war. The US will gladly get sucked into this one, considering our current administration's stance on Iran. I'm not claiming this war will be of Biblical proportions, but it could quickly get nasty: Moslem vs. Christian! We don't want it to happen, but THEY obviously do.
(Added 10-28-06: Ok, Ok, my prediction proved wrong. The U.S. pressured the U.N. to stop the battle between Israel and the Hizbollah terrorists, and they did, sort of. The U.N. troops are still there today. Yet the missles are still falling on Israel, and Israel is still responding with counterstrikes! It turns out that Hizbollah had 13,000 missles to lob into Israel! Many of these missles were/are hidden in towns, inside homes with roofs that slide back, allowing the missles to be hidden, yet fired easily. More regarding this can be found at http://martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/aug2006/hizbollah_rockets1html .) Of course these missles were provided mostly by Iran, Hizbollah's biggest supporter. This crisis is temporarily over.The biggest threat now comes from Iran and North Korea's refusal to stop producing nuclear fuel for weapons, weapons they both say they need to protect themselves from the country that calls them "evil," - the U.S. Remember, these two countries were two-thirds of President Bush's "Axis of Evil" speech, with the third country being Iraq, the one country proven to have no nuclear or W.M.D. (weapons of mass destruction) ambitions. The U.S. pressured the U.N. for many more sanctions against North Korea, and North Korea has already responded by saying the enforcement of these sanctions is "a declaration of war" against them. Check out the above U.S. Dept. of Defense night-time photo of North and South Korea. North Korea requires almost a total blackout after 9p.m. to conserve power. They are heavily dependent on China, their best friend, for fuel to give them electricity. Millions in North Korea are malnourished or are dying because of their dictatorships' policies. They are a desperate country. Does this situation sound serious enough to you? And now that we've had a very mild hurricane season pass, it's time to remind you that we are currently at the start of what hurricane predictors call a 20 year cycle of increasingly numerous and violent hurricanes.)
We have more need now than ever before to put together a comprehensive "hurricane kit" capable of sustaining our families over a period of time probably exceeding three weeks. We've got hurricanes, avian flu, and a possibly larger war staring us in the face. For some of us this means getting together lots of canned food, dry food, even MRI kits off the internet, storing water- lots of it- with a drop of clorine in each gallon, having a solar or wind-up powered radio, candles, matches- lots of 'em. EXTRA MEDICINES could be hard to acquire, but possibly worth the effort. (Expect the transportation/ food / medicine delivery system to slow to a crawl if loads of folks are getting really sick.) Go on the web and look at lots of survival lists; decide for yourself what you need.There's lots of lists available, from the Red Cross to "doomsday- Mad Max" lists. Get started NOW! Debbie and I are currently pretty low on extra cash until our old home sells, but we're putting together a basic hurricane kit with hopes of enlarging it substantially later. If it's a catagory 4 or larger hurricane, we'll head for the mountains, to our unsold home there. If it's avian flue, we'll stick it out here by not leaving the house except in an emergency. If it's a big war, well, my mom's a veteran of what that was like, so I'd defer to her advice. Doubt I'd need my guns though. Who knows. Moslems don't hate us, but there are enough terrorists that do, and if it escalates into a Moslem vs. Christian war, ANYTHING could happen.
Let's get prepared for a hurricane for now, but the wiser ones of us will look down the road and prepare for the oncoming avian flu. I'm writing this because I care for you, knowing only friends and family will read this. Ignore it at your peril.
Love- Mike

2008-07-09T11:11:00.001-07:00

Got Tornadoes? Get a Weather Radio! Feb. 05, 2007

Florida just got slammed again with at least three tornadoes four days ago. They swept across the state during the very early morning while almost everyone was asleep. The area had no warning sirens. Twenty people dead at last count. The area looks like a giant bomb went off- leveling most of the homes. A new church, built to withstand a Category 4 hurricane was flattened. People were swept out of their beds with some found far away, some in lakes. The contents of their homes were swept right out along with them. The destructive power of a tornado can't be stopped, but can we do something to save lives?
The answer is yes. IF YOU LIVE IN AN AREA SUSCEPTIBLE TO TORNADOES, GET A WEATHER RADIO! For an investment of around $30 you could possibly save your life. As soon as we moved from the mountains of Virginia, where tornadoes rarely occur, to the coast of North Carolina, where waterspouts often come ashore and turn into tornadoes, I got a weather radio.
For those totally unaware of what a weather radio is, let me explain: All it does is sound a loud alarm for 15-20 seconds, then a robotic voice announces the change in weather that has activated the alarm and any precautions needed to be taken, etc. I got the smaller, more portable one from Radio Shack (pictured above), so we can take it with us on the boat. Other units look more like bedroom clock radios. Mine runs on batteries, or AC power. It does its job, sometimes too well. Let me explain that last sentence: When you get a weather radio, you sit down and program it to respond to signals sent from the National Weather Service. You get to choose the KIND of weather you want it to respond to, and THE AREA of the country about which you want to be alerted. I could have set mine to alert me of weather warnings in Virginia if I had wanted. I chose the counties surrounding us here in New Bern, NC, and I chose possibly too many weather warning types. I probably could have omitted hurricane warnings. Those are ubiquitous on the TV and radio. I chose for it to alarm me of strong thunder storms, tornadoes, and hurricanes. (I think you can even program these things to warn you of freeze warnings!) Programming the thing isn't hard, but is time consuming. Just sit down for a few minutes with the owner's manual and "get 'er done." Then put the radio near your bed and turn the volume all the way up! You want to hear it go off when you're watching a movie or whatever. You can also push another button to have the radio tell you the current and future weather conditions, tides, wave heights, etc.
Is it a pain? Sometimes, during the summer, it will alarm us to strong thunderstorms passing through. When it goes off and I'm near enough to hear it, I head back to the bedroom to listen to the warning. That lasts 30 seconds, usually. Then I push a button to tell the unit I have heard the message, so it won't sit there and emit loud beeps to alert me that I have missed a message. This is no problem. But at 3 a.m. it is sometimes. It is a rude awakening! I know it's just doing its job, and I usually fall quickly back asleep. Remember- it was around 3 a.m. when those sleeping souls were sucked right out of their bedrooms with no time to prepare.
Get a weather radio if you live in an area that has tornadoes or frequent strong thunderstorms. Those strong thunderstorms seem to be getting more frequent, what with the global warming that scientists have finally agreed is occurring. (See my blog from last year on global warming, back when those scientists couldn't seem to make up their minds as to just why the Antarctic shelf and glaciers in Greenland were melting so fast.) When a strong thunderstorm nears, I frequently go out on the deck and close the patio table's umbrella which is screwed firmly to the deck, then run a rope around the lightweight chairs, etc. and anchor them to the railing. Sometimes I take down the hanging plants, wind chimes, etc. that could get beat-up. Then I go inside and watch "the show." These can be very strong storms, lots of high winds (up to 60 mph!) lightning and sideways rain! Once past us, I usually have to go out and haul small and large branches to our burn pit. (We have lots of trees.) Bigger storms take hours of cleanup time. These storms are now predicted to only get more frequent and stronger with global warming occurring. I am seriously thinking of removing some of those lovely trees nearest our home, knowing they could fall on us. My neighbor says, "That's what you have insurance for."
I predict weather radios will become almost as common as iPods soon, because of global warming. For the price of an inexpensive dinner for two you can have at least a few minutes warning from a tornado. That's enough time to get into an interior closet, hallway,or bathtub with thick pillows from your sofa over your head. I wish those poor folks in Florida had those few moments. Give one to someone you love as a Christmas or birthday present!
(Added 2-6-07) I just heard a short news piece on NBC News last night about the Florida tornadoes. In it they said The National Weather Service issued three tornado warnings, one 16 minutes before they hit, one 11 minutes, and one 6 minutes before they touched down. Then the announcer went on to say a weather radio- some as inexpensive as 16$- could have saved many people. Wonder if they read my blog written just 8 hours or so before their broadcast? Naaaa.
(Added 3-9-07) Yesterday I went to Radio Shack and bought another weather radio like the one I own. This is to be a gift for a relative. It's been a couple years since I got mine, and the portable model is a tad smaller and a lot pricier! It's now going to cost you $70 to get the hand-held model WITH the power adaptor!!! That's almost double what I paid. Maybe check around for a better price- like on eBay, etc.
I looked at their "Red Cross" model weather radio with all the nice features- hand crank capability, flashlight, AM-FM radio, even a cell phone charger! But DON'T buy this unit! If you inquire, you'll find the owner's manual is rather vague on the topic of whether or not the unit will AUTOMATICLY alert you of a changing weather event. The store manager told me she had asked other Radio Shack dealers and had been told IT WILL NOT PERFORM THIS FUNCTION! Looks slick, but don't buy it for THIS purpose. Put your $50 towards one that will awaken you, alert you, without you having to turn it on to the NOAA channel.

2008-07-09T10:43:00.000-07:00

Let's Stop School Killings- October 03, 2006

Yesterday was the third intrusion into a school in a week resulting in loss of life. This time it was a seemingly stable thirty-something fella harboring "a grudge" and a desire to molest who barged into a one room schoolhouse in an Amish community in Penn., chased out the boys, and methodically shot the girls, execution style, after binding them. Five girls dead at last count, with more critically wounded.
What's the solution? Well, to discuss that you first have to discuss the problem. There's a lot of insane folks out there, and with more cutbacks in funding for the mentally disabled and their hospitals/treatment, that figure will only increase. Funding for mental health needs to be restored, plain and simple.
And these crazy folks have easy access to lots of guns. Doubt there's much we can do about this aspect of the problem. Guns are an ingrained part of American society. I own a few myself, mostly hunting rifles, but included is one pistol for family protection from the crazies and drug addicts out there. Never had to grab it. But the other night something happened that makes me worry about even owning it. It's a digression from my topic, but, hey, it's my blog, and I can ramble if I want to. I was doing the usual barbeque thing- I cook out a lot to help Debbie ( and it tastes better!)- around dark-thirty at night and was just shutting down the gas and collecting the cooked meat onto a platter. I'd turned to go back inside with it when a strong light shone on my face. I looked, and it was coming from 20 feet away on my deck. I saw a silhouette of a big man with a light held high and pointed at me. I said, "Can I help you?" (What else does one say under those circumstanses?) And the man said, "I just thought I'd come over here and help myself to whatever you're cookin'. Smells great!"
It was my neighbor with his "night fishing" light on his head. He was, of course, joking. He'd never steal anybody's food. He was just foolin' around. But what if I had been sitting inside watching TV and had seen his light in my backyard? Would I have reached for that pistol? I doubt it. It would probably take something more serious than that... or would it? Our community has its share of escaped felons, home invaders, and serious drug addicts that need to steal to feed their habits. OK, digression over. Sorry.
So what do we do about these school killings? We have to do a better job of guarding our schools. Ever since Columbine occurred, schools across the country have added "School Resource Officers" to their campuses. This is usually a town cop, on duty with his uniform, pistol and radio communication gear. My previous school where I taught almost always had one on duty for the 800+ student campus, including the adjacent middle school. The trouble was he was only one man to cover a lot of ground. If a loud, complaining parent came into the middle school office, he went. If a fight broke out in the high school's cafeteria, he went. But he couldn't guard every door in those buildings. Any idiot that wanted in those buildings had no problem doing so. Can we guard every door? The cost to the schools and community for hiring enough extra resource officers to do the job right would be far too high. Kids need to come and go- to the office- to the bathroom! We can't just lock the doors and then post a teacher/guard there at the end of every class to unlock the door nearest their classroom and "inspect" every person that enters.
Or can we? What would this entail? First, we'd have to remove that teacher from most extra duties- coaching, club sponsoring, etc. The extra work in maintaining security at "their" door would be enough extra work. Second, we'd have to ensure that teacher had passed a course or two in security work commensurate with the work required. Third, to really be effective we ought to strongly consider arming those teachers with a Taser gun or a discretely hidden pistol, perhaps one with the special "fingerprint recognition" technology now available- so only the registered user can use the pistol. Yep, they're expensive, but worth it. No one could steal that pistol and use it. Certification in this kind of firearms use would also be required.
Since most perimeter school doors are also "fire exits" the doors would have to be automatically locked to anyone trying to get in, but easily opened from the inside to allow egress in an emergency. These kinds of door locks have been around for 50 years. Let's utilize them.
How about those bathroom visits, trips to the office during class, etc. that entail leaving one building to enter another? Build more bathrooms. They're cheaper in the long run than paying officers to guard doors. Provide a (parent volunteer?) guardian to accompany any student to the office. Tell parents coming to pick up Johnny for a dentist visit to come a little early to get him between classes. (Frankly, I've never understood why most doctor visits can't be after school anyway!) Sacrifices have to be made to help ensure security at our schools. Combined with metal detectors through which every teacher and student must pass at the main entrance of every school, my plan of putting armed teacher-guards at every unlocked perimeter door during its use would make schools safer.
Our society is adapting to sacrifices just like these all across America. It will probably get worse in the upcoming years. Israel has been adapting to daily terrorist threats for decades. Our threats come from within as well as from the outside. There are obviously enough troubled individuals in our own country to warrant major changes in the security of our schools. What is the price of just one murdered student? We have to pay that price now before we lose more.

ADDED Aug. 19, 2008- almost two years after I wrote the above: I just heard a brief piece on ABC morning news that entailed an interview with the superintendent of the Texas Harrold Independent School District. In the interview the superintendent said he was allowing guns to be brought to school each day by his teachers once they had completed training in their use and how to handle hostage situations. He gave two reasons for allowing guns in his school: The school was thirty minutes away from any police protection, and the school was located right next to a major highway, so it had easy access and escape for a potential shooter. Sounds like a logical decision to me. Wonder how long it will take before some governing body takes his common sense answer to this problem away from him?

2008-07-09T10:38:00.000-07:00

PAY TEACHERS WHAT THEY EARN! October 19, 2006

Disclaimer: Now that I've retired from teaching full time, I can write this. It's too late for me to benefit from this, but it's not too late for society to have more teachers dedicated to their profession and partly repaid for their schoolwork done at home.
I taught elementary (Title 1-Chapter 1) reading and math for 10 years. Those were some of my most enjoyable years of teaching. It entailed working with kids that were mostly affectionate and appreciative of the help that I provided. I worked about 40 hours per week at that job. This gave me lots of time to go back to the farm/homestead and do lots of chores. It was a low-stress job. I earned my pay of $8,500 per year, no doubt about it. And I never once carried a briefcase.
But I also taught 21 years as an English teacher. Let's get something straight: There is a world of difference in these two jobs. As an English teacher, if you want to be effective, you HAVE to put in a lot more hours than your peers. As an English teacher I worked an average of 60 hours per week. Big difference. Some weeks, after I had been in the profession for 5 or more years, I worked a full 80 hours, usually because of grading research papers or essays at home. Some weeks I only worked 50 hours because the grading load was easier, just the usual quizzes and tests. But averaged together it was about 60 hours per week for 21 years. Over those 21 years, if you add the extra hours, it comes to 27 years of 40 hours per week of work, the "normal" work week most Americans have. Therefore, I haven't taught 31 years total. I've taught 37 years over a 31 year period! That's 6 years worth of grading papers, etc., at home!
(Added Oct. 28, 2000: I just found this statistic and thought it interesting, so I've added it here: In The Virginia Journal of Education, Nov., 2006, p.19, they report that public school teachers spend an average of 50 hours per week on all their duties, including grading papers. I can only assume that when they say "public school teachers" they mean elementary and secondary teachers, including overburdened English teachers, and the average is the average of all those polled. Like I said, interesting.)
My normal week as an English teacher consisted of teaching the classes, sometimes with the same lesson plan, often with two or three different lesson plans because they were different classes (like English 9, English 11, Drama, etc.) Then I would often stay late at school for coaching drama or forensic arts until 5 p.m. I would drive home and check the mail. My wife often would find me napping with a Newsweek magazine on my lap when she arrived home. I wasn't physically exhausted. Teaching high school emotionally drains most teachers. I'd try and do one short chore, then I'd watch the news and eat dinner. By 7 p.m. it was time to open the briefcase.
How do you tell if an English teacher is trying to be effective in his or her job? Look for the ones carrying a briefcase or something with a lot of papers in it. It's a simple fact: In order to produce better writers you HAVE to assign more writing, AND that writing has to be graded so the students can receive feedback as to how to improve. Stand outside any high school and watch as the teachers head for their cars. I've done this hundreds of times. You can easily tell who is taking work home to be graded. Most teachers carry no bag, just a purse if they're female. But watch the effective English teacher carry a heavily loaded bag, briefcase, or box full of research papers, projects, essays, short stories, etc.
So I'd open my briefcase and grade papers until 11 p.m. most every night. (That's 4 hours, minimum per night.) Some nights I'd grade until 1 or 2 a.m. if I really wanted to get that batch of papers back to the students right away. After grading, I always had to do my lesson plans for the next day. This usually only took 30 minutes or so, after I had been teaching for 4 to 5 years. But during those first 5 years of teaching I often found myself studying what I had to teach the next day. This often entailed reading a selection or two, or intently studying pronouns or something so I wouldn't sound like a fool trying to teach the next day. And, of course, anytime I was given a new assignment- a different class level, etc.- that meant a whole different set of quizzes and tests to write, different books and pieces to read, different lesson plans, different everything! I usually went to bed after my wife was asleep.
I have to say right now that I owe a huge thank you to Debbie for being a partner of sorts in my career. (It's almost as if the school board got 1.10 teachers for the price of 1.) She would help me enter homework, quiz, and test scores almost every night when she could. I'd call out the name and grade and she'd enter it in my grade book. We found this was a lot faster than my entering them by myself. Deb was a professional bookkeeper and was gracious enough to average all those grades and help me do report cards for 19 of my 21 years teaching English. She double checked EVERY student's average, with only one mistake (easily corrected) in all those years. Not too many teachers can say they had the marital help I had. This help enabled me to do even more grading, test and quiz writing, etc. than normal. As for anyone possibly wondering about the privacy of a pupil's grade, Deb rarely connected a grade with an actual face of a student. She simply didn't know them, so that was never an issue. She maintained absolute secrecy about all school matters. Again, never a problem in my entire career.
That was my usual workday. I, like most folk, waited for the weekend when I could relax some. My Friday nights and Saturdays were usually my own. If I had a huge load to grade, I'd reluctantly start on Saturday afternoon, knowing it would make my Sunday easier. But, make no doubt about it, Sundays were for grading. Almost every Sunday for 21 years you could find me grading papers in my recliner. (I wore out 2 recliners this way!) I graded all day on Sunday, finishing, as usual, around 11 p.m. Can you imagine how many family outings I had to pass up? How many times my son would come to me with a football in his hand wanting to throw it around, and I'd have to tell him I couldn't? I'm in no way looking for pity, but just telling the truth. My family and not just myself had to make a huge sacrifice because of my chosen profession and my desire to do well in it. No doubt about it. I owe them all a big thank you.... and, I guess, a big "I'm sorry." With some hesitation, I can honestly say I partly neglected my family for one-seventh of their lives during my career. That was a hard sentence to type.
Was it worth it? Well, as a beginning English teacher in Florida in 1971, I got $7,000 per year and worked an average of 90 hours per week, starting out as an English teacher and coach. We had no kids of our own back then, but it still was not worth it. It was killing me, draining my soul. In 1985 I started teaching English in Virginia, at around 80 hours per week for about $17,000 per year, but with two kids of my own. It was an arduous struggle finishing 31 total years of teaching, but I ended at $40,000 per year and was averaging 60 hours per week. I have been put in Who's Who of America's Teachers a dozen times, and into the newer National Honor Roll's Outstanding American Teachers- 2005/2006. Unlike some teachers I know, I never once applied for or sought any honors. These were honors bestowed upon me by my previous students that thought I had made a positive change in their lives. God bless 'em! Many of my students loved me and the work I did for them. Most liked me, but you can't win 'em all. I'm sure a few hated me, school in general, and their English classes in particular.
So can I say it was worth it? Yes and no. I'm proud of the job I did. Not every teacher can say that. But I'm sad that I hurt my family by ignoring some of their needs during that time. There were many times I wished I had taught social studies, history, math, anything that didn't come with the required briefcase. (Don't get my wrong, I have talked to math teachers, etc. that have taken work home, but none, I repeat-none- can honestly look me in the eye and say they worked at home nearly as much as I did.)
Let's pay teachers for the work they do. How to do that could be a problem. Most teachers are an honest lot. If you can agree with that statement then you can agree with this one: Let the teacher who carries home work also have a time log to "punch-in" when they start grading, writing tests, etc. at home. When done they "punch-out," enter it on their time log. Pay $5.00 per hour just for work done at home to ALL teachers. Sure the English teachers will bring home the most extra pay, but I think you'll be surprised how many other teachers start assigning writing to be graded later by themselves at home. It is a well known fact that many teachers simply will not assign any work that requires them to grade much at home. They feel they aren't being paid for it, so they don't assign it. Very early in my career I witnessed an English teacher (of a school's brightest honor students) dump an entire day's worth of student writing into the trash can rather than take it home to be graded. (When I asked him why he'd thrown it all away the teacher said he had "checked it off" in his grade book as being done.) This gave me a bitter taste for lazy teachers not dedicated to their students. My idea could change all that. Or the dishonesty that rears its ugly head any time money comes into an equation could ruin this idea: Teachers could start cheating the time clock in order to earn more.
Another alternative is a form of merit-based pay: Simply pay teachers extra for the total work they produce. If a teacher says a set of papers took 8 hours to grade- a common fact with English teachers- give them compensation for the grading they did. They need it. Trust me. I've been there! I remember having to go to the bank to take out a $300 loan to fix my car's radiator because I simply didn't have $300. I remember buying my young son and daughter's clothes at Goodwill back before they cared about "style" or even "newness." I remember having my kids in the "free/reduced lunch" program in the elementary school where I taught. I know poverty. We lived it for years. As a family, we didn't get "comfortable" until I hit the $35,000 per year pay scale. That's a fact. By then it was almost too late to save much for my kids' upcoming college tuitions.
Let's crunch some numbers: If the average (English!) teacher works 20 hours per week at home on schoolwork, and is paid just $5 per hour for it, that comes to $100 per month extra pay. Multiply that times a ten month school calendar and you get $1000 extra pay for extra work. That kind of merit pay should not break too many school budgets. That money is deeply deserved by those teachers earning it, and I know it is needed by them. If you really want results, double that $5 to $10 per hour, and watch what happens! If just one wealthy, local philanthropist could start an experiment in one school to do this, and thoroughly document the amount of work done at each teacher's home, then publish the results, I think we'd all be surprised at the results. The students would improve in multiple areas, and the level of satisfaction by being just a bit compensated for their extra work would be evident in the teachers. More of those teachers would stop considering a career change! (Where's Bill Gates when you need him?)
We are at a point of crisis in education. We have to start paying teachers more or we'll see a steady decline in good teachers. I think we're seeing it already. Periodically I would encourage some of my pupils to go into teaching. Good candidates for the profession have told me to my face they don't want to enter teaching because they don't want the low pay that comes with it. Let's face it: Nowadays a teacher has to get a "calling" -much like a preacher- in order to enter teaching as a career. Let's at least pay these teachers more for the work they produce. Then we'll see an increase of dedicated professionals. The teachers deserve it, and the students deserve more dedicated teachers.

2008-07-09T10:27:00.000-07:00

My Departure from the World of Retail Sales- January 21, 2007

It's all about "the bottom line- profit." OK, that's the way our economic system functions; That said, I can understand when a cash register doesn't ring-up sales as often or quickly as it could, that management needs to scrutinize the reasons why.
Now I'll be specific: I was given the opportunity to join the staff at a local business, one long in local history (100+ years!) in my smallish town. I really liked most of the merchandise and thought, as a retired teacher, I'd enjoy working part-time there as well as at my other part-time job, which is not in retail, but where they love my work. The shocking reality was that I'd have to learn to use the new business computer/ cash register software under pressure and with little effective assistance.
I've run cash registers before, but it was back when all you dealt with was cash, checks, or credit transactions. I'd worked for two different record stores, Pizza Hut, and Sears prior to starting my career in teaching. And during those teaching years I've almost been a leader- in the forefront, locally, so to speak- of using the computer to do sundry jobs- long before other teachers gave it a try: I've figured how to use Adobe Photo shop to remove red-eye, re size and do photo resolution changes, etc. I've used different programs to put together school and band posters, photo albums, slide shows, put up my band's 8 page web site (with MP3 files) and numerous other successful work. The difference here is that I could take my time to train myself in using these programs. But I always got the job done, and done right. I'm proud of the work I've done and the computer programs I've mastered. I'm no newbie. But I am 58 years old. I don't memorize as well or as fast as I used to.
Still, I never had a problem, given my time and dedication to a completed product. Computers have taken over the cash register during this span, and learning a proprietary (private company's) program to run the computer can be a steep learning curve. On my new employer's computer/register I can easily do cash, check, and credit transactions, as well as take payments over the phone and in person for rentals. For most businesses this would be all that was needed. But these duties probably only comprise 80% of the needed work done at this computer. It's the other 20% that got to me. In addition to the above three or four functions, there are many others where I simply have to turn to someone for help. I've never been guilty of badly messing-up the end-of-day receipts, and don't want to start now. These other functions are less often used, but are important to such a diverse business. They include doing layaways, making payments on them, paying them off; account purchases; taking-in repairs and paying them off (done two different ways as per just who does the repair); etc., etc. Believe me, there's a myriad of other functions that register does, almost all of which must (evidently) be learned quickly by any new employee.
So how was I trained to do these functions? Almost all my fellow employees- even the bookkeeper, God bless her!- showed me their way of doing certain things. We're talking 60 second to 2 minute lessons. And over half of these short sessions were interrupted by a phone ringing that had to be answered or a customer with a request. That's when the lesson ended by necessity. (The one lesson that really stands out was when a fellow employee, seeing me use the computer mouse to work the software, took it and threw it the length of its short cord, saying, "Don't touch that! You don't need it!" In fact, his one, brief lesson may have been the best. I rarely had to use the time-consuming mouse after that.
The computer, besides having its proprietary point-of-sales software, also had the same proprietary software's "training program." I should have been alerted when I noticed the training program was called the "Test" program. I spotted it on the computer screen's start-up page, but when I asked about it I was told it was pretty useless. Two weeks later, with my skills obviously still lacking, the assistant manager asked me to try it out. It was an exact copy of the regular P.O.S. software, only transactions done on it didn't go into the computer's memory. If I had had someone looking over my shoulder and teaching me, it could have helped. But there was no such person available. There's no money to be made in staff training until the training is complete! I did a few of the transactions I already knew how to do, but was soon lost and frustrated on the other functions and had no help learning just how to do them. What good does it do to just stare at a screen when you don't know what to put on it?
If I had been given the chance to stand at the computer and DO each of the more complex functions at least five or ten times in a row, I know I could have mastered them. But retail is obviously about sales, not training. Instead, after being shown how to do something new, I was not asked to actually do it again for many days. This gave me ample opportunity to forget what I was just shown! If I don't use it, I lose it. Don't most people?
One fellow employee commented that it was hard for me to learn the software because I was constantly being taken away from it to do other jobs: "The new guy" - me- got to spend half a day delivering merchandise, sometimes in the dark, or lugging around the store a large stepladder and replacing burned out incandescent and florescent lights, or spending two-thirds of a day just vacuuming the entire store, and another few hours spot-cleaning the carpets.(OK, I admit I volunteered for this last job.) Got to admit, it's hard to get much software experience when sweeping cigarette butts in the parking lot But these were jobs needing doing, and I'm a "team player," so I did them. (The only time I complained was to a much younger employee when I said I didn't like going to my next job while soaking wet with sweat in my "sales clothes.") No one told me to wear jeans, t-shirt, and sneakers on "maintenance days." I wore a salesperson's clothing to do maintenance work. So here I was, a part-time employee, expected to learn the software, yet I was constantly being taken from it to do other jobs.
It has now been four weeks since I started this job. I came into the frying pan at Christmas rush, so the flame was on high at the time. I knew the least about the business when I was needed the most. At the conclusion of the Christmas sales period I was congratulated and thanked by the store's owner who said I had been a big help to his staff and had contributed to the store setting a record profit. And that same owner called me into his office to thank me for "stepping up to the plate" by offering to spot-clean the many dark, unsightly stains on the carpet. This fine man recognizes initiative and hard work. He even gave me my first-ever Christmas bonus! (Teachers don't get bonuses too often.) He is a very kind person that I will miss. During our three-part interview process (once interrupted by me having to leave to go to my other part-time job) he told me: "Don't feel guilty if you ever want to quit this job. If you want to quit, go ahead." Granted, I've only been interviewed four or five times for employment, but his words seemed strange during an interview. Now it seems like a prophesy of sorts, like he knew it would happen, like it had happened before.
I felt inadequate and even rejected by a couple fellow employees for the past week. My only interpretation is that they've grown weary of helping me. After only three weeks there, this overpowering sense of doom fell upon me. After four weeks I know it's not in my head: I've noticed contempt towards me from one employee, the one most helpful when I started! And others are purposefully ignoring me or giving me curt answers to my innocuous questions. I'm a "dead man walking!" I don't need a weatherman to tell me which way the wind blows, as Dylan sang. So at the conclusion of a very busy Saturday, during which I had really earned my $8 per hour, I turned to the assistant manager, a guy that I had previously thanked for his patience and kindness during my "internship," and asked, "Do you think I should be looking elsewhere for another job?"
His expression of consternation told pages as he responded with, "Well....( insert long pause)...You'll have to talk to (insert owner's name) about that."
All my life I've made it a point to not be where I wasn't wanted. In teaching, I've made it into the Who's Who of America's Teachers a solid dozen times, and another professional honor organization once, without ever seeking those honors. My students wanted me. My school system of 29 years asked me to stay another year for double salary! They wanted me. Tomorrow I will quit the world of retail sales. They don't want me.
Through my teen and adult life I've had the ability to "outwork" most other employees, through sheer determination and strength when I was young, and through perseverance as I aged, often logging 80 hours per week as a teacher (see next blog entry). That willpower is simply not with me as much as before. Yes, I gave it a pretty good try, and I feel I improved this retail business some while there, cosmetically- and I think I made a couple of the employees aware of the importance of price tags on merchandise. (Some customers don't want a salesperson assisting them for various reasons, they just want to look and note prices; these customers need price tags!)
I'll survive. I still get my full teaching pension and my other part-time job salary. (They just gave me another raise and a bonus!) In another year and a half I can dip into my TSA savings, and in four short years social security kicks in. Yes, I'll make it, but it'll be without much respect for this new wide world of retail sales.

2008-07-09T10:05:00.000-07:00

Today's Music: Superficiality Over Substance - March 13, 2007

Dylan sang "The times they are a-changin'" and, boy, was he right! Popular music continues to change as the years go by. I have trouble saying music is "evolving" because of the implied meaning of "improving through evolution." Today's music is far from improving on what has come before, in my opinion. More on this later.
I just bought a DVD of great interest to me: "To Tulsa and Back- On Tour with J.J.Cale." I have admired John Cale's music since I was a 21 year old clerk in an Orlando record store back in the early '70's. I've only managed to see him play one time, and through no fault of his own, it was a most dissapointing night. My wife, son and I traveled from Virginia to Charlotte, NC, to see him after over 30 years of loving his music, buying his albums, playing some of his songs in various band incarnations, and "spreading the gospel" on the quality of his music to anybody who would listen. It was a medium-sized venue (the Vistalite- sp?) with a bar and a $15 per person cover charge. I thought seeing Cale in such an intimate room would be a blessing compared to seeing him in concert in a large venue. Boy, was I mistaken! The main problem was the youngish (21-30 year old) crowd that populated the place. Sure, there were quite a few 40 to 50ish folks there, but the boisterous youngsters far outnumbered us "oldtimers." And were they loud! Most had never heard of J.J. Cale, but were there to party. We could barely hear the music. Management started the show with a warning that Cale didn't play loudly (he's a believer in nuance or finessee in his guitar work, not volume,) and that they needed to "keep it down" so others could hear! Did they listen to that request? Hell no! We watched in total amazement as the management repeated this request three more times throughout Cale's show. We ended up hearing about one-fourth of his music. The crowd would loudly talk and yell throughout most every song. They obviously wern't there to hear Cale's music.When we got home I shot off an angry email to the venue's management about the situation. Never got a response.
Here's my point: It seems "today's youth"- at least the majority- is far more interested in the superficial over substance in their music and in their reaction to it. The above described patrons were far more into drinking and partying than listening to a recognized song-meister and guitar player. For those who don't know, John Cale wrote "After Midnight" and "Cocaine"- a decidedly antidrug song, and his popularity took off when Eric Clapton covered them in his albums. Cale also penned "They Call Me the Breeze," covered by Lynyrd Skynyrd, and favorites like "Magnolia," "Lies," and "Momma Don't (Allow No Guitar Playin' in Here,") covered by hundreds of bands for over 40 years! John Cale is now 65 years old and still touring. He does it for the love of music. He doesn't need to tour. He is the ONLY musician I've heard of who turned-down his record company's request to get out and promote his hit songs, a decision that cost him millions of dollars. He is a man of moral decisions. His answer to his record company's request: "If my songs are already a hit, why promote them?"
I used to DJ dances and wedding receptions, back in the '80's and '90's, a moonlighting English teacher making a few extra bucks. It was dismaying to watch the music gradually change from "hair bands" like Night Ranger, with their high-energy ballads, to rap music, with it's droning, boring beat and offensive lyrics. I challenged all my students to bring me a rap album that did not have offensive language. The challenge went unanswered for four or five years when one day a very motivated, bright, Black male student, (and the son of a police officer) brought me a CD. I took it home, put on the headphones to better hear the lyrics, and sat on the porch to listen. It was a Christian rap album! No bad lyrics there, I had to admit the next day to the class. The student who loaned me the CD asked if I would buy that kind of music. I had to tell the truth: No, rap music simply lacked any melody- the rise and fall of notes that gives music variety and interest. I wouldn't buy it. But I thanked him for proving me wrong- that rap albums existed that didn't contain vulgar language. Unfortunately, most rap music is vulgar, offensive to women- constantly referring to them as "bitches"- offensive to all Black males- calling even themselves "niggas"- offensive to police- offensive to anything positive in life, constantly promoting "bling"-the things money and drug selling bring- over more positive values, and constantly promoting violence as the first and only choice to settling differences between people. My students today (Black and White) tell me they never look a stranger in the eye while on the street. Why? Because to do so is now interpreted by our youth as a challenge!! A challenge to be settled with violence- fists, knives, or guns, with guns predominating! This is a major change in American culture that did not exist before rap and hip-hop music took over the airways, advertising, recording and video industries. Coincidence? No. Rap music promoted the "gangsta" image to the point of it being desirable, first among Black youth; then, because of its popularity, that image has trickled down to White youth. Read that last sentence again. I've got to say here that not all students are emulating their "gangsta" rap heros. I've taught lots of really fine Black and White students, but I feel sorry for the many Black women, mothers of those students who struggle daily to keep that permeating "gansta" image from enveloping their children's whole lives. Bill Cosby's campaign to slow or stop this from happening is not enough. Few survive the enormous peer pressure to conform. It is a well known fact that 50% of all Black males are locked up, incarcerated, at any given time. Those men have bought-into the gangsta image. College educated Black women have a very difficult time finding a marriage partner, Newsweek reports. Duhh! Many more great Black men must step forward and speak out against this self-defeating music and the negative shadow it casts over the Black race or it will continue to spiral out of control.
Have you seen the "modern" way of dancing- done at high school dances and proms, and most dance floors in the nation since the 1990's? Most teens and twenty-somethings do "freaking"- they stand rubbing against each other, simulating the sex act. Prom chaperones across the nation have quite a time trying to stop this kind of dancing. (There's a reason why those kids want very low lighting at dances!) Now, these kids didn't invent sexuality in dancing, they just took it to the absolute limit. The only thing left is to remove the clothes! And what kind of music do they "freak" to? Rap and Hip Hop, with its repetitive, strong, primal beat, mostly done with a drum machine. Again, the beat of the music wins over the message of the song. The listeners are there to "groove and grind"- just like at the aforementioned John Cale show, not to listen to carefully crafted lyrics and melody, not to learn from the song. The music is superficial, lacking melody, lacking meaning. And they love it! Other music is out there, but Rap and Hip Hop dominates. That's basically why I gave up DJ jobs. I couldn't stand the music anymore. I had outgrown it. My dad hated my Rock and Roll, and I had learned to hate "the music" of a younger generation. I was a liberal and educated musician! This wasn't supposed to happen! But my dad hated "my" music because it was so different from his Frank Sinatra and Tommy Dorsey. I feel a little more justified in that I have particular differences in my distaste for today's popular Rap and Hip Hop music.
So, in watching my J.J.Cale DVD, I listened as Cale said that people buy the music they grew up with, the music of their youth, their good times. He counted himself fortunate because some of his songs have "crossed over" to younger bands who cover his material. There are some serious musicians playing contempory music. John Mayer, Nora Jones, and The String Cheese Incident come to mind. There are lots more. But Rap and Hip Hop predominate the contemporary media. Today's youth, according to Cale, will continue to buy-into Rap's messages of violence well into their fourties and fifties! Ever wonder why the murder rate is 10% higher than just 10 years ago in our nation? It's now expected - almost accepted- that an arguement will end in gunfire- even on the highways between strangers!
Popular music has changed. Has it evolved? Dancing has changed. Has it evolved? Our whole culture has changed. Has it evolved? I don't think so. We've regressed. And to think this whole blog was supposed to be about music. Music and culture- you can't really seperate the two.

2008-07-09T09:57:00.000-07:00

DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN! April 01, 2007

I believe it was Yogi Berra that first uttered that famous line I borrowed for this blog title. The reason I chose it is that Debbie and I have been living close to the poverty line these past three years, much the same as we had to live when we first married twenty-two years ago.
Why? Well, in 1985 I was in my twelfth year of teaching, maybe making $15,000 per year (and working 80 hours per week!) not quite half way through a career of 31 years. Debbie worked full-time at low wages, but our combined incomes were minimal. Deb and I moonlighted with a D.J. service and later a band to make extra money. We never took a vacation until my parents sent us to Acapulco, Mexico. I had to borrow money from the bank to fix my van. The little rental home we lived in with Michael John, my son, and Diane, my daughter, was heated by a wood stove, and was often a chilly environment in the mountains of southwestern Virginia. We survived by simply not spending money, unless necessary. We ate, but I'd be lying if I said we ate well. Children's clothes came mostly from Goodwill, until they got old enough to notice the difference, around third or fourth grade. Times were bad. And they wonder why 50% of all teachers quit teaching within the first three years!!! They wonder why they can't get and retain good teachers!!!
Things gradually improved around my twenty-fifth year of teaching, by then making near $30,000 per year. That's when we could tell a difference. We could actually get the little things that before required a "family conference"- an agreement before purchase. I remember coming home with a $120 VCR machine that I'd gotten without consulting Debbie, and feeling a tad guilty. But the bad-'ol-days were behind us, finally. We started making payments on a home just outside Independence, Virginia. The kids grew up and went off to college. Paying for it wasn't too big a deal because they got half their expenses paid by us and half by their biological mom with whom we shared custody fifty percent of the time. Yes, we still moonlighted doing D.J. and band work, but times were better; you could just feel it. It took 25 years of teaching to just feel comfortable, but we were finally fairly comfortable for the first time in our lives.
Then I retired with a full pension. We had been looking for five years for a place on deep water so we could have a small, cruising sized boat and maybe see some of the eastern coastline from the water. Our search took us to my birthplace- Hawaii, specifically the island of Kauai (the most beautiful one!)- but 24 days of looking at property there (in 2000, when it took $250,000 to get a crowded, little home) convinced us that there is indeed a reason you don't see too many white haired retirees living there. We met a doctor at his retirement party that told me he was leaving Kauai to move to California so his dollars would go farther. If a doctor would make that decision, what chance would a retired teacher have of financially surviving there? We hated giving up the idea of living in paradise, but decided to look elsewhere.
We looked from the Northern Neck of Virginia all the way down to Key West. Almost every vacation found us camping with a tent or in a cheap motel, looking for "the perfect place" somewhere on the east coast of the US where it doesn't get too cold or crowded. Key West used to be nice back in the '70s, but it had changed. Still a good place to visit. All of Georgia and South Carolina were just too hot and humid! Beaufort- pronounced "buu-fert"- South Carolina was the most friendly spot. Nice strangers would approach us to chat there. But the humidity almost did Debbie in!
The best place we found was Beaufort- pronounced "bo-fert"-North Carolina. The folks were a tad more reserved there, and waterfront home prices in that area were sky-high. But we both liked that area enough to start making concentric circles around it to outlying areas. We found New Bern, North Carolina, about 45 minutes away from Beaufort, to be just the right size, beautiful in enough spots- especially the historic, downtown area, and affordable. I bet I searched Realtor.com every day for real estate in the Beaufort- New Bern area for close to 2 years! Then I found it: the property listed on Realtor.com had what they call a "virtual tour"- a series of photos stitched together so that by downloading it you could turn your view to look at other adjacent areas, similar to standing and slowly turning your head in both directions. The price was close to right, it was on deep water, on Brices Creek, which emptied into the Trent River, which emptied a mile later into the Neuse River, which emptied a few miles out into the Pamlico Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. We had boating access to the entire east coast! We visited and bought it. Nothing else was as affordable. We were lucky to find it.
Now we had to put our home in Virginia up for sale. I had stripped wallpaper and painted a few rooms, getting ready for this time, but I hadn't done enough, it turned out. The home sat on the market for two years with only very "low-ball" offers. We rarely visited the house, but when we did we continued to clean and clean it out, trying to make it "salable." All this time we paid a nice neighbor boy to mow and trim the yard, check on the house weekly during the winter months and knock down cobwebs. We kept the heat on low, so pipes wouldn't freeze, and kept paying monthly mortgage payments, insurance, taxes, etc. It quickly drained us financially. It was tempting to rent it, but previous experience with renters in Debbie's mom's home taught us that lesson. (It cost us $6,000 to fix that home so it would sell.)
DO NOT BELIEVE HOME APPRAISER ESTIMATES OF YOUR HOME'S VALUE! We learned that the hard way. We were told by our first appraiser that our home was worth $214,000. (He was an ex-student of mine with whom I had had more than a few problems, and was doing me a "favor" he said.) The next appraisal came in at $185,000. (This was done by a friend of my ex-wife's, and he frankly told me it was a more realistic value!) So Debbie and I agreed a good asking price would be somewhere between the two appraisals- $189,000. Boy, were we wrong! Maybe in a great housing market would that have been a good price, but things in Grayson County, Virginia, and surrounding mountain communities were not lookin' up. Factories had closed left and right, sending almost all textile manufacturing to Mexico and China. Even the furniture plants were cutting back or closing entirely. There were, and are today, few good jobs to be found in those beautiful mountains. The few folks from Charlotte that came to the mountains to look wanted a home way out in the country with a dirt road and at least 5 acres of privacy in all directions. The locals who looked wanted a turn-key home where all they had to do was move in their furniture. Nobody seemed to want a home that needed (more) rooms stripped of their wallpaper and painting and new carpet! No one had the imagination to offer us a reasonable low-ball price and then do the work themselves with their choices of paint and carpet!! To this day I am amazed at that.
So we bit the bullet and paid to have all the rooms painted and new carpet put down in every room-even the basement- and two porches. This decision cost us close to $10,000! It came at a time when Debbie and I had already tightened our purse strings, so it meant "sucking it in" and tightening them some more. We were now living close to the poverty line again. It was deja vu all over again. We went again this year to AARP- American Association of Retired Persons- to have our taxes done because they did it for free. In the past three years we've learned (again) to simply not spend money unless absolutely necessary. We buy meat by looking for those special sale stickers they put on it just before it goes out of date. I ask for a "senior citizen" discount at many restaurants. (Wendy's Hamburgers is the best at this.) For my birthday this year Debbie gave me a new set of guitar strings. (I've still not put them on, wanting to stretch the usefulness of my current year-old strings by way too much!) No needed repairs to the house we live in have been done, windows replaced, faucets repaired, etc. (Just a leak in the roof fixed to keep more damage from occurring.) No vacations that we paid for. Mom paid to fly us out to San Antonio to visit her. When I "blew-out" both my shoulders pulling on the starter rope to my granddad's old outboard motor for three hours, it froze my right shoulder and pretty much disabled my left. I hated to do it, but went for help.The doctor did a series of x-rays and a costly MRI scan of my right shoulder that showed bone spurs and torn cartilage, basically a blown rotator cuff. When he told me he'd only operate on it after I unfroze it with therapy, I went. But when the therapist charged $70 per visit as my co-pay, out of pocket expense, I had her teach me how to try and do it myself at home. I only went there three times. It gradually got better, but I never went back to the specialist. Deb and I have postponed needed dental work, lots of it, and minor physical problem work, like "pre-cancerous" skin lessions removed, etc. We were right back where we were back in 1985! Don't get me wrong: I know there are plenty of folks out there who have it a lot worse than us. We never had to pick up aluminum cans to put food on the table like some. But we were one paycheck away from having to do just that! Fortunately, those paychecks kept coming.
Debbie works full-time in child care, and I work part-time at Sylvan Learning Center, but have held down two jobs for a few months, totaling over 50 hours per week. plus my retirement pension and a deferred compensation whereby I worked an extra year teaching, but get paid for it over a five year period. But paying two mortgages, two upkeeps, two sets of taxes and insurances were draining the financial blood out of us. Deb figures it cost us close to $800 per month to let that home sit empty. Times 3 years that comes to approximately $28,800! Maybe we should have rented it! But once burned, twice shy.
It's sooo nice to talk about it all in the past tense! Two days ago we closed on our old home. We had dropped our asking price incrementally down to $159,900. Someone finally looked at it and saw the money we had put into it, and the overall potential of the home and made us a realistic offer. It was a nice, local couple with a thirteen year old son, probably wanting to be closer to their workplaces and the school. (The home sits a little over a mile outside the town limits, so has easy access to schools and shopping, yet still has that country feel, but has a paved road leading to it!) Yesterday I walked them through the property, and they love it. They're happy there. And Debbie and I are more happy here, the first time in a long while. Another era in our lives is over. The deja vu is slowly fading away.

2008-07-09T09:55:00.000-07:00

Realizing Life's Goals - June 03, 2007

Without goals in life, I'd be living without hope for the future. I try to make my goals realistic, within my grasp and abilities. I'm no brain surgeon or rocket scientist, for sure. So I've always aimed for attainable goals. Retiring to our spot on the water was one of those. Acquiring the "perfect boat" for such a spot was another.
I researched hard on the internet to find different areas on the water that were affordable for a retired teacher on a pension. I looked for close to 5 years, using dial-up web service- all we could afford! (Realtor.com became an almost daily visit.) That's hundreds of hours of waiting for pictures of homes to download, enough to drive an ordinary man to distraction- or worse. But I have an uncanny ability to be pretty patient. Don't get me wrong, I have a temper, and have my limits of frustration. Teaching the slower students as well as the bright ones has taught me patience, I think. If you want results from the slower pupil, ya got to be patient. It will come, but at an entirely different speed than the average student. (One of our key weaknesses in public education is that there are usually no special classes for the kids with verbal I.Q.'s in the 70 - 89 range, too smart for "Special Ed." classes- below 70 I.Q.- and struggling to keep up with average and brighter kids.) So to be an effective (and compassionate) teacher I learned to have lots of patience.
Debbie and I spent almost every vacation looking at homes. We started with the ideal location, Hawaii, where I was born. We even went back there for 24 days and really looked hard at homes, living as cheaply as possible without camping on the beaches. It was almost heartbreaking to come to the realization that it just wasn't a practical place to retire. We could only do it if we both worked two jobs. Some retirement! But if ya got the bucks, that's the place to go, if you think you wouldn't suffer from "Island Fever"- an itching to get off the island and back to bigger spaces, and friends and family on the mainland. Oh, by the way- don't waste your time on Oahu, my home island, and home to close to a million inhabitants. They have traffic jams, gangs, murders, and all the problems that come with living in close proximity. The Big Island- Hawaii- has some nice areas, more like small oasises among the bare lava flows that stretch for miles. It even has some affordable housing. But look out for buying home insurance; the Big Island has the only active volcanos in the archepeligo. That's the principle reason housing is affordable on that island. Maui is supposed to be nice, but local folk from Kauai tell me it's more for the "flaky Hollywood types" who only stay for two years or so, then move on, usually selling most of their furniture at garage sales that local Kauaiians grab up and resell back home. Look elsewhere, even for a brief visit. I can only recommend the island of Kauai, the northernmost island. It's called "The Garden Island" for a reason; it's the greenest of all Hawaian islands. It's where Hollywood loves to come and film Jurrasic Park, South Pacific, and even the fantastic TV show- Lost. It really reminds me of Daytona Beach around 1964. It's quiet, has few nightclubs that stay open past 9 PM, and many folks there are sort of "spiritual" in nature, very much into healthy lifestyles. Kauai has almost everything you could ask for, except a lively nightlife! The sidwalks sort of "roll up" around dark-thirty there. But no big crowds, very low crime rate, only a brief traffic jam around quittin' time, and it's an outdoors paridise! It's the ONE place in the US you should visit before you die. No kidding! (Just try and do it while you can still go kyacking and snorkling. You don't want to just be a wallflower at this dance.) If I ever win the lottery- guess where we'll head for? If you go to Kauai, and you see a middleaged White fella playing exceptional guitar left-handed, ask him his name. If his nick-name is "Lefty"- tell him Mike Upchurch, a fella he briefly befriended back in 2000, says hi.
So Deb and I checked out Key West. Save your money. Way too hot and expensive. The limited variety of terrain bothered me. It's just not green enough! And Key West of the present is not the Key West of Jimmy Buffet's old songs from the '70's. We looked at Norfolk, Virginia- way too crowded, the Northern Neck, and south along the coast until we hit Beaufort, South Carolina. Had to be the hottest, most humid spot we'd ever visited, but had the most friendly people we'd seen anywhere. Strangers would just come up to us and ask how we were doin'! This wasn't just one person, but several. That impressed us. Since climate and crowds affected our preferences greatly, we headed north and found a town of almost the same name to be our favorite spot-Beaufort, North Carolina, but pronounced "bow-fert", not "beau-fert" as in South Carolina. Unfortunately Beaufort, NC, turned out to be too small, too historic, and way too expensive. Even our real estate salesperson was a snob!
We made concentric circles out from Beaufort, looking at nearby areas until we found New Bern. This was it: perfect size -but growing perhaps too fast now, lots of history and beauty, lots of waterfront with deep water access for bigger boats, affordability, and nice climate. We went back home and I started focusing my web searches for a year on the New Bern area. Then we saw it: a home on Realtor.com that had one of those "virtual views"- a series of photos stitched together to give you the impresasion of turning slowly and viewing whole rooms, yards, docks, etc. It was in our price range on deep water on a beautiful creek that led to a nice wide river and out to the ocean. Perfect! We bought it and one goal was reached, our retirement home had been found. It only took 5 years of looking and patience.
The next goal was to put the right boat at our dock on Brices Creek. Our new home came with a boat, a SeaRay 21 foot openbow, basically a ski boat. I told the previous owner it would do us until I could get what I wanted- a small cabin cruiser. Unfortunately the motor in that boat died within a couple months of our moving in, and since a replacement motor would cost too much, I sold the boat on its trailer. Just a few trips out into the Neuse in that boat showed me I couldn't afford a V8 gas engine's thirst. It cost us $40 worth of gas for just one hour on the water, and that was when gas was way under $3 per gallon. I knew diesel motors were in my future.
I'd been researching small cabin cruisers for years on the internet, reading what others had said about theirs and others' boats. I can't remember exactly when I first heard of the Albin 25 and 27 aft-cabin cruisers. But what I had read must have excited some degree of passion in me because I immediately signed up to be a member of the (Yahoo) Albin Users Group online. I lurked online reading daily posts to this users group for over 4 years before I ever made my presence known by posting my first "letter" to the group. That was just 3 weeks ago. I made my first posting because I then felt for the first time I was actually a member of their group- I had bought my first Albin!
Because of sheer poverty, waiting for our Virginia home to sell, I had to wait for 3 years to get the boat I wanted. Patience again. In that time we made do with a small 16 foot sailboat for short excursions onto the water. It's my dad's old boat, a 1976 Advance StoAway cuddy cabin sailboat. I put a 4 hp Yamaha four stroke outboard on the back and we could motor down Brices Creek until we got under the bridge and out onto the Trent River. Then we could raise the mast and the sails, if the wind wasn't too strong- or too light! Using that little boat helped us maintain our sanity while waiting for the "right" boat. Then I found it: an Albin 27 aft-cabin for sale nearby in Oriental, NC! But this was in November '06, back before we'd sold our home, so we couldn't afford to buy it. I bet I checked that boat's status every day, just knowing someone would beat me to it. Then our house sold, and my lovely wife gave me permission to check the Albin out.
I did everything right- I thought. I hired a boat surveyor and a mechanic to check the boat. I paid nicely for a boat yard to haul it out so the bottom could be inspected carefully. Basically I invested $378 for the survey and $185 for the motor checkup, a total of $563 for a boat I didn't even own! What I learned was this: Hire the mechanic first! If the motor doesn't check out, and the cost of fixing or replacing the engine/ transmission is too high, why pay for the haul-out and survey? I learned the boat was sound, in great shape for an old gal made in 1984. But the engine (a Ford/Pugeot Lehman 4D61) was a bit long in the tooth, and basically obsolete. My mechanic never said that. He gave it a clean bill of health. I went home and researched the engine online and found out it was obsolete. Parts are getting hard to find, and pricy if you can find them at all! So I had to make a decision: either wait for another Albin like this (but with a newer engine) to come up for sale locally- which could take years, pay a captain to pilot one to me from Maine or Key West- at an additional fee of thousands of dollars, have one shipped overland on a custom trailer- again for thousands more, or get the one available now and locally and take a chance on the motor living up to its reputation of longitivity. Life is a gamble. I went for it and got the local Albin.
Check out the photo. Ain't she a beauty? My research and experience dictated I needed an economical and safe boat. These boats average under a gallon of fuel per hour! That's less than $3 per hour!! These Albins come from a long Swedish heritage of being efficient and safe. The original Albin 25Family Cruiser was designed and made in Sweden where marine conditions are notably rougher than around here. It proved so successful it was shipped all over, including to the US, where Albin finally opened its own manufacturing facility in Conneticuit, and began the "improved" and bigger Albin 27, my boat. I simply fell in love with this boat's design.
Because I love this boat so much I know it will be hard to write without prejudice about it, but here goes: It's safe! The boat goes at displacement speeds- that's 6 to 9 mph- pushing the water aside rather than riding up on top of it- called planing. That's the same speed as some $2,000,000 cabin cruisers make as they crosss the Atlantic. No one will ski behind it, but we can live with it. The boat has a high freeboard- or gunnel- from the water, which translates to a less likely chance of someone falling off it. (Notice how high the sides of the boat are from the water? That means if you are standing or seated it would be pretty hard to fall off this boat.) These boats regurlarly go across the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas, etc. to vacation. They are famous for taking bad weather and waves and surviving. It's hard to capsize one. This Albin 27 has a complete galley- a sink with pressurized cold and hot water. An icebox is built into the cabinet that we may use as a trash can because our Albin even has a refrigerator back in the aft cabin! A full head with sink, toilet and shower is in the main cabin. And there you will find a small eating settee and V-berths for two to sleep. Back in the aft cabin are two twin sized berths, lots of storage, and the forementioned refrigerator (that can double as a freezer.) Besides that refrigerator addition, and the added water heater, this Albin has an added space heater to the pilothouse area, so if we close that area off with canvas, we can heat it and the main cabin too. Nice. There's even a third battery just for the refrigerator that has its own solar collector I can attach to the roof and use to extend the battery's charge during anchoring-out times. Haven't tried it yet. Haven't tried the nice air conditioner yet either. It attaches over the front hatch when at dock and cools the main cabin area. Haven't tried putting up all the canvas that came with this boat. It encloses everything in back under the hardtop. The cxtension to the hardtop you see going back to the aft cabin cost the previous owners over $3000 extra, and keeps rain and sun off the boat's occupants riding back there. It has two drawbacks: it makes me have to slightly duck my head- since I'm 6'3", and it makes it a little harder to fish from that area. I thought aloud about removing it, and the boat surveyor, overhearing me, said to leave it for at least one season to see how much we appreciated it doing its job.
I could go on an on about this boat. But that isn't the point of this blog. It is to point out to the reader to set attainable goals, do thorough research on what you want to achieve, and to have patience with that goal's attainment. I shudder to think of some of the places we could have ended up living if we'd made a hasty decision; Lake Lanier, above Atlanta, seemed nice until I did some research and found out just why there were so many For Sale signs! That water is drying up and many docks have no water for months at a time, as a growing Atlanta and points south demand more and more from it. And what's left in that huge lake is polluted and getting worse every year. I could have bought another "go-fast" boat just like so many have. I see them every day sitting "on the hard" at my local marina, rarely if ever being used because of the expense of today's gasoline. I know almost all boats are "a hole in the water into which you pour money." Mine probably won't be any different. But until that motor finally gives up and dies, we're goin' boating on the cheap! See ya on the water! Next goal? To make a professional recording of my songs.

2008-07-09T09:44:00.000-07:00

Stuff Happens- October 21, 2007

"That's life." " Stuff happens." Or, as my neighbor responded when I asked him if he knew why some laurel bushes might have died on the other side of my house, "Things die." Not the answer I was looking for, but still an answer. And a valid one.
Deb and I had just (luckily!!) sold our old home in Virginia this summer, invested loads of money into our new home and dock, when I woke up one morning with numbness in my left hand and pain in the left arm. The pain kept me from much sleep for many nights until a couple weeks of chiropractic adjustments ended it. It seems four years of football in high school wherein I used my neck, head and helmet as a battering ram, plus plain old spinal deterioration over the years caused a nerve or two that run down my left arm from my neck (spine) to be crushed/ pinched by the vertebra. I continued with the three times a week visits for three months, thinking they may just cure the problems with my hand. The numbness and weakness have persisted in my left hand- my guitar playing hand.
It seemed my hobby of playing guitar since age 14 (44 years) and my new career of 2 years- being a singer, songwriter, and guitarist- had left me. Blown up in my face- like the photo above. All my plans for my retirement career (an oxymoron?) had changed. I'm just now accepting the fact that I've lost the past 25 years of learning guitar. Don't get me wrong; I can play some, just sloppier than usual, and a "C" chord is out of the question, as are similar shaped chords, most rapid lead playing, etc.
I can still strum the thing, especially the above pictured Gibson Les Paul, which I purchased a few years back because it was the easiest to play electric guitar I had tried. But it lost out to my Fender Stratocaster, simply because the Strat had tone, tons of tone the Les Paul lacked. I am really glad I bought it now! I can barely play my Martin acoustic guitars anymore. My old standby Stratocaster, with its great tones, will go back in its case too soon I fear. It looks like the Les Paul will be my new guitar, not by choice, but by necessity. That's IF I decide to be a guitar strummer instead of a real player. (Alright, I can hear you guitar players out there yelling: "You idiot! Don't you know the Les Paul is one of the most sought after guitars in the history of rock music? You don't appreciate what you've got!" Yes- indeed I do appreciate the instrument. But it is famous for it's sustain- the ability to hold a note or chord, not its tone, which is usually generated by utilizing effects boxes and amplifier settings.)
I just miss the ability to really play, play hard, play solos, dig deep into the music. My strumming sounds about like it did back in college, albeit with more chords from which to choose. Nothing to brag about.
And I can still play drums. I could always be someone's drummer. But there goes my songwriting. Ever try to write a song using drums? I bet Mick Fleetwood (of Fleetwood Mac) couldn't even do that.
Jimmy Buffett is a strummer. Lots of singer/ songwriters are strummers. They hire good guitar players to do the "heavy lifting"- the solos, etc. I guess I could do the same. So maybe the music business (or hobby) isn't over just yet for me. But it has changed, that much is real. I have to face facts.
I still haven't seen a spinal specialist because I fear their only answer would be surgery. I would probably consider surgery on my neck, if it will return all feeling to previous times. This is still kind of new to me; getting used to having trouble buttoning shirts, loading a memory card in my camera, or even cutting my fingernails on my right hand is all hard to do. I still do projects (-yesterday Deb helped me make three aluminum clad outside extension cords, which I placed by crawling on my belly to different corners under the porch,) and yard work, etc. And I can hang to a 24 foot ladder with my left hand while using the right to cut vines off our chimney with a hedge trimmer. But I can't really play guitar anymore. I waited three months before I notified our bass player that it was over and canceled my band's web site. That's life. Stuff happens. Let's just hope one of the things that dies isn't my involvement with music.

2008-07-09T09:34:00.000-07:00

My Childrens' Childrens' Children- October 28, 2007

The above photo shows me holding my first grandchild, Dagen, less than a couple hours after his birth. I've got over a dozen spots freshly frozen on my face by a dermatologist. It seems that all those years suntanning, playing sports, swimming, water skiing, and working in the sun can add up to skin cancer, especially in blondes, redheads, or folks with blue eyes. I've learned my lesson about the sun's harmful effects; I now wear a cap or sunscreen on my face when outside for any length of time. We HAVE to learn from our mistakes. But more about that later.
I really didn't mind turning over my classroom to a much younger, new teacher when I retired. I emptied all four file cabinets, 31 years worth of teaching, into boxes which I placed on the counters of the copy room across the hall from my room. Most of the boxes contained copies of worksheets, study sheets, quizzes and tests I handmade for my students, hours, weeks, years of late night labor. I wanted the new teacher (and any remaining teachers) to have an opportunity to save loads of time by utilizing my previous work. My other choice was to cart all of it to the dumpster around back. I chose to lay it all out, my work, my career, my "soul"- if you will, on the chance someone might want it. I did this after much reflection. You see, our previous department chairwoman had retired a couple years earlier and had left nothing behind, not even an offer to come get what we wanted of hers, despite the fact she had a lifetime of nice work to offer. I guess I sort of resented her doing that, and I was determined to do the opposite.
On July 19, 2007, my lovely daughter gave birth to my first grandchild. His name is Dagan Parker Felts, son of Diane and Tate Felts, born at Outer Banks Hospital, NC. He weighed in at 7 pounds 4 ounces and was 20 inches long. Deb and I were near for the delivery, along with my ex-wife, her hubby, Tate's parents and his sister. It was a regular party! The delivery, Diane's first, went pretty smoothly. Debbie and I stayed at Tate and Diane's home for the night (along with everyone except Diane,) then revisited her and Dagan the next day before heading back home. Mommy and baby are both healthy and doing well.
It's been 3 months since then, and I've been trying to find a handle on how Dagan's birth has effected me. I look forward to spending some time with the little feller, teaching him how to fish off our dock, pulling him behind my boat on the big, inflated donut some passerby "donated" last boating season. Maybe I'll teach him to play drums or guitar, if we get to spend serious time together. Perhaps, as Jimmy Buffett sings, "teach him how to fuss, teach him how to cuss, and pull a cork out of a bottle of wine." But what I really want him to know is that life is good, full of beauty, and worth living, despite the signs to the contrary.
My brother and his wife divorced over the issue of having children. She heard her biological clock ticking down and "demanded" children. Dave was not yet ready to bring a new life into the world as he saw it. Though Dave could put Michael John, our son, on his shoulders and go trapesing off around our Virginia farm for hours, he just didn't think this world was stable enough to raise kids of his own. He tended to classify folks as either "good" or "evil." And, in his view, the evil predominated. So he went very sadly through his divorce. Keep in mind that Dave had gone through the same childhood I had: an Air Force Lt. Col. father that physically and (more importantly) emotionally abused him for his first 17 years. Nothing we did ever satisfied our father, the most judgemental, opinionated, and demanding person I have ever known. Dave, I'm sure, saw a little of our father in himself, enough to scare him away from having kids of his own. He was smart enough to know that he too could end up an abuser. Add to that a pessimistic view of life and people in it and you can easily see why Dave just wasn't ready for children at age 27.
I've spent a third of my life proving my father wrong. I'm not stupid, like he almost daily said I was. I'm not the sharpest pencil in the pack, but I did graduate from Florida State, and I did manage to get on the Dean's List a couple times. Education quickly teaches a person that if they were abused, they stand a great chance of abusing their own children. I purposely chose to not beat my children as we were beaten. I purposely chose to daily tell my children I loved them, unlike my father who never uttered those words to us. I raised my children almost the exact opposite of the way we were raised for a reason: so they wouldn't have to undergo the insecurities, lack of self-esteem, and feelings of inadequacy we had. It worked. My son is doing fine, still looking for that next great "gig" playing drums, but has a college degree in his pocket, a talented girlfriend, and a nice day job. My daughter is doing fine, too. She has her degree, a job in real estate, her license, a great husband, and a wonderful baby boy to keep her busy for awhile.
How does all this tie- in to my feelings about my first grandchild? There is hope for the future of us as individuals, families, and as a nation. There is hope even for this planet, if we do not allow it to be blown up by overzealous politicians. We have to learn from our past mistakes. Someone once said, "Those that do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Eveyone makes mistakes, but only a true fool keeps making the same ones. I taught that to all my English students (by way of enticing them to make corrections in their writings.) I want to teach it to my grandson, too. I guess I'm not done teaching yet.

2008-07-09T09:31:00.001-07:00

Want Smarter Kids? READ TO THEM! Feb. 29, 2008

A friend of mine emailed wondering why I hadn't put anything up on my blog in a while. I answered that I hadn't had any epiphanies lately. Most folks have an epiphany every now and then. You probably remember the one you had in high school when you realized that most of your "friends" were really just acquaintances. (You did have that one, didn't you?) This posting is not the result of an epiphany. It is the recognition of a deeply held belief, a belief that needed to be said.
Today I went to a web site that sells nice children's' toys and provides "professional" child rearing advice in the form of articles written by experts. I read one such article, written by a PhD. regarding reducing the need for parental discipline with kids by having routines in the home, regular activities that give children a sense of security and comfort. He said these routines included things like a regular bath time, brushing teeth, bedtime, etc.
He missed an opportunity to promote one of the most important rituals a parent could do with their child: nightly reading! The simple act of reading to or with your child can have enormous, positive life-long effects. By just reading to your child every night from an age level appropriate book you are generating in your child an interest in books and the world of information and entertainment books can contain. The child learns from your modeling that reading is important and fun. They take this positive attitude towards books with them to school, and the effects are easy to discern as the child's grades and performance in school is likely to be better than if they had not had these nightly experiences. The child will likely understand plot structure, character motives, and be able to predict outcomes in stories better. They will recognize different words on the printed page with increased frequency and probably develop reading skills for unknown words much faster than children not read to on a regular basis. These children (usually) quickly learn to read because they want to emulate the parent. Kids like to copy what parents do, good and bad.
The main point I am trying to make here is that by nightly reading for just 10 to 20 minutes with your child you are cultivating A POSITIVE ATTITUDE TOWARD BOOKS that will likely last a lifetime.
I'm a retired reading and English teacher, and I can attest to the fact that way too many students come to school with horrible attitudes towards books. They don't often see their parents reading books, so that positive modeling never occurs. The students usually prefer movies and videos to books. Why? Because they require NO WORK to enjoy. They're easier and a whole lot faster than actually reading the words on the page and using the imagination to picture characters and situations in a story. Television, DVD movies, and video games have deeply hurt most students' abilities and true enjoyment of reading. Books simply can't compete with the instant gratification found in these other mediums.
It might be futile for me to rant about this decline in ability and enjoyment in reading. It does appear to be a widespread cultural phenomena to desire instant gratification. Folks (not just kids) want something without waiting for it. They want it NOW. They don't want to earn that new $125 pair of jeans, or that $300 iPod. So we seem to have a credit card crisis occurring in America. Reading is an activity that I fear will be relegated to only the (elite?) few who study it in the future. There will always be a need for future writers and readers- if for no other reason than to write those movies and video games being enjoyed. But, imagine a world where only a few choose to learn to read and write because computers are able to do those tasks through speech recognition software. Just because something is different does not mean it is necessarily bad. But in this case I fear the decline of actual reading will result in people who do not truly enjoy a good story, a vivid description, or an enduring thought on the printed page.
A friend of mine recently told me he had only read one book in his 49 years. But he is an avid listener to books on tape. He has a long drive to work and back home, so he has devoured hundreds of books this way. Has he enjoyed it? Yes. He often talks about the books he has listened to. He has been empowered through his listening, is more well-rounded and articulate because of it, no doubt. Though he is to be commended for this, I had to tell him that I thought listening to books had too many limitations for me to advocate "everyone" doing it. Foremost, when you listen to a professional reader, you are giving up the chance to imagine just how the character in the story would say a passage. The reader does this for you. Professional readers tend to not use much emphasis and inflection in their readings. They simply don't sound like actors on a stage, as a general rule. Their energy level can't come close to what a good reader could imagine a story's character saying or doing on the printed page. My imagination works far better than what most oral readers deliver on tape. They tend to sound dull and flat.
Secondly, the listener to a book on tape is unlikely to rewind often enough to get the nuance or full meaning a well written passage can offer. I frequently reread a passage. Sometimes I do so in total awe of the writer's prowess (i.e.- Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath) and sometimes I reread simply for enhanced comprehension. That's right, I often reread so I understand exactly what the author is trying to say to me. I'm no genius; I have to reread if I truly care about my comprehension. Tell me people who listen to books on tape do the rewind shuffle very often. I sincerely doubt they do. They're busy driving, or doing lawn chores with headphones on. Their activities preclude them having the chance to rewind. Consequently, real enjoyment and comprehension suffers.
Books on tape (or CD, or MP3, etc.) have their place, especially for the visually impaired. But not much can compare to the actual physical holding of a real book, turning its pages, and letting the eyes linger on a turn of phrase that interests the reader.
I am deeply afraid reading will become a thing of the past. Too many students have told me they've never read an entire book. The first was the son of a school principal. The latest, last week, was a college bound S.A.T. student of mine, and he wasn't ashamed of saying it at all. In fact he was kind of proud of it, like "look what I got away with, without getting caught." Remember, these students raise their children to have their values- or the lack of them!
Please read to your child every night. Your child will benefit in ways you can't measure, and the snuggle time together makes it all worthwhile. Too soon will come the time when your child will start to read to you. Let it happen. And too soon will come the time when the maturity of the child will mean the end of the nightly readings. Sad. But at least you can say you did your best, and hopefully your child when grown will do their best. Who knows, they may even read every night to your grandchildren.

2008-07-09T09:10:00.000-07:00

HERE ARE MY OLDER, YAHOO POSTS, CUT AND PASTED TO THIS SITE. BEATS RE-TYPING THEM!

The Next Chapter in My Life -June 07, 2008

I just quickly composed the following piece for an AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) essay contest and submitted it a few minutes ago:
The next chapter in my life will not be as much of a struggle as preceding chapters. I retired from teaching high school English, a stressful endeavor if there ever was one! The next chapter of my life will find me reducing stress by becoming a songwriter. I’ve always enjoyed playing guitar, and I’ve been in a few bands playing mostly rock oldies. But my age and lack of expertise at playing and singing music now suggests I’m better off taking it easy and concentrating my efforts on songwriting, and hopefully leaving a legacy of songs my children will be proud of.
I’ve written many songs, but the more I write, the more I know I have a lot more to learn. It will be an uphill struggle. I’ve made up my mind to not be concerned about selling my songs, but to concentrate on pleasing myself. All I want is to write, perform on, record and produce my own material in my home studio. I’m in the process of soundproofing my garage right now.
I’ll write these songs while sitting at a short, plywood podium I had custom made so I could sit in front of my class, textbook, grade book and copious studysheets, worksheets, and quizzes easily at hand because of the generous shelving in the podium’s interior. That podium is covered with the well-wishes of my students. Knowing it was the only thing I would take with me when I retired, they would grab pens and write nice things about me on it, and then they’d sign their names. It’s my “yearbook,” representative of my years trying to make sense of this world to my students. In this next chapter of my life I will continue to try to make sense of this world, but this time through songwriting.
Using that podium for songwriting will remind me to not waste my time writing songs of superficiality, songs that may have a great beat, but are devoid of meaning. I’m in the closing chapters of my life; I don’t have time to waste on superficiality.

Mike's Boomer Blog Moves to Blogger.com

2008-07-09T08:25:00.000-07:00

Hey, friends. After years of blogging at Yahoo.360.com, I'm moving to Blogger.com. Why? I'm happy with the Yahoo folks, except for one tragic flaw in their service. It seems that when I send a friend or acquaintance to 360 they make them sign up to read more than one blog. Some folks are not pleased having to do so, even if it's free, myself included. Thus this shift to Blogger.com.
Like most bloggers, my topics will sometimes be rants and raves, but usually they will be entire essays on topics of concern to me, like music and the music business, current politics, family survival and safety, public education (since I'm a retired English teacher,) and boating, etc. Lately I'm considering a longer blog on the topic of soundproofing a music studio, a project I'm currently undertaking and finding a darth of good information on the web to guide me.
So I hope you read my work. It's never done to offend, only to open some eyes and hearts to some concerns I have regarding life, retirement, and my hobbies. Enjoy.