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062908 **LIVE JAZZ TONIGHT AT MY BUNGALOW, 7-10** BYOB. Email if you need my address. Because of the heat and the JAZZ TONIGHT, this installment is brief. *ErosAromatics* This week I've been working on a logo for Eros Aromatics. I had been trying to steal from some old 1920s adverts, which involved small amounts of illustration. I'm no illustrator; I am, however, after 15 years of graphic design, copy writing, and type setting, a good typographer. I sent a couple of examples to my friend Tara; the latest one she focused on the use of type faces. I had been concentrating on the (stupid) illustrations and forgot about the most important part--the typography! I realized if there ever were a perfumer who needed to use text-based logos, it is I. I will end up with one small, graphic character, but mostly, biz cards and adverts will focus on good typography. If perfume represents a refined and elegant part of our lives, then good typography only reflects it. There's my answer. I have a recipe for a cornstarch-based lotion. I'm going to try to make it, but with cornstarch and baking soda, as my intention is to make an underarm deodorant lotion. It's based on (distillate) water and vegetable glycerin. I don't mind using the shortening-based deodorant (it works really well and smells great) but some people would find it difficult. You really can't use an applicator; you need to work the balm into your skin with your fingers. Your fingers end up very greasy. A lotion, on the other hand, will not be nearly as greasy and should go on with ease. Whether or not it works it an issue yet to be determined. *Quotations* If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. --George Orwell When liberty comes with hands dabbled in blood it is hard to shake hands with her. --Oscar Wilde Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it. --GB Shaw He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself. --Thomas Paine It is easy to take liberty for granted, when you have never had it taken from you. --Dick Cheney Man is born free, and he is everywhere in chains. --Rousseau Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty. --Einstein There is no must in art because art is free. --Wassily Kandinsky For good or evil, man is a free creative spirit. This produces the very queer world we live in, a world in continuous creation and therefore continuous change and insecurity. --Joyce Cary To be nobody but yourself--in a world which is doing it's best, night and day, to make you like everybody else--means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting. --ee cummings *Music* Really quite a stunning artist, Patricia Barber first came to my attention in the mid 90s with her record Modern Cool. She's created quite a catalog of top-notch modern jazz, vocal and instrumental, with much of it sounding like really good modern funk-fusion. I saw her once in Vancouver; she engendered exactly the kind of response I hope for from modern jazz: the band started to play the encore and a fellow sitting next to me leaned over, a look of incredulity on his face, and asked, "Is this Black Magic Woman?" They tore it up of course. These are some of the most beautiful lyrics yet from this modern singer and keyboardist, from her album Verse, which is possibly her most "intellectual" venture to date: If I were blue, If I were blue, Would that this were that but Bring on the pelting rain, If I were blue, I've been listening to a folk/country artist named Jeffrey Foucault. These melancholy lyrics of his are characteristic, bittersweet, and touching: I stumbled out of Gateshead. And I ended up in Durham There was a gypsy selling papers. One part love. It was a late night in Newcastle And we stood each other beers And with the hotel windows open And I stood in Durham City And my dream came to me waking One part love. Peace, love, and ATOM jazz 062208 Don't forget: a week from today, **JAZZ AT THE BUNGALOW, Sunday, June 29, 7-10**. Featuring Flatland and a great raffle. BYOB. It's gonna be a gas! *Politics* It just gets worse with McCain. He is the worst possible politician. He's accepted more than $1 million from big oil and his top advisors lobby for oil and against environmental legislation and alternative-energy plans. This is the last man we want leading us into a new energy era. Watch the video: http://tinyurl.com/57xohn *Quotations* People change and forget to tell each other. --Lillian Hellman We change, whether we like it or not. --Emerson There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction. --Churchill Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts. --Arnold Bennett We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person. --William Somerset Maugham He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery. --Harold Wilson When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. --Victor Frankl Growth is the only evidence of life. --John Henry Newman There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered. --Nelson Mandela Change your thoughts and you change your world. --Norman Vincent Peale *Nonfiction* From Blackjack for Blood by Bryce Carlson (1992): "I remember a bizarre incident that occurred a few years ago at a large and famous casino on the Las-Vegas strip that shows what can happen when a player doubles down on a breaking hand. I was playing at a single-deck $100-minimum game early one Sunday morning. The other two players at the table were really high rollers, and their wild play and radical bets were making things easy for me by drawing off all the heat. Although they were obviously very poor players, with that kind of money in action, the bosses were taking no chances. One of the players, a small man with a full beard practically obscuring his face, had been drinking and losing steadily for hours. Suddenly, our of apparent frustration, he decided to just chuck it all and go for broke. "Whipping out a thick wad of $100 bills, he promptly proceeded to bet three holes, $2000 per hole. The dealer's eyes widened and he immediately shuffled the deck. Simultaneously, the wary pit bosses exchanged puzzled looks and descended on the game like a pack of hungry wolves. The other player and I backed out, joining the rapidly growing gallery so we could watch this fascinating development without distraction. All eyes were riveted on the drama about to unfold. The dealer, obviously "sweating" from all the heat, practically shuffled the spots off the cards, and then after the cut began to deal very slowly and carefully. The last thing he wanted to do was make a mistake, "As he dealt his up card, the five of clubs, I saw his jaw muscles tighten. Our fearless champion picked up his first hand, a pat 20, smiled and slid the hand under his bet. Hand two was also pat with a total of 19. Hand three however was a little more interesting: it consisted of a pair of sevens. The right move was to split the sevens; the next best play was to stand on 14 and hope the dealer busted. Our hero did neither; instead he shoved out another $2000 and doubled down! "Incredulous, the dealer could hardly conceal his contempt as he dealt out the double card face down. The dealer then flipped his hole card, the three of spades, and promptly hit it with an ace, for a total of 19. As he paid out $2000 to the player's winning 20 and indicated a push on the second hand, you could almost hear him thinking, "No sweat. We'll get it back with interest on that crazy double down." I was thinking the same thing. Then the dealer turned up the double-down card. It was the seven of hearts, for a total of 21. For a moment, no one spoke, no one moved. Not a sound. "Then a deep restless rumble, at first more felt than heard, suddenly exploded from the crowd into a roaring cheer that crashed through the casino, assaulting the ear and overwhelming the mind. Total pandemonium. The bosses in the pit were in shock. They stood there, frozen, their great stone faces staring in disbelief. Strangely, our bearded friend seemed to be taking all this in stride. Bleary eyed and almost incoherent moments before, he now appeared cold sober and well under control. No sooner was the hand paid than he scooped up his cash and over $6000 in checks and headed straight for the door. Surprisingly, the other player had also disappeared. The bosses looked uneasy. Blind luck was one thing, but this they sensed was something more. "About this time the phone connecting the pit to the "eye in the sky" began to ring. The shift boss picked it up and began a short conversation. After a few words he looked up and fixed two hard evil eyes on the dealer at our table. Hanging up, he walked over and whispered something in the dealer's ear. The dealer's face blanched, and he looked like he was going to be sick. Removing his dealing apron, he left the table and walked shakily out of the pit. Next the shift boss fanned the deck, face up, across the felt and began to sort out the sevens. One, two, three, four, five...FIVE?! In a single-deck game? The joint, as they say, had been had! "The whole thing had been a setup, one great elaborate con. The crazy bets, the wild plays, the drinking. Everything, Our boy had waited hours to make his move and then when everything was just right--WHAM! To this day I'm still not sure exactly how this caper went down, though it no doubt involved some sort of "handmucking" play. But I do know there are people haunting the clubs who can do more things with a deck of cqrds than a monkey can do with a coconut." *MyJourney* Mostly it was peaceful and quiet in my new apartment. Every student who was able and willing to come to my abode for lessons did. I only had a couple of students (or groups) for whom I had to leave the house. Every once in a while, at night, I'd hear yelling. When I rushed to the window I usually saw one or two dead mobsters and a getaway car burning rubber. I'd been told by my students that if a person didn't mess with the gangs, the gangs wouldn't mess with them. This of course did not account for the legions of business owners who were forced to pay "protection" money. Those masses were considered simply a part of life. Life, I soon discovered, as the world made it without the aberrations of a communist revolution and cultural purgings. Everything in Taiwan went on as if those events had never taken place, no genocidal atrocities, within only a stone's throw across the strait. The mob way of life, the bribery in high places as common as air, the infidelity at every turn (all of course under the guise of one form of piety or another). Mostly folks were content in their wealth, outfitted their homes and ate meals as if they were kings and queens. All, that is, except for the so-called Mountain People. The Mountain People were an indigenous group pushed back to the mountains by various occupiers, Chinese, then Japanese, then Chinese again. Really, their stories were identical to those of American Indians. And they lived in similar squalor, with the women forced to prostitute themselves and the men with raging anger matched only by the rage of their alcoholism. I discovered villages of Mountain People in my aimless wanderings from the center of town. The farther away one got from town, the more likely to find Mountain People. At first I was stunned. I had never yet seen anything like it on the island, dirty babies in the middle of the street, their mothers likely off at some brothel, or sweating in the fields in they were lucky, drunk fathers stumbling around in the shadows with rotten teeth. One night a couple of my students had me join them at a local whorehouse. I agreed to go, but insisted that I would abstain. And I did, under half-hearted protests. As I sat in the waiting area, I was surrounded by ladies hoping to change my mind. There were a couple of Chinese ladies, older; I gathered they were aging spinsters, without families, forced to take up this sort of work, despite their better judgement. The rest were Mountain People. To my eyes, they looked very much like (or at least close to my idealized vision of) the ladies I'd met from two other groups: American Indians and Tibetans in Nepal. Dark hair, brown skin, tall, thin, fine features. I quickly found myself infatuated with one such girl in particular. I asked if we could go to a room. The other girls giggled and I heard them saying, "Finally," and, "I told you he'd give in." Upstairs in a small room, my escort began to undress. I gently stopped her. "I really just want to talk," I said. She eyed me warily as she buttoned her blouse back up. "What's your name?" I asked. "A-Lian," she said. "And a face as beautiful as a lotus flower too." In Chinese, lotus is lian and lian is also one word for face, so my statement came off as a poetic play on words. A-Lian blushed. I could see that she felt more comfortable now. We talked about her life and family, about the raging prejudice of the Chinese, about life in the brothel. A-Lian was unwilling to talk about how she ended up where she was. As though it were a given and her best bet was just to give herself over to it. I protested that she would be a super model in America. "Well, I live here don't I, right here where God placed me. What can I do?" I talked about my naive ideas for getting her to safety. After a while she stopped me. "My boss will be angry if she knows we're only talking." "I paid for an hour right?" "But you won't want more." She was right. I hadn't brought enough cash with me. "Well, can I see you again? Maybe we could go for tea." She laughed at that and told me I'd have to come back if I wanted to see her again. I told her I would take extra jobs just so I could afford it. I've never seen such a drop-dead gorgeous smile in my life, beaming back at me like a beacon for a better world. I will be back too, I thought. I'll be back tomorrow. *Music* My voice teacher, Sarah, sent me my warmups and various exercises by email. What a revelation! In the old days, we taped lessons, and I kept dozens of cassettes around for occasional tuning up. This is so much better it's ridiculous. The stuff is 10 times easier to use (especially in this day and age with no cassette deck) and the sound quality is much better. It's win win. No going back. Two tracks in particular that I've been loving the past few weeks: Give It by X Press 2 with Kurt Wagner and Idle Time (Lack of Afro Remix) by the New Mastersounds. Both tracks make me turn up my stereo the moment I hear them. The former has the refrain, "I guess I should give it, give it a little more time," and the latter climaxes with, "Idle time, idle time, the devil's playground." The first I need to remind myself of daily; the latter I need to take more fully to heart. Peace, love, and ATOM jazz 061508 I went in for one day of volunteering at the library so far. It was a gas. All the different young faces, some timid, some bold, that stop by the Summer-Reading table, either with a parent or alone, paint a touching tapestry. I'm pleased to say the kids found me, apparently, quite likable. I could see that a couple of the older kids were surprised to find tattooed and pierced me at the table, smiling warmly, asking, "Are you interested in playing the Summer-Reading game?" Are you? If you know any kids, from newborns to teens, the Summer-Reading program is a fun way to join others on a summer mission to read. The fourth level (one gets prizes at each of the first three, according to how much reading one has done (or says one has done)) enters you into a drawing for a family trip to Disneyland or a $250 gift certificate to the store of your choice. Their are numerous other prizes and incentives along the way. Free tickets for kids to Blazers games is high on my list. *Errata* --"I've been a maladjusted fishwaiting on a train that might never come." SHOULD BE: I've been a maladjusted fish --"Our lack of olfactory vocabulary is a travesty, leaving us dumb in the face of so many pleasure." SHOULD BE: in the face of so many pleasures. *ErosAromatics* This week I came across a perfume that I made a while back, and then put down, thinking it a failure. I remember why I thought so: it is based on immortelle, which is possibly the most difficult material to use in natural perfumery; after I made it, I couldn't smell the immortelle, so I thought I had failed. Instead, after a couple of months of sitting, it is an exotic, dark scent in which immortelle plays a clear and enticing part. I think it's not quite perfect, but it's definitely a keeper. I think I'll call it Erato, who was the Greek god of love and erotic poetry. Missy wasn't so fond of the brew as I, saying it reminded her of the smell of a Chinese herbal-medicine shop, which is dense, complex, earthy, and spicy. I don't get that, but it is too spicy; the immortelle is not yet pronounced enough. What I need to do is to dilute the immortelle in alcohol; it's incredibly thick and viscous in its undiluted state. Diluting it would make it more usable; I'll need to get a nice scale first, one that can measure down to hundredths of a gram (to facilitate making a dilution with a small amount of the raw material). I intend to make use of immortelle regularly, once I can get it into a usable form; immortelle, petitgrain sur fleur, and labdanum are my top three essences. Labdanum can be a difficult one too. Anya McCoy, list mom for the natural perfumers list and all-knowing when it comes to professional natural perfumery, strongly advocates that _all_ materials be diluted before use. I really can't see myself doing that, except for with the difficult ones. This week I made my first (and LAST) attempt at making liquid soap. Dr Bronner can have it all to himself. It was catastrophic right from the start--I dumped a whole bucket of lye on the floor, injuring myself, but it could have been much worse. I wasn't wearing gloves or goggles; I opened a difficult plastic lid, then stood up with the open bucket in my hands, and promptly fell on my ass! I should've taken that event as a sign. Instead I pressed on. It didn't even come close to working the way it was supposed to, and in the whole process, which is extremely complicated, with lots of chemistry and chemical rules to follow (like not dumping lye on yourself), I realized it just isn't meant for me, my disabilities, or my temperament. And frankly, the only soap I like has no scent. How is unscented soap a perfume product? It's not. I will make other toiletry and body-care items, bath oil, baby shampoo, moisturizer, underarm deodorant, air freshener, etc. Soap be damned! *Quotations* Most books, like their authors, are born to die; of only a few books can it be said that death has no dominion over them; they live, and their influence lives forever. --William Styron What I'd finally say about truth and autobiography is that all writers are probably trying to get at some core truth of life, at some configuration that is enduring and truthful. I just haven't found the truth to be my vehicle. --Mona Simpson Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don't know how great you can be! How much you can love! --Anne Frank I think all happiness depends on the energy to assume the mask of some other life, on a re-birth as something not one's self. --WB Yeats Every aspect of Western culture needs a new code of ethics--a rational ethics--as a precondition of rebirth. --Ayn Rand Without an understanding of myth or religion, without an understanding of the relationship between destruction and creation, death and rebirth, the individual suffers the mysteries of life as meaningless mayhem alone. --Marion Woodman There's a rebirth that goes on with us continuously as human beings. I don't understand, personally, how you can be bored. I can understand how you can be depressed, but I just don't understand boredom. --Dustin Hoffman Atheism alone is a rotting corpse. I substitute art and nature for God--the grandeur of man and the vast mystery of the universe. --Camille Paglia The Bible lacks any guidance of morals. On purpose, whoever wrote the Genesis presented the fantasy figure called "God" as not being in the least interested in people behaving morally but only in obeying, like ignorants, his commands, however criminal and immoral they were (the Bible presenting ample proofs of this). To attain this end, the Genesis had to stigmatize "opening the eyes" or "gaining knowledge" as a sin. Reason was forbidden. Were the Bible to be taken as a teaching of morals, as it purports, "Adam and Eve" would have never been forbidden to taste the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for precisely discerning between good and evil is the very fundament of morality. --Manfred F Schieder Even when the poet seems most himself he is never the bundle of accident and incoherence that sits down to breakfast; he has been reborn as an idea, something intended, complete. --WB Yeats *Gardening* It feels fantastic to be gardening again. Our bed is the shining star of the garden, really. More lettuce than we can eat, scallions and carrots on the way, and robust and healthy broccoli plants (who are adoring the cool, wet weather). I ordered some organic, heirloom potato seed, and Missy planted a batch in a tin trash-can, the bottom of which I had my friend Mark drill holes in for drainage. Vertical gardening is the best way for potatoes; as the vine grows, you add more soil, keeping a small bit of the vine peaking through the top of the soil. When you're finished, the whole can is filled with potatoes. Growing potatoes in the ground, with trenches in the old-school fashion, is terrible for soil structure. Also got some tomato seeds, winter squash, melon, corn, and beans, all heirloom/open-pollenated. Just need to get some beets and sunflowers. *Nonfiction* I have owned an awful lot of gardening books over the years. There are several that I return to every time I grow something. But there's one, a book I stole from my mother about 20 years ago, that I simply could not do without: Secrets of Companion Planting for Successful Gardening by Louise Riotte (1975). Looking at our flourishing garden, Missy and I concluded that much of the material in this book is second nature to me now; I don't need to read that carrots and onions are mutually beneficial; that fact is deeply ingrained in my mind. The book is arranged alphabetically, unlike all the other gardening books I know. I'd prefer it if it were arranged by family (carrot family, sunflower family, mustard family, etc.); the Maritime Northwest Garden guide is so oriented; it goes through month by month and explains which varieties of which crops in which families hold the most promise. I like that. Still, the Companion Planting book is second to none. Everything I ever needed to know about gardening (and then some) I learned from this book: "Lettuce (lactuca sativa). In spring I keep a small supply of lettuce plants growing in cold frames. When I pull every other green onion for table use I pop in lettuce plants. They will aid the onions, and the compost in the onion row will still be in good supply for the lettuce to feed on, while the onion will repel rabbits. Lettuce grows well with strawberries, cucumbers, carrots and it has long been considered good to team with carrots and onions. Radishes grown with lettuce are particularly succulent." In one short paragraph, Ms Riotte has touched on multiple layers of necessity in organic gardening: cold frames in early spring, succession planting, compost application, plant compatibility, plant protection, produce quality, and more. "Broccoli (brassica oleraceae). Like all members of the cabbage family broccoli does well with such aromatic plants as dill, celery, chamomile, sage, peppermint, rosemary, and with other vegetables such as potatoes, beets, and onions. Do not plant it with tomatoes, pole beans, or strawberries." These rules thrown at you are not to be ignored. They stem from eons of cultural stewardship, and years of Riotte's own experience. If she says radishes taste better with lettuce and tomatoes are not to be grown with broccoli then you can trust that advice might as well be handed to you by Gaia itself. Her take on weeds is fascinating: "Weeds. Someone once said, "A weed is a plant out of place," but I am inclined to go along with Ralph Waldo Emerson who believed, "a weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered." Weeds wisely used are some of our most important companion plants. Of course, they should never be allowed to overwhelm the food plants, but a few left here and there may surprise you with the influence they exert. The extensive root growth of weeds penetrates the subsoil, breaking it up and making it easier for the roots of crop plants to go farther than usual as they search for water and nourishment." Everywhere one looks, this book contains sage advice, and even a few slightly whimsical entries, like this one: "Suicide in plants. Why do most annual plants die in autumn? Larry Nooden and Susan Schreyer at the University of Michigan are studying a chemical "death signal," possibly a hormone, which they have traced to plant seeds. The possibility is being considered that seeds inside mature fruits such as soybean pods send out hormones which cause plants to yellow and dies even before nights are cold enough for freezing to cut them down." This book is still available, under a new title, Carrots Love Tomatoes: Secrets of Companion Planting for Successful Gardening. As far as I'm concerned, if a person can assimilate the mass of information in this book, a person can be a good gardener. Do you know anyone who often laments, "I wish I had a green thumb"? Give them this book and you will solve all their problems. *Politics* Bill O'Reilly has got to go. He's a wicked, racist, reactionary gas bag. Check out this video, at the end of which Bill Moyers throws down the gauntlet with O'Reilly. In this clip O'Reilly calls those seeking media reform "lunatics" and "unstable." This is no journalist; this is an enemy of America: http://tinyurl.com/6936sx By Matt Frei for the BBC: ""There is nothing that is wrong with America that can't be fixed by what is right with America." The words were once uttered by a man who is now busy licking his own and his wife's wounds. Bill Clinton is not used to failure. But ironically his words turned out to be prophetic in a way that neither he nor any of us would have imagined. "After an electoral process that makes a round of Harry Potter's favourite game Quidditch look simple, the Democratic Party has eventually chosen a man whose name--some Americans can't help noticing--rhymes with Osama, and whose middle name is Hussein; who was brought up in Hawaii and Indonesia, and whose father was a Kenyan economist. And all this in the middle of a war against foreign extremists. "If you had tried to sell the Obama story to the fiction editor of a major publishing company they would have laughed at you and ushered you to the door. Good fiction needs to be plausible, they would have bleated. Great reality can be as implausible as it wants, America has now replied. "Back on the campaign trail, Barack Obama and John McCain are knuckling down to the nuts and bolts of their diverging economic policies. Obama knows that he needs to stop sounding vague and hopeful and start sounding precise and resourceful. If he fails to do this he will never win over those voters who are having a truly miserable time these days. They need him to feel their pain and reduce it with sound policies. Much of the rest of the world has the luxury of electoral irrelevance. They are free to continue basking in Obamamania. "The last thing they want to hear about is the senator's proposals for tax reform and transport regulation. So, in Berlin they are wearing Obama t-shirts. Karsten Voigt, a former government minister, has been able to declare that Germany is Obamaland. In Rome, one restaurant is apparently selling Obama pizzas, with olives and pineapple chunks - surely this is doing the man from a Chicago a culinary disservice? On Bondi Beach in Sydney, they are drawing battleground states in the sand and debating whether a black man can win in Kentucky or Tennessee. "Obama's nomination has achieved in one night what hand-wringing Bush diplomacy has failed to deliver in four years: a powerful signal that America still has the power to surprise and inspire. It proves that the revolutionary heart of this nation founded on ideas borrowed from the European Enlightenment still beats despite Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. The world peddles in symbols which never convey the complete picture and ride roughshod over nuance. But America desperately needed a symbol which everyone at home and abroad could feel good about. "Legions of Republicans or Hillary Democrats may not like what they hear from Obama, they will probably never vote for him, but they cannot dislike what they see in him at first glance. His very improbability gives Americans a reason to feel good about themselves and he gives the rest of the world a reason to feel good about America. And that, of course, is where it may end. His campaign could turn out to be a minefield of unexpected hiccups. His presidency, if he ever gets there, could be haunted by mistakes and misjudgements. He may lose on 4 November. "After another four and a half months of campaigning, America will be ready for any legal outcome delivered at the polls, assuming, of course, the votes can actually be counted. The world needs to come down to reality and experience the cold turkey of American electoral politics. Despite the lofty dreams ringing in campaign ears this remains the 50-50 nation. American elections tend to be decided by a whisker-thin majority in the swing county of one swing state. "Obama may be a global citizen but to voters in West Virginia or parts of Ohio that sounds as pretentious as a double decaf Venti latte. But before the German politician who wrote that Obama was a cross between John F Kennedy and Martin Luther King gets too sniffy about those hillbillies in America, just remember this: Germany has a minority of four million Turks, but has elected only a handful of ethnic Turks to the Bundestag. An ethnic Pakistani Prime Minister taking up residence at Number 10 Downing Street is even less likely than England winning the World Cup. "In Beijing, the overt racism shown to African students brought over under the bygone days of international Communism is truly shocking. Even if America is not ready to elect a black president, the rest of the world has no right to point the finger. And there is always the possibility that Obama failed not because he was black, not because he was too global, but simply because his vision of America's future did not add up." *Music* A while back I was complaining to Missy that I can't play guitar or bass anymore because of the tremors in my hands. Without even thinking about it she said, "You can still sing." She didn't realize what a huge impact that statement would have on me. I promptly sought out a voice teacher. Having studied vocals privately for years, with both a pro opera singer and also a pro jazz singer, and having tried others, I know almost instantly if a person's teaching style and singing approach jibes with mine; the lady I found, Sarah Cawley, is exactly what I needed and didn't even know it. She is extremely warm and encouraging, and after only three lessons, I feel she has reminded me of everything I ever knew about singing. In our last lesson, she listened to a CD I put together of songs I'd like to sing. She chose two for me to be working on: Lush Life (MUCH to my delight) and April in Paris. The CD I brought has all kinds of music on it, old, new, folk, jazz, male, female, and those are the two she chose. I couldn't be more delighted. As I've started working on Lush Life, I'm reminded of what an immensely good record is John Coltrane Johnny Hartmann, the recording from which I'm taking my pointers on this song. I never realized how much I wanted to sing this song! Peace, love, and ATOM jazz 060808 I will be volunteering this summer for the Multnomah County Library; I'll be working with the Summer-Reading program. Summer Reading is a game which gets kids to read. Last summer, the library signed up 55,000 new readers with this program; their goal this year is 60,000. It is meant mainly for kids, from newborns to high-school seniors; their is also a summer-reading program for adults. Studies show that it's important to start reading to your kids when they are born; this will improve their language skills and learning ability by leaps and bounds. The game involves reading a certain amount and getting prizes for each level you make. For preschoolers, their parents mark off one spot on the game board for every 15 minutes they read to their children; for grammar-school age kids, they mark of a spot for every half hour they read; high-school students must read for an hour to mark of a spot. Mark off 10 spots, you reach the next level and receive a prize. At the end of the fourth level, you are also entered in a drawing for the grand prize. One thing bothers me: the main sponsor for the program is Target. To me, this fact is unacceptable. I promise you, readers, I will do my best to see to it that corporate behemoths like Target are permanently banned from sponsorship of LOCAL-COMMUNITY goings on like those of the library. Interestingly, the Multnomah County Library is older than the New York Public Library (it started in 1865); also, it only became a part of county government a few years ago. Before that, it was supported by patrons. What kind of sense does that make! Intellectual sabotage is what that represents. *PoeminProgress* Waiting on a Train New York city subways are *ErosAromatics* My application with the US Patent and Trademark Office for a trademark on "Eros Aromatics" is still in process. The latest ripple was that they needed me to sign off on a waiver stating that I'm not interested in any rights to use of the word Aromatics except as it appears in the above mark. The process is overly complicated because there are so many parties with vested interests who want to make sure no one steps on their name. As soon as the trademark goes through, I'll get the Eros-Aromatics web site up and running. That, in turn, will crystallize my resolution to get some finished products ready for sale. One of the things I look forward to most about the possibility of owning this house is that I would get rid of the lawn (there isn't much) and plant fragrant plants instead. Then all I need is a still and what with the many roses and the jasmine bush already here, I can start making my own raw ingredients for perfumery. Enfleurage, a technique used to extract the scents of the most delicate flowers, is an age-old technique which no one except crazy natural perfumers uses anymore; it involves glass frames on which a layer of solid fat (cocoa butter, shea butter, lard, etc.) is placed; flowers are then carefully laid on the fat, and replenished with new flowers every day or so; the "enflowered" fat is then washed with alcohol, separating the odorous from the not-odorous elements; that alcohol can then either be distilled, to make an absolute, or used as is to make perfume. I encourage you all to read an article Anya McCoy wrote for the huge online perfume site called basenotes. The theme of the article is the following quote: All truth goes through three stages. Read the article here: http://www.basenotes.net/columnists/20080529natperfcol2.html *Quotations* Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality of those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change. --Robert F Kennedy Things do not change; we change. --Thoreau Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof. --John Kenneth Galbraith They must often change who would be constant in happiness or wisdom. --Confucius What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others. --Pericles I resent people who say writers write from experience. Writers don't write from experience, though many are hesitant to admit that they don't. I want to be clear about this. If you wrote from experience, you'd get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy. --Nikki Giovanni True contentment comes with empathy. --Tim Finn The most valuable things in life are not measured in monetary terms. The really important things are not houses and lands, stocks and bonds, automobiles and real state, but friendships, trust, confidence, empathy, mercy, love, and faith. --Bertrand Russell I have been under considerable pressure to buy at least a laptop computer. I have always turned the suggestions down for the reason that I have never done creative work on a typewriter. There is to me a lack of empathy. --Winston Graham Science may have found a cure for most evils, but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all: the apathy of human beings. --Helen Keller *Fiction* This week I read Seven Lies by James Lasdun. At first it comes off as an entertaining memoir about a boy growing up in Soviet East Germany. Much humor revolves around the boy's native cynicism, and skewed world views. Early on he comes to see people in two groups: those with "cords still attached" and those without; those without have been beaten down a bit by the wily, awful ways of the world, and so are cynical the way the protagonist is. Most of the book is a coming-of-age story; the heart of it doesn't emerge until 3/4 of the way through. Suddenly, the story becomes one of political betrayal, deception, and misrepresentation. I found the sudden shift in focus too abrupt. Most of the book is spent in the mind of a young man, not in the political world where it ends. It left me feeling a little cold. I've begun Caleb Carr's The Angel of Darkness. He wrote this before The Alienist, but the main characters are the same; however, it's set later so the characters are older. This to me is a fascinating turn. Thinking of Mr Carr writing out characters and then deciding to write about them again but in an earlier time leaves me smiling. Whichever book a person reads first, by the time you get to the second, the characters are like old friends, and so you're entranced from the get go. So far, this seems to be every bit as well written as The Alienist. Being set in old New York (1919 Manhattan), it immediately catches the attention of this old New Yorker. *Nonfiction* Excerpted from A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman. The last paragraph has to do with the status quo; our lack of olfactory vocabulary is a travesty, leaving us dumb in the face of so many pleasure; olfactory education should become an integral part of any liberal-arts education. Smell is the most complex and powerful sense, not the lowest and basest one, as many in the past would have had us believe: "Smell is a potent wizard that transports us across thousands of miles and all the years we have lived. The odors of fruits waft me to my southern home, to my childhood frolics in the peach orchard. Other odors, instantaneous and fleeting, cause my heart to dilate joyously or contract with remembered grief. Even as I think of smells, my nose is filled with scents that start awake sweet memories of summers gone and ripening fields far away.
"Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary, and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the Poconos, when wild blueberry bushes teemed with succulent fruit and the opposite sex was as mysterious as space travel; another, hours of passion on a moonlit beach in Florida, while the night-blooming cereus drenched the air with thick curds of perfume and huge sphinx moths visited the cereus in a loud purr of wings; a third, a family dinner of pot roast, noodle pudding, and sweet potatoes, during a myrtle-mad August in a midwestern town, when both of one's parents were still alive. Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines, hidden under the weedy mass of many years and experiences. Hit a tripwire of smell, and all memories explode at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth. "People of all cultures have always been obsessed with smell, sometimes applying perfumes in Niagaras of extravagance. The Silk Road opened up the Orient to the western world, but the scent road opened up the heart of nature. Our early ancestors strolled among the fruits of the earth with noses vigilant and precise, following the seasons smell by smell, at home in their brimming larder. We can detect over 10,000 different odors, so many in fact that our memories would fail us if we tried to jot down everything they represent. In The Hound of the Baskervilles Sherlock Holmes identifies a woman by the smell of her notepaper, pointing out that, "There are 75 perfumes, which it is very necessary that a criminal expert should be able to distinguish from each other." A low number surely. After all, anyone "with a nose for" crime should be able to sniff out culprits from their tweed, India ink, talcum powder, Italian leather shoes, and countless other scented paraphernalia. Not to mention the odors, radiant and nameless, that we decipher without even knowing it. The brain is a good stagehand. It gets on with its work while we're busy acting out our scenes. Though most people will swear they couldn't possibly do such a thing, studies show that both children and adults, just by smelling, are able to determine if a piece of clothing was worn by a male or a female. "Our sense of smell can be extraordinarily precise, yet it's almost impossible to describe how something smells to someone who hasn't smelled it. The smell of the glossy pages of a new book, for example, or the solvent-damp sheets from a mimeograph machine, or a dead body, or the subtle differences in odors given off by flowers like bee balm, dogwood, or lilac. Smell is the mute sense, the one without words. Lacking a vocabulary we are left tongue-tied, groping for words in a sea of inarticulate pleasure and exaltation. We see only when there is light enough, taste only when we put things in our mouths, touch only when we have contact with someone or something, hear only sounds that are loud enough. But we smell always and with every breath. Cover your eyes and you stop seeing, cover your ears and you stop hearing, but if you cover you nose and try to stop smelling, you will die. Etymologically speaking, a breath is not neutral or bland--it's _cooked air_; we live in a constant simmering. There is a furnace in our cells, and when we breathe we pass the world through our bodies, brew it lightly, and turn it loose again, gently altered for having known us." *PoeminProgress* My Stool When I was about 17, I spent Peace, love, and ATOM jazz 060108 The date is set for the next Jazz at the Bungalow: **Sunday, June 29, 7-10** The lineup is the same as last time: Don Corey bass, Tom Sandahl guitar, Willie Mathies sax, and Tim Rap drums. We'll hold another raffle (for Don's CDs and my chapbooks; a friend, Jennifer, significant other of Jesse Lavere, even offered to do Reiki massage for one of the prizes), make another good recording, and have a blast all around. Tell all your friends and come on down. *Grammar* Three separate people, including my mother, brought up with me the last installment of Grammar, all of them with varying things to say. I think I'll have to write a book, though much of what I have to say comes directly from Strunk and White's (EB White) seminal classic, The Elements of Style. I could write a 21st-century version, but really I would just be rewording what's already been said. Save for the computer-age stuff. For those of you with doubts about NO TWO SPACES after periods if you're using a computer (I know there are a few of you out there), there is absolutely no question at all. Look it up. It's common knowledge: word processors (anything computer based as opposed to typewriters) automatically add more space after a period. Period. --The word 'between' is a preposition; as such it takes an object. Between always involves two whatevers, between the fence and the gate, between Adam and Jesus, between you and X. If not X then what is it? Well, imagine for a minute you could say between just one thing. Would you be more inclined to say between me or between I? Between me is logical; IN ALL CASES it is properly: between you and me, between God and me, between me and the wall. *PoeminProgress* I Could Live in Florida if only for the summer rains. *Quotations* If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything. --Confucius The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. --Marcel Proust Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore. --Andre Gide The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery. --Mark van Doren The process of scientific discovery is a continual flight from wonder. --Einstein He who never made a mistake never made a discovery. --Samuel Smiles I have to recreate the universe every morning when I wake up, and kill it in the evening. --Bjork Those scents are images. The perfumer's art is yours. You decode the air into its own language. --Jeanette Winterson Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne. --Quentin Crisp He who does not know foreign languages does not know anything about his own. --Goethe *MyJourney* [A story of creative nonfiction] The apartment offered by Mr Xie was quite nice indeed. It was the first place I had lived with an instant gas hot-water heater. There were tiles everywhere; even the bathtub was tile. I did end up trying it for a small time with William; it simply didn't work, for either of us. We were both, how shall we say, opinionated people. In the end our differences of opinion did get in the way of good hospitality. Which was all well and fine by me. I proceeded to experience Taiwan, and Chinese culture, by total immersion. Not long into it, I wrote a series of letters to my mother. I had no intention of sending them; it was a journal exercise in which I explained my experiences and circumstances--to myself mostly. I went into great detail, about my station, about the Chinese language, about my ill-fated affair in Taipei. Eventually I wrote some poems. My China I found myself shivering, uncontrollably It was a lonely time for me. I steadily increased my student load, mostly by word of mouth. It was my knowledge of latin, and thus, most of the roots of our language that won many a student over. Several told me I taught them more in one month of lessons than they'd been able to figure out in all the years they'd been studying. But an intimate relation I never did find again after I'd left Taipei. In Hualien, a small town by any measure, there really weren't all that many women to choose from, especially not for a foreigner. I did meet a few Chinese ladies I thought once or twice about dating, but I decided it was mostly out of desperation I found myself considering the notions. It was I and my tea and my books, all alone, for the longest time. I was in a regular habit of spending time in local tea shops; I found I was able to sit in such places drinking the best tea and learning more than I could want about Taiwanese people, their habits, their colloquial speech. Shop owners were always very proud to have a Chinese-speaking American on the premises; I was paraded around like an idol in a Taiwanese parade. The parades in Hualien put Taipei to shame. The idea was that every clan, Chun, Chen, Xie, Gao, Wu, had its own idol, literally a statue in their own temple that listened to all their prayers and confessions. Once a year, each clan had its own parade, carrying their idol through the streets with much fanfare and enough fireworks to deafen the dead. The most fascinating thing for me was that each clan and idol had its own medium. This medium was called in to interpret supposed communications from the idol on occasion. On the day of the parade came the real test. The medium was asked to force himself into a trance. He (they were always men) then marched along the street in front of his idol, which was carried by three or four others. And he was beating himself silly in the most awful ways imaginable, tearing himself to shreds, feeling no pain, entranced as he was (or wanted others to believe). I once saw such a medium slashing himself on the shoulders and back with a machete; it got so bad, other clan members had to step in and stop him from killing himself. I began to understand that this willingness to give one's life was one of the most important traits in Chinese culture. That and filial piety. I never told a soul that my relations with my family were strained. I always said they were fine and I was saving up money to bring them over. It was lie like that or be branded a malcontent, left to make my way with the thugs and mafia men. I drank with those types sometimes and didn't half mind their company. To have my lot cast with theirs was not a gamble I wanted to make. *Politics* From the BBC: "Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu has called Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip an "abomination." He strongly condemned what he called international "silence and complicity" on the blockade, which he compared to the actions of Burma's leaders. Speaking at the end of a two day mission to the area, the former archbishop said the humanitarian situation there could not be justified. "Earlier, 60 Palestinians were detained in an Israeli raid on northern Gaza. Residents in the Beit Hanoun area were summoned to a local square by Israeli troops with loudhailers before dozens were taken away, witnesses said. Mr Tutu was in Gaza on a United Nations fact-finding mission into the killing of 19 Palestinians by Israeli shellfire in November 2006. "The former archbishop of Cape Town said the international community's "silence and complicity, especially on the situation in Gaza, shames us all." Mr Tutu said conflicts were resolved through talking to enemies not friends. He said his meeting with the deposed prime minister, Ismail Haniya, was an opportunity to tell the Hamas leader the firing of rockets into Israel was also a violation of human rights. "During his two-day visit, Mr Tutu met relatives of 19 civilians killed in the Israeli shelling of two houses in Beit Hanoun and is due to report his findings to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. He condemned the incident as a "massacre." Israel says the Beit Hanoun deaths in November 2006 were a mistake during action to target areas used by Palestinian militants. "The Israeli military confirmed its pre-dawn incursion into Gaza on Thursday and said about 60 "wanted Palestinians" were being interrogated. Armoured military bulldozers destroyed farmland during the incursion, witnesses told AFP news agency. Israeli forces launch frequent attacks into Gaza which they say are aimed at combating Palestinian militants who fire rockets into Israel." *Music* Nicolai Dunger, Soul Rush--This record is a real find. Comparisons have been made between this album and Van Morrison's Astral Weeks. It's not quite as world-changing as that one, but the parallels to Van Mo are entirely appropriate. The evocative vocals evoke the spirit of a young Van Morrison, barely able to contain his passion within his vocal chords. There is also the fact that the instrumentation here is quite reminiscent of Astral weeks; it's a hybrid of folk and jazz, though overall this is a rock record. Just as Astral Weeks was, this recording is hard to pigeon hole. Highly recommended. _____ Citizen Mix June Swoons 08 1. Give It, X Press 2 featuring Kurt Wagner *PoeminProgress* Tall Paul I knew a fellow when I was 17. Peace, love, and ATOM jazz |