November Rain

A Return To Blogalia

Now where was I?

This summer I was busy researching for various lectures, and writing Amazine, my Mets blog, which really took off. During the World Series I helped WFAN producer Ray Martel (who reads Amazine as it turns out) pull together an historic interview with Tigers' pitcher Mickey Lolich. Ray is a great guy, we talked several times. He read my Lolich piece in Amazine and figured I was the only man in the world who knew where Lolich was. Even major league baseball doesn't know apparently. As it turns out, I did, and set up the contact. By the way, Mickey called me and said not to give out that number ever again, so I ripped it up. I will tell that whole story later on. It was an historic moment in sports journalism.

On Tuesday, October 31st, I spent the whole day creating a huge marionette puppet theater on a porch in Fishkill to scare the kids on Halloween. Over a hundred kids came to answer questions from the Talking Pumpkin and win candy, and be scared by moving objects. There was a Mets fan in a black coffin that tapped his fingers on the coffin waiting for next year. I have photos somewhere. And there was a floating pumpkin, lit from the inside, and a cloth pumpkin that rose up out of the mail box, and an old Hopi elder rocking in a rocking chair smoking a cigar. There was also a spider who lowered down and rang a bell. Some kids were so scared they ran away without getting any candy. Also a witty conversation with the minister of the church down the street on Biblical characters.

I also had a great coaching session with AB, and gave her the Magic Flute vocal score as a present.

On Wednesday, November 1st, All Saints Day, I did research on all the Global Warming news coming out of the UK, and put together some stuff.

On Thursday night, November 2nd, Day of the Dead, I created a powerpoint about Gordon Brown and the UK Green Revolution. I attended the current edition of my brainchild "Citizenship Thinktank" for the only time this year, and Dan was there. We watched a great Bill Moyers segment on sweatshops. I presented my short powerpoint on Gordon Brown and "Bush's Worst Nightmares" (7 of them, I will post later, most of it about global warming) and then the longer one on the beginnings of slavery. Dan and Dawn gave me a ride to my car.

Friday, November 3rd, again, working away at the index, getting as much of that to email offto Oklahoma as I could before Canada. I had heard some Native Americans rumoring that Bush would set off some kind of global disaster and declare martial law if the elections were going badly. Kind of a crazy idea, but I took it seriously, because they were going badly for him, and put at least some of my house in order.

Last weekend I was in Ottawa for the 93rd birthday of William Commanda, and I sang happy birthday for him (an unofficial version, naturally I wouldn't violate anyone's copyright laws) with his daughter Evelyn on stage. Over cake I showed her my letter from Chirac. She didn't see the signature and was reading it in French, and while translating, said to me, "It seems you have touched this man's heart very deeply with what you have written." Tommy said, "It's Jacques Chirac..." "Who?" "You know, the President of France. That's who wrote it."

I also attended the Water-Life Conference sponsored by Commanda's Circle of All Nations, and met some really fascinating people. Several there had organized cross country walks for raising awareness about water, one man had canoed across Canada. During the seminar, news came out that Domtar was planning to expand their damming operations on Chaudiere Falls.

I caught a cold while being detained briefly by customs people near Montreal, and it got worse over the weekend, and was particularly bad going through customs on the other end. The highlight of the trip (I am being facetious) was sitting up in a chair for three hours in the Montreal bus station being forced to listen to elevator music until dawn. I got back to Poughkeepsie on Monday and the class had a session on global warming and other current events.

Tuesday November 7th I voted early at my local church, and an old friend was working there. I went to Poughkeepsie for errands and it looked good for the dems, but I had no idea how good. I was keeping a close eye on it. I saw some middle aged Republican-looking business men walking aimlessly along the highway, I guessed at the time that they were trying to find their polling place. Now I wonder if they got advanced word of the Democratic sweep and were contemplating jumping under a truck.

I went to a friend's house to watch TV and watched the New Jersey channel and followed the Menendez election, which looked to me like evidence the Hispanic vote just jumped to the Democrats. Things really didn't start hopping til 10PM, and then it was pretty exciting. I watched the whole thing until 2 AM, or later. I was truly astounded. A great moment in history. It was a revolution with no leader, no media hype no ideology or dogma, just a sea change, a groundswell of individuals all following their intuition. This is what some political theorists (Naomi Klein) a few years ago called the leaderless cell, and predicted it would bring down Bush sooner or later. They say Hillary had alot to do with key upset races in the senate, namely Whitehouse upsetting Lincoln Chafee and Webb in Virginia, but I think it was more than that, I think it was a miracle of democracy in action. To say the system works is a little hasty, but it sounds nice on the tongue. We'll see what happens over the next two years.

I also had a very creative coaching session with budding opera star AB. I had her sing chromatic, whole tone, and diminished scales while I improvized impressionistic chords on the piano behind her notes. She sounded wonderful. We also went through Queen of the Night several times. The scales helped.

Wednesday November 8th, I taught class and led global warming discussion, which was one of the best, really eye-opening. Then a student asked what President Bush had said to the nation about this impending crisis, I said, "nothing really,except that it doesn't exist." And then I explained about the Luntz memo of 2000, and how that shifted the course of history concerning global warming. I asked if anyone wanted to watch Will Ferrell's faux interview as Bush, speaking to the nation on global warming (in the absence of any real interview by Bush) and they were very insistent on seeing. I showed it at the end after some usual technical delays, and the next professor came in during my time as he often does, and did not look amused. I thought it was totally appropriate as an ending to a very substantial class.
I asked both classes if other profs were leading them in discussions about global warming, and only one student said yes.
In the evening I coached Karioke Karen in a wonderful three hour recording session at No Parking Studios with Dean Jones as engineer. Everything went near perfect and Karen recorded five songs. The mixing still needs to be done. There were some emotionally satisfying moments for all three of us musically. K is a natural on the Supremes songs and I suggested we use Momma Told Me (Love Takes Time) as the first cut. More next week!

Thursday November 9th, took a relaxing walk in the warm sun, and then made it to the bank and the post office just in time to pay bills. Then more indexing, etc. on Native New Yorkers.

Friday November 10th, slept in to try to cure persistent flu symptoms, got to school and had great class outside, another warm day. We were on sidewalk, and it was time for me to do my chalk talk creation of Stonehenge, and was able to draw the diagram on the pavement in chalk, in alignment with the sunset as it was actually happening! That was a once in a lifetime opportunity, I suppose, and I really enjoyed it! When the sun actually went down, it got cold and so everyone wanted to come in, which was fine. I needed the black of the blackboard on the wall to show the patterns of stars on the horizon, so it worked out perfectly.

I worked on the index and powerpoint until all hours.

Saturday November 11th 2006, I went to see the Bob Dylan exhibit at the Morgan Library with a musical friend, and it was quite comprehensive. Then I went to see a revival of Theo Harder's musical "The Marriage Broker." She was there, and came in sitting behind me. When it was over she took a bow to great applause.
I hadn't seen her in a while, and I turned around to applaud her. She stared at me and said, "Evan?" And reached out to shake my hand in the middle of her composer bow. She said, "I'm so happy that you've come!" She came and sat with me and we talked music and I told her I thought the play was ingenious and so was the music. Actress Beth Holland sat in front of me. Later, the Musical Matchmaker in the musical, played by Woody Regan, told me he had actually matched her and her husband together and he played at their wedding, and that qualified him to play Cupid in this magical theater piece somewhat along the lines of Waiting For Godot, in that the entire piece involves a female usher and back up rehearsal pianist and a customer waiting for the star to arrive. The star never arrives, but the amount of fictional detail in the ruse is terribly imaginative as it unfolds. By the end, you realize that most of the people you thought were in the cast never existed.

Then it was time to get back home, very late of course.

Sunday November 12th I spent in the lab and the library, working on the Native New Yorkers index and got it down to five letters. That took most of the day. I also worked on a power point for an upcoming presentation on the native history of waterways around Manhattan, but found I did not have a copy of an earlier overlapping powerpoint, so I had to stop. I called my son and told him I had a dream where he wrote a novel that was published and it looked alot like The Fountainhead (which I'd bought him in Chicago, appropriately enough) It was a thick paperback with small pages. There was a characture of him on the back, some exaggeration, but flattering. The title was "The Wisdom of Baseball." He said in fact he was working on a novel, which I didn't know. He added that if he ever used that title, it would be years down the road. I thought it would be a good retitling for my Mythobaseballogy, the meaning of which escapes most readers.

I saw Igor and he said his Political Thought website is active again, and that Dan B was involved. We talked about Joe Lieberman and his unusual overthrow of a Democrat.

November 13th, 2006, four days until the 56th anniversary of the enthronement of the Dalai Lama, in case you were planning to celebrate it. November 17th falls on a Friday this year, I hope it is a portal for further transformation of our nation and all our people. I showed the movie Kundun to my class today, the life of the Dalai Lama, which included that fact. I had a talk with Louie McCroskey about Egypt and the civil rights movement after class. He seemed tired; basketball season is just days away.

Earlier today worked on the powerpoint on Manhattan waterways, and the pieces finally started to fall together, as I found themissing material. I gave Louie (my neighbor) a jump start, he seemed in a really good mood.