July 14th, 2007 Friday night we had a big corporate gig at Paypal. We decided after that gig to make another personnel change. so, Saturday on the riverboat cruise we were joined by new drummer Jason Weyerman. He did a great job, we had another full house and a beautiful night for dancing on the river. I hope he will be with us for a long time...
July 24th- Rhythm Collective played on a hot Tuesday night at Lauritzen gardens. Beautiful.... banana and fig trees, butterfly bushes and Hibiscus plants everywhere--- the dancing girls were all there and old and new friends, lots of kids. RC has a way of bringing people together and getting them in to the music. It is a blessing. Old and young. SEE BLOG FOR UPDATE ON RC
*said graphic artist bailed-- people come and go so quickly around here. The photo above could be the cover after all-
Some notes on Rhythm Collective..... Blog; continued.
New year's Eve 2o07 is just past. I wish you all the best in this New Year- whatever you need may it be provided, whatever you loose, whatever you bind.
We arrive at Trovato's at 8:30. My lovely wife is ready to dance--The streets were ok- a little ice, and 5 inches of snow. I start setting up and the maitre' d comes over. She is a lovely blonde. She smiles. "Someone on the phone there wants to talk to someone in the band." No news is good news.
I pick it up behind the reservation desk. My wife and I do not carry cell phones. Ornery? Old Fashioned? Absolutely. "Hello?"
"Ya Mon. It Soup mon. Kevin."
"What's up?"
" I can't make it man. I'm just leaving Lincoln and I'm slidin all over."
He had assured Frank earlier in the day he would be here. "Great..... (I count to ten) Joseph! do you want to talk to him?"
I know he wouldn't. He would chew him out. "No." He continues to tune his guitar.
We wind up using a drum Machine, thank you for the assist.
At the end of the night, which was good, packed house toasts reggae with digital drummer boy.
I say, "Lets use him on the new album. "
Turns out the young man had to be pulled from a snowdrift. Who knows what the future will bring.....
This is our 10nth summer together. Ten years of music-- that's 30 boat cruises- come along with us this summer. It is such fun. Rolling on the river with a Reggae backbeat. I'm the skank guy, you know. I play just after the beat with a chunk a skank-- regular; like a heartbeat.
Come and ride the river with us.... It looks like the river cruises may be kaput this year 2008, and Trovatos may be going bye bye as well--changes, changes.
May 2007 ----Just came home from mushroom hunting. We got a sack of morels for our troubles. I scrape the mud off my boots in the mudroom and take myself back again, way up that river on a gigantic island of native prairie grasses the shrooms growing along a clearing edge which faces east (getting the most sunshine all day) once you find one- go in concentric circles- there will be more. But, you know that. You've been hunting them too, I believe. Dip em in egg, roll them in cracker crumbs, and fry away. Heaven.
best when served with fresh asparagus which is in high season...
My neighbor ____ is driving. the refuge is up by Fort Calhoun and we are taking the river road back. We drive up to the lookout point in Hummel Park. You can see way off across the Missouri valley which is fairly wide here just north of Omaha. NP Dodge park is at your feet. My friend is a professor at a local college. He asks if I read the article about Omaha being #1 in the country for low income statistics. If you are a minority, Omaha simply is a bad place for you. I agree. He has moved here from New Mexico. He gives me a perspective a long time resident loses sight of. "So tell me a little about this park?" ____ Loves history same as I do. I showed him where Manuel Lisa's trading post was, at the base of the bluffs.
I look off across to the interstate and the train tracks the honey creek, the dew drop inn, the turkey buzzards which come a bit closer to check us out, riding the thermals like a kite. "These stairways and paths were built by the WPA. In those days there wasn't a deer or a turkey within 50 miles of Omaha. The depression, hard times, and city hunters cleaned them out. Deer came back in the 60's and the turkeys in the 80's. This park had the hermits; or so our urban legend and local haunted, misguided, made up, rumor mill stated. (I lived up here all alone for 10 years and never saw a single one.... ) once as kids who rode our bikes out river road as far as the old rock quarry we saw a station wagon parked on the side of the road. There was no one around so we looked in. In the back there were the carcasses (skinned) of 11 cats. How do I know they were cats, you might ask? Well, because the feet were still on them. Those claws were done retracting. Tabby, calico, and black . 48 different color patterns. This park is closed after 9PM. I've had people ask me, why is that? Where we're parked you would never want to come to at night. The gang graffiti on the cement blocks and the trash everywhere... rough customers."
"Does this park ever get patrolled?"
"Not often."
We drive through Minne Lusa and I show him where I grew up. The house is orange now. The big Cottonwood that grew in the front yard is gone. I stopped there once. the lady does daycare and showed me the old place. It seemed smaller somehow- why is that? Lot's of memories there. Hers, now. I show him the private club we had to walk past to go to the public pool in beautiful Miller Park. My ballfields, ice skating, sledding, hothouse arousal park. "Did you play golf here?"
"You bet I did. Shot a 38 once. This part of town was on the edge of the riots that flared here in the late 60's. Nice neighborhood then. Changed fast."
So where I live now is still Nofo, diverse, in flux. It feels like West O to me. This was West O in those days.
September 27th 2005 A beautiful Autumn morning. We have workmen in the back yard. They are building a stone wall. It takes me to a poem, two Tramps in Mudtime by Robert Frost. I would love to do the work they are doing. But I like to look out our big window and watch working men. Artisan, craftsmen, I study their methods, their techniques. This Sunday is the Benson Fall Garden Walk. Our home is not one of the featured gardens, but the house across the street is, and of course my lovely wife Christine would be glad to show you through our yard if you would ask her.
She is such a blessing. There has only been one other person. one precious soul, I have loved so much. I crave her touch, her laugh, her guidance. She is the best teacher I have ever seen, and I'm sure all her students would agree with me, and as a gardener she has no equal..
I played a benefit Friday night at Shag with my band Rhythm Collective. As far as I know this was our last gig--- not so fast---- 10- 20- 05 Correction---- now it seems RC is just in a state of change- look for us in your area- nicin' up your party in 2006
Old friends. People amaze me. I have these two friends. They quarreled over a woman years ago. One can forgive, the other never will. I get along with both. I have another friend who has problems with many mutual friends in the local acoustic music scene. Grudges- big time.... I have another friend who won't speak to me anymore. I worked with him for many years. Now suddenly, I'm this bad guy. (My bandmates and I fired him) I choose not to acknowledge that.
My wife has to sit next to a woman at work who just wears her out, Innuendo implications sniggers and winks.. This is a grown up child in the negative sense- one can be childlike, gentle, and forgiving-- or the bitterness can win out-. it is simply malicious.
Why do I concern myself with this stuff? I must let it go. I cannot teach preach mold or hold anyone release I must go to the blackboard of life and write a million times release release release................
March 24th, 2005. This was necessary because (in my computer ineptitude) the other Blog was mysteriously erased except for the last saved copy, which you can still see, typo's and all, but which I cannot (I'm sure some computer whiz could) go back and salvage, or correct. So it remains, and this new start up carries on from that point.
It makes sense. Have you ever reached a point in your life where you stop and say- "From this place there needs to be a general reworking of everything; thought processes, rooting out old patterns, realization of health and aging factors, a need to care more about my well being, a need to squelch the old rebelliousness that at 50 is just childishness, a need to be more honest."
I am there. I found myself fatigued and depressed far too often. I found myself making the same old mistakes I thought I had left behind. I found no solace in the tired old places I was used to looking, and that distanced the people I love; as though I needed more distancing of loved ones in my life. I found that above all I was still searching, and residing on, the blind alleys, the dead end streets I had convinced myself I had given up.
We humans have such a talent for deceiving ourselves. I can do something that is only marginally less destructive then what I found to be unworkable before, and convince myself it is a radical departure. This deception comes not from my own mind. It is bolstered and tweaked, encouraged and abetted by the evil one. He can paint a picture, convince you that things are different; and they are really not. Those of you who will say, "Hogwash. The Devil? What kind of Medieval rant is this. He does not exist, any more than the other. I am a modern man, I don't need faith, that is a crutch. Blaming demons for my failings--- Hogwash!"
Not to me. I see those demons every day. I like to run with them. I let them make my vision blurry. They use procrastination, ennui, and deceit as tools. If you have not seen them then bless you, you are not paying attention. Evil works like gravity, it begins to pick up speed and run downhill as we rationalize and allow smaller iniquities to blossom and find ourselves falling, forever falling.
I choose spiritual enlightenment. I choose faith. I do not find this an easy choice. I doubt every day. But I face the alternative. A life with no Divine light in it would be hell here on earth. If you can live with only human love and your intelligence as mainstays for existence; good on you, but I cannot. It is entirely too bleak. My moral compass would crack and break and there would be no direction besides down.
March 30th The month is going out like a lion. Driving sleety rain from the north. During the Ides I dealt with some fundamental issues of huge import. Life issues. Things that pertain not to sustenance, imagination, luck, (a fiction) Deja Vu, preordained coincidences, karma, juju, impulse, pressure, second guessing, fear; I found that I was hanging out in the past, and trying to project into the future, angst filled, imagining molehills and mountains that I should never have paid attention to. Because, I wasn't living in the now. I was bouncing back and forth on that old roller coaster that feels so comfortable and provides the sensations, but when you make those majestic bipolar sweeps past the present you will get off course, you will be bound.
I try to spend every moment, in the moment. It is not easy. It is too simple. Human nature likes to complicate these things. It requires silence. Who said this, "Most of the errors we make come from the inability to sit quietly alone in a room ?"
My wife tells me, "You have barriers you need to break down. You have things you need to do and which would be easy for you, yet you won't. Why is this?"
"I know. What do you suggest?"
"Just do them."
I was looking for a summer job. One thing I have always wanted to do, but I had talked myself out of, with all kinds of rationalizations, ( I'm an expert.) was going Downtown to the fashionable Old Market area and play music on the street corner for the tourists and the locals. I'm going to do it this summer. No more excuses, meet me down there, It will be fun (that's what I had to convince myself of.) and it is needed.
March 31st 2005 My neighborhood, Benson, is at the start of a boom cycle. Benson was once a small town on the outskirts of Omaha, until it's annexation, there is still the feel of a small town, the buildings along the 5 blocks of Maple street ( the main drag ) have everything from the architecture of the turn of the century to shining modern storefronts and every thing in between. Post office, hardware stores, luthiers, restaurants, art galleries, yoga schools, a health food store, bars, specialty shops, book stores, a library, and the Community Center. An Astrologist. This neighborhood was a crowded bustling vibrant area back in the 30's through the 50's. Farmers from the outlying areas traded at the mill, had farmer's market's, shopped the stores when they came to town.. During the sixties the area declined somewhat, largely because of urban sprawl, the malls, people changed the way they shopped. The Benson area was in some ways a blighted area, it needed changing. Badly. So, in the late 90's a younger generation of entrepreneurs began to make their presence know, people started to care, passionately, the artistic community mobilized. Voila! Change.
Today's paper (Omaha World Herald. www.Omaha.com ) has an article on the front page about neighborhood revitalization plan, sponsored by the City of Omaha, and the influential Omaha by design, working with Benson leaders.. (I have been asked to be on the advisory board) This will be one of the first demonstration projects since the city approved a plan last December to improve city neighborhoods, dress up businesses, and develop green space.
This is an example of people taking charge of the future of their community. The naysayers will have to find something else to carp about. Benson is moving. Our Benson Arts festival will be July 9th this year. All of you out there in Cyberspace are invited. Music, food, and the Arts. Come and spend the day. Omaha and Benson as a tourist destination!! Man, I like the sound of that.
April 26th 2005 Oh man! Controversy in Benson, publicity (was it P.T. Barnum who said there is no bad publicity.?) and jam packed crowds at the Neighborhood Association and Business association meetings- we have a man trying to open a business here in Benson who has run Gentleman's Club's in his past. They local incumbent city council guy is trying to get him to sign a paper which says he will not open a gogo club if his restaurant doesn't catch on. I wouldn't sign it, either. (the election is in two weeks!) Let the man open the place. You can shut him down if he changes his mind. (well- I gave him the benefit of the doubt- turns out he was a deceiver from the get go)
June 20th 2007 Benson is still in a state of flux. It shows signs of revitalization and signs that it is going downhill. I suspect, as with most things the truth is somewhere in the middle. I get panhandled regularly as I walk to the grocery store on the corner, crime is on the rise. The current music scene is not as vibrant as the local papers would have one believe. They need a story one day... boom. The next day it is back to what is normal for Benson which is borderline living on the edge. I have put as much in to this awakening as I can afford. I'm stepping back. If it happens well and good.
I talked to a woman who ran a business in Benson for years in the produce department at the local super saver store. The business she ran was bought by a local musician/packrat/pagan/entreprenuer who lets the building sit idle and stores junk in it. Just what we need. She painted me verbally her picture of Benson. (I wrote it in an article for the local paper. They edited it out. I quit writing articles. If I'm getting paid, OK; edit me. If it's a freebie tell it like it is or don't expect another article) She said, "Benson is like a pig. You can dress it up and put a pretty bonnet on it, but it is still a pig."
I agree. My wife is scared to walk around this neighborhood alone and that is a new feeling for her. The city does not care anything for the people who live in this neighborhood, and yet they raised our property taxes 100% this last year. What do we get for that?
As they develop north downtown the displaced poor will need a place to go. I know where they will be heading. Our marginal
neighborhood. I'll stick it out. I'm not going anywhere. Just don't try to paint these pretty pictures which have only a skewed partial version of the truth?
Thursday morning 4-28-05 It's spitting snow, and it's almost May. Nebraska weather. I had a heated exchange with a Texan once, up here for the College World Series, a Rice Owl man.; concerning weather extremes and contrasts. He said, "Texas is so big it can be boiling in El Paso and a Blue Norther rolling in to Amarillo."
"I don't doubt it. But I've seen the temperature in Nebraska drop 70 degrees in an hour. Heard stories of plains children frozen while walking home from school. 40 below on a winter night. Texas has never seen that. Oh. our summers are as hot as yours."
North of town is Hummel Park. It is a rough wooded area on the western bluffs of the Missouri River Valley. From the banks of Ponca Creek on it's northern edge, 300 feet to the top of the bluffs, lookouts and a pavilion where the local devil worshippers have their Black Mass. As kids we called this area, Devil's Slide, because of an eroded steep cliff face, an area where teenager's and younger (Oh, and sometimes us elders.) will scrabble up and down the cliff face or wander off on the other ridgeline trail The legend here was the kid who rode his bike off the cliff) As kids it was here we would hear these urban legends, the Albino Farm, sunken graves, haunted hollow bridge. And last but not least was the Hermit of Hummel park.
Harpo told me the story first. "You know those hermits up in Hummel Park?"
"Don't I. Everybody knows that."
"Well, I lived all by myself up there for 10 years, and I never saw a single one." (Drum roll- rim shot)
So when I was 30 a friend of mine lived in a makeshift teepee all of one winter, paranoid schizophrenia just setting in like a veil, robbing this fine young man with the skills of a AAA ballplayer and a big family who had already seen this happen before. I still see him. Long as he's on his med's he's fine.
So this May, the 21st, a Saturday, I will play the Florence Frontier Days. From 3 pm until- when, 9? 10? who knows. I will see lot's of people I haven't seen in years. We will play on a flatbed trailer in the parking lot of Kelley's North Bowl. Mike Brock, Charlie Melia, Harpman Tim and an as yet to be confirmed. drummer.
those of you who have read my novel, Raincrow, will be familiar with a character named Debby. the following is a letter to a fictional character. ( weird? perhaps. I am not concerned)
Dear Debby,
Thank you for your latest communication. I sent it off into cyberspace and barred entrance through that particular porthole. This is harassment, can you conceive of that? I learned long ago that the best I can ever do is not enough for you, and yet I continue to do the best I can simply because that is my personality. If I mail a document the day after I receive it, that is as fast as the process can go.
The hatred you have for me; Let go of it. I never meant to hurt you. If you really read the book you can see I am harder on myself than I am on you. I accept half of the blame. I pray that you can stop living in the past, stop railing against things you cannot change. You lived vicariously through your daughter, hoping somehow to right whatever wrongs that were, real or imagined, chasing you like a bad spirit. That is your stuff. You must accept that and let go of the blame- no one else is responsible for your happiness. Let go of the sorrow and sadness, the pain. You have pushed away so many people who have cared for you.
I will never discuss these things of the past, with you. I will be utterly silent. You will not take me to those old negative, lost, places, I do not acknowledge those hurtful feelings you cultivate. I will not go there with you. Ever. Let it go. Here is a simple solution, if you can come into the now, let's be friends. What a concept. What do we have to lose? We won't sort through that baggage anymore, won't lay down more bricks, we will accept the way things are, and have a conversation with a positive feel, and a touch of grace. Can you do it? Will you continue to carry that old, dead weight? I hope not. Thomas
6-27-05 RE: The perfect man. Angeline and I were driving north on 60th street, close by now to the spot where three men were found burning along the edge of the woods. An execution. As I look out across the fields, the oaks along the fencelines, horses grazing on the hill, tractors out in the hay fields, it is hard to imagine that sort of violence being played out amongst God's glory. The sun was just beginning to rise as they piled into their SUV and threw a torch by the side of the road. Going where? Perdition. My mind tempts me to think about what that must be like. I decline. I shut it out. Wasted thinking. Just say a prayer and be silent instead. We listen to the radio. The beat of the song playing is soft and sinuous. The singer is a young woman. Well known in that circle of music. She appears on posters that people will hang on their walls. She is telling the story of her search for the perfect man.
Angeline say's, "Best wishes to her. She's kidding herself."
I turn the right blinker on. We pass underneath the Interstate. There is a little diagonal road between 60th and the highway. If it is not too wet, or too dusty, I take this cutoff.. I've known people who lived on this road, one of the houses left vacant, a huge place that over the years had been used as a junkyard. You could see it from the Interstate.
My friend, Flatwater Eddie used to point at it as we went by. "See that? They are having a powwow over there." Then he would snort through his nose as he laughed. So amused.
"What did you say?"
"That girl. She thinks there is such a thing as a perfect man."
"What girl?"
"The girl in the song. She won't admit that the perfect man would have to be a clone of hers. And then she would despise him for not standing up to his own beliefs."
"So she's never going to find Mister Perfect?"
"Thomas. Being married is not about perfection. You will always find flaws in your mate."
"Well. see... you're lucky. You got Mr. Flawless."
"I'm not kidding, Thomas. This girl finds one husband unacceptable. So she begins looking for another one and takes the remains of another divorce, his own set of baggage, and finds this one somehow less than perfect as well."
"Jeez. What a surprise."
"So the search begins again. What is important is the marriage. Sometimes there will be misunderstandings. There will be times of hopelessness. The children will demand your time- and what binds you together? Examine this. Is it the grace of God? Or is it loneliness or just what is expected of some people, or fear? Fear of being alone."
"So in other words Mr. Perfect is a collaboration?"
"Everything in a marriage is."
We tooled down the highway. The news started so I stuck an Emmylou Harris CD in; Emmy has always sung me home from gigs late at night, when I used to have trouble getting to sleep late at night, she would sing me through the wee. hours. "How would it feel/ if the world was falling apart around you?/ pieces of the sky are falling/ in your neighbors yard/ but not on you?"
We pull.into J.W.'s parking lot. This place has the best salsa on the planet. It is as far north as you can go in Flatwater with out being in the Northern Hills. Angeline and I were raised in this neighborhood. There is always a feeling of coming home. I pose Thomas Wolfe's famous statement, "You can't go home." I see what he means, although my children still live here, I will never, again. Too many old memories. Alright to come home for a visit, though. .
August 10th, 2005 I heard that Peter Jennings passed away today. He was my favorite voice for the evening news for so many years. He just appealed to me. That straightforward style. I forgave him his occasional spin, he was a gentleman. A dying breed.
On the plus side I am nuts about his replacement, Elizabeth, and here she is going through her own crisis right now; her husband Marc Kohn, musician, (had a hit with Walking in Memphis a few years back) was shot in the head during a robbery attempt. He lived, thankfully. What is this world coming to? These petty robbers who would take your life for a few bucks? I will never understand where these dregs of human society come from. Who raises them? Who fails to teach them the differance between good and evil? How can a person cause the kind of heartache involved in murdering a fellow human being? Their family? They suffer as well.
God Bless you, Peter..
Last Tuesday a young man was killed robbing the pawn shop in my neighborhood. His partner is paralysed. Misguided. A hard lesson to learn, and a big bump in the road for the future of this neighborhood- however; there is always a trace of good in every action.
