A quick heads-up to any interested: Michael Franti of Spearhead took a trip to Iraq and Israel earlier this month. His travel diary is posted here. Worth a read for anyone interested in the goings on of that part of the world. And everyone should be interested.
music: Yonder Mountain String Band- Quincy, CA, 7/6/02
The great coast-to-coast trip is underway, but only officially. I have spent today and half of yesterday at home in Milwaukee. The past week or so has been a prologue of sorts, a stopping off with some friendly folk, a re-traversing of roads already taken. We tore out of Boston last Sunday and headed for the Phish show at SPAC. As luck would have it, AJM’s mail order landed us in the orchestra pit, third row. Third row. I’d never been that close. it was a good opportunity to see the band into whom I’ve sunk so much time and money and attention at close range. It was a good opportunity to watch them carefully, catch an intimate glimpse at their interplay. The show itself had its moments and got there at several points, but I think that I’ve pretty much had my peak experience with this band called Phish. Alpine tomorrow and Saturday will be a party: loads of fun but a large, impersonal experience. Coventry should be the same. Meanwhile, the seeds of two new original songs have been planted and will have time to germinate over the summer. AJM and I are working at it, plugging away, gettin’ there.
We made the late-night drive to Syracuse after SPAC and rolled in at about 3:30 AM. DFC and DBGrandi were still up, waiting to meet and greet. And although I have been indebted to DFC for setting me up with blogspace and email, I had yet to meet him face to face. That all got resolved early Monday morning. We all spent the longest day of the year sleeping very late, bumming around Syracuse, and relaying tales of here and there. Thus it was that AnizeCon ‘04 came to pass. We even saw Reid bike by our car, which he of course has no idea about. We’ll check in with the Anize satellite office out West in the coming weeks, but for the first AnizeCon it was great. I’m waiting for t-shirts.
We made an all-day push into the midwest and landed in Chicago Monday night. I crashed hard and drove up to the Brew on Tuesday, and here I’ve been. I liken the two stops in Syracuse and Milwaukee to the first two stops that Bilbo Baggins and his party of Dwarves make in The Hobbit: The Last Homely House, and Rivendell. Each were friendly places, places for rest and recreation, and each were located along the road that will be taken, but not yet in uncharted territory. This is my true jumping-off point, Milwaukee is my Rivendell. From here we venture down roads I have not yet travelled and into untold adventure. For now, here on my outpost on the edge of the Frontier, I can at least imagine fantastic journeys…more from the road. Probably. Perhaps not. It’s a brave thing going out your door, you know.
music: Geoff Scott’s Altitude Music, 1/28/03
Things have been busy here this week. Tomorrow AJM arrives, Friday I move out of my apartment, Saturday we pack the car, and Sunday we begin to roll west. Two months of Great American Road Trip lie in front of me, and all I can do to not leave now is keep packing my stuff up.
The summer will be my first in quite a few spent predominantly outside. It will be most welcome. I will not have a computer at the ready, which will also be most welcome. But that means that this little corner of the internet might be a little silent for the next two months. I’ll have my blank book and pen, and when I can I’ll try to post here, but we’re doing this one low-tech.
(…as if i had some sort of obligation.)
On the agenda: hiking in the desert and the mountains, two oceans, a fair amount of lakes, music festivals, roadside diners, international borders, making original music, clear nights and brilliant starfields, enormous quiet open spaces, long stretches of road, lazy mornings, busy evenings, very little obligation. Such a time will be most welcome after a full year of grad school and urban focus.
More from the road, I’m sure, but the next couple of days will be primarily about getting set to leave Boston with a clear plate. Between AJM getting here and moving and packing and locking up, there won’t be much time to sit down and type. So more from the road when I can. First stops are at SPAC, then off to Syracuse to meet the man behind the curtain. Then a swing through the midwest where we catch up with family and friends and reinstate our yearly pilgrimidge and from there we bee-line west to find even more music and adventure and the myriad wonders of the American West.
Best of summers to everyone and anyone. Pack light, sing loud, and check your gas gague often. Ramble on.
music: O Brother Where Art Thou? Soundtrack
Graduation was yesterday. I am now formally a Master of Education, pronounced competent and prepared to engage in the work of education, and admitted to “a fellowship of learned men and women.” A substantial honor, by most measures. The ceremony itself was replete with pagentry and ancient tradition. I donned traditional costume: black gown, mortarboard and tassle, and an academic hood reminiscient (to me at least) of the rags I received at Minikani. We graduates were made to feel important and grand. My family descended to share in celebration. We were given our diplomas. And yet, something about the whole production was empty of meaning to me.
There is no question that I worked hard in graduate school. I have gained much from the experience and consider it an important step in my life’s path, the attainment of a goal I’ve had for quite some time. But this program was such that there was little affinity for the academy. This program was a practical one, based in community involvement and carried a focus that placed poorly-recourced urban communities at the center of our consciousness. I spent the majority of my time in grad school away from the university, among teenagers who are struggling to pass high school. Strange that at the end we were brought back to the University for an upper-class, world-renound ritual and celebration. I walked past throngs of high school students on a detour route as I was on my way to the ceremony. This juxtaposition, I think, made me a bit uncomfortable. That, and the simple fact that it only took one full year to complete this Master’s degree. A trying and difficult year, to be sure, but only one year. My bachelor’s degree carried much more weight and meaning perhaps only because it took me four years to complete.
The ceremony itself was a bit brusque and impersonal. We were marched into the venue with 10,000 other graduates and 20,000 spectators, we were asked to stand, we were conferred degrees, and we were marched out. We then went to the School of Education and were promptly marched around the venue as our names were called. While it was not completely anonymous, the ceremony itself was overly-hyped. However, I found the rituals surrounding to be quite meaningful. I was especially fascinated by the tradition of the academic hood, it symbolilzing previous academic accomplishments. My hood was brown and red, the colors of my alma mater, and also the colors of the rags whose challenges are accepting opportunities for service and a sacrifice of time, talent, and effort. Both challenges I have accepted, and both will be integral parts of the work that I am about to start. The hood, conceptualized as such, is another piece of cloth tied around my neck, an outward symbol of an inward goal, a material reminder of the life of service that I have chosen. The ritual of marking the official acceptance of such a challenge was what made commencement worthwhile.
Today I attended the graduation exercises of the high school in which I worked this year. I was moved far more by this high school graduation than my own fancy Master’s degree ceremony. For one, the kids who graduated today valued their diplomas and celebrated their accomplishments so much more than I could. It was not by any means a certainty that these kids would graduate, but they did with all odds stacked against them. My own graduation was a foregone conclusion. Whereas I could pretty much count on graduating according to a schedule set before I even enrolled in my own school, the teenagers (and their families) who whooped and hollered today as they received their diplomas did not enjoy such a position. They not take any of it for granted; they couldn’t. And their achievements today meant so much more than the formality of me receiving my own degree. Besides, part of the challenge I have accepted in earning my degree in education is to work towards making sure these teenagers make it to their own high school graduation, even when the odds are stacked against them. They are my priority. I am secondary.
If nothing else, these graduations mark the end of my work this year as a trainee and intern, that ultimately correct oxymoron: “student teacher.” I can finally relax and take some time for myself. I can start to prepare for my two month trip this summer, a free-wheeling, open-ended, impulsive and spontaneous counterpoint to the world of discipline and rigor from which I came. I’ll return to increased responsibility and work, but now my formal training has reached its completion. My students have themselves commenced in a far more significant way than I. And most importantly, I have rededicated myself to the goals and values that will guide me through the next leg of this single life.
music: John Scofield- A Go Go
We don’t realize how much we use certain things until they break or stop working. The basics are pretty much taken care of: electricity, running water. We don’t even think twice when we flip a lightswich or turn on the faucet. The smaller things we depend on follow the same transparent trend; we use stuff without thinking twice. We take for granted that all these little gadgets that make our lives what they are continue to work. It is only when something breaks down when we realize just how much we’ve invested in it. I say all this because my external hard drive stopped working yesterday. And it really, really, really sucks.
The good news is that most of it is replacable. I used the drive as a data repository, predominantly for audio files. The drive housed the entirety of DJ 1ey’s ogg collection, a sizable collection of live shows in shorten and FLAC (including several pay-per-download Phish shows), archives of performances at Murphy’s, archives of some original work, as well as backup files of everything I typed for college and grad school, backups and older versions of the Live Live website, backups of some photos, and backups of this weblog. 1ey’s collection is replacable, as are many of the live shows. I luckily dumped everything I edited and tracked out for Murphy’s back onto Jason’s computer at the bar, so that is safe. I still have originals of all the backups, except for the earlier versions of the Live Live site. The only thing that is gone forever are the master archive recordings of some original work. The highlights have been saved and made into a CD, but the raw cuts are somewhere out there in the digital ether.
It’s true that all may not be lost. There is such thing as data recovery, but I haven’t looked into it yet. I don’t really feel like paying too much for all this to be recovered seeing as though not much was permanently lost, but to get it all back the way it was would be great. I think it’s a hardware thing, which makes me worry a little more. Software I could deal with more comfortably, but after re-installing drivers, checking for viruses, checking to make sure the USB port was working, and checking to see that communication between drive and computer was good, I think it’s pretty clear that the problem lies in the physical. The amber “drive working” light now remains on except for quarter-second blips every two seconds whenever I try to access the drive. The thing hums nicely, doesn’t sound bad, but things aren’t connecting. But it’s not like I can open the thing up and repair anything manually, like when my bike breaks. This is the proverbial black box (it’s blue actually). Any tech-savvy anize’ers (or anyone else) out there who has some ideas?
The drive will go into hibernation for the summer, and as such I’m not really scrambling to save the data. Rather, it will fall into tmo’s care for July and August, which might mean that problem will work itself out by the time I get back into town. But it also means that the majority of my intended projects for Murphy’s are coming to a screeching halt, and some of the music I wanted to bring across the country isn’t going to make it. It also means that I am down 160 gigs of storage and some original recorded music. Which really, really, really sucks.
music: Martin Sexton- Live Wide Open
No matter how amicable the circumstances, no matter how good the decision, breaking up is a hard thing to do.
music: Grateful Dead- 11/11/73, San Francisco, CA
It’s quite late, and a school night. I know. But seniors are trying to graduate, and despite a list of things I need to do and people I need to call that is growing and growing, I need to take a quick minute before bed to pay respects.
Word came down the pipe this week: Firefighter Killed While Riding Bike in Bay View Neighborhood. Turns out this one was someone I was friendly with growing up. We were on the same baseball team when we were 13 and 14. He had a shock of red hair (in those days it was a pretty pimpin’ mullet) and was faster than anyone else on the bases. His fielding was poor enough to put him in the outfield, but he always batted second or third in the lineup. I went to high school with him as well. We were friendly, never really hung out, but friendly. We dressed up in crazy outfits on selected Fridays senior year of high school. We talked shit on the bench and spit sunflower seeds through the fence. He was this kid I knew growing up, and this week he fell under the tires of a cement mixer while he was riding his bike to work.
I’ve been thinking about John for the past couple of days. I can’t claim to know him all that well, but he still casts a shadow into my mind. Our paths crossed at some point, and now that he’s no longer among the living I can’t help but step back for a minute and reflect on just how fragile any of our paths are. John was diesel — a goddamn firefighter is right — but just like that he was benched. Permanently. And that he was riding his bike was a little unsettling: I know that moment where you are riding close to a bigger vehicle and something slips momentarily…it’s happened to me enough times to taste the unthinkable for half a second…it’s enough to shake me into taking the bus this week. John was in fucking shape. He could have whipped through a triathalon no problem, but just like that…it makes me think of my student who got the daylights beat out of her two weeks ago, or my old friend K. who is now an officer in the Marines and most likely in Iraq. Humans are fragile creatures. Even the tough ones.
The loss that I feel with regard to John is quite minimal compared to those who were closer to him. Some other friends of mine from high school, his family, the firefighters that worked alongside him. I still couldn’t help but choke something back. What is even more sad is that John is the second of my old teammates to die. Another friend passed on a couple years back. Just like that. Something just stopped working. You never know, I guess. It makes me feel a little guilty about trying to get through these next couple of days for the sake of some time in the future.
This week, a picture of John got taped onto my bike frame. In some little way, he will ride with me as I pedal through traffic, dodging this and that, navigating as best I can towards some yet-to-be-determined destination.