Today is musician Laurie Lewis’s birthday. She’s 62, born in 1950.
Laurie Lewis plays bluegrass and a jazzier fiddle music called “newgrass”. She’s from California and discovered the work of Bill Monroe through a community of musicians in the San Francisco Bay area – not the standard path but certainly effective. She’s not an imitator, but finds inspiration in the tradition. Lewis told an interviewer earlier this year, “How am I ever going to be able to imitate a man from Kentucky, I’m a woman from Berkeley.”
She turned out to be a trailblazer in her chosen style of music. As far as the impetus for breaking gender barriers and being unconventional, it seems to come naturally out of her upbringing. Here’s a quote from another interview:
“You know, I grew up in Berkeley, and it took me years of getting out of the area before I got over the feeling that everything was weird, everybody thought differently than I did, everything was strange. I realized after awhile that, no, I was the weird one, and that Berkeley was the strange place. And outside of modern European countries, there weren’t many places in the world that were like this. You know how Europeans claim they can spot Americans all the time? When I was 16 I went to Europe for the first time with my family. Nobody thought we were an American family. They all thought we were maybe German or Danish or something. The way we dressed and the way we were was just different. But that’s what I grew up in.”
What are some of the lasting effects of your upbringing?
California’s Governor, Jerry Brown, has signed legislation that will eventually lead to the legal operation of autonomous autos on the state’s many, many, many roads. By 2015 California will have guidelines to govern cars that drive themselves. I shared this news with Wally, proprietor of Wally’s Intimida – home of the Sherpa sport utility vehicle.
Here at Wally’s Intimida, we are thrilled about the coming age of driverless cars! I believe it will bring back the Hugeness Imperative! The H.I. was an important part of the car buying equation back in the ’90’s, when people sought vehicles that were increasingly larger and heavier as a safety measure. The thinking was – “if my car is bigger than yours, it will be harder for you to hurt me”. A line of reasoning that is undeniably true in terms of physics, and truly undeniable as a sales pitch! Oh how I miss those days!
In the years since, people have started to place more value things like fuel efficiency and reducing greenhouse gasses.
But I believe that turning control of your car over to Robbie the Robot is going to bring back the H.I. with a vengeance, because if Robbie goofs up, the sheer bulk of the vehicle will become your last line of defense! We’re already working on a Sherpa “Impervious” package – marketing the car cabin as a watertight, reinforced, self-contained life support system that cannot be compromised by any sort of impact.
Yes, it will be considerably heavier than the current Sherpa, which is already as hefty as a fleet of motorhomes. But don’t worry about gas mileage, because Robbie will be able to drive it sensibly. He’ll accelerate gently from stoplights and follow other cars at a safe distance. He won’t gun it on yellow lights and he’ll actually come to a full stop before turning right on red! You won’t notice because you won’t be paying attention anyway. The car will simply turn into another place to “be”, and driving will be just another thing that happens nearby while you neglect it. Even if laws are written to make the licensed human responsible for monitoring the trip at all times, you know what’s going to happen. People will do (and get caught doing) everything that humans can indulge in while riding around in the it-drives-itself car.
Everything.
Just let your imagination run wild with that one.
Autonomous Autos? I can’t wait! Pre-order your Sherpa Impervious at Wally’s Intimida today, and let our circuits do the driving tomorrow!
What one rule would you be sure to include in the laws that govern driverless cars?
Today’s post comes from perennial sophomore Bubby Spamden.
Hey Mr. C.,
What do you know about Saturn?
I have to do a report on it. It’s, like, my most favorite planet, but that doesn’t mean I know anything about it. It’s just, y’know. Beautiful.
Kinda like Angie, who is a volleyball star here at Wilkie and who makes me think of a giraffe, but pretty. I’m kinda sure I love her even though I don’t actually know if she’s nice or not. I’ve never had the chance (courage) to talk to her directly. Her friends say she’s really down-to-earth but they’re her friends, what do you expect? It would be worth telling a lie to stay close to Angie. Although why would they would think they had to lie to me about her being nice in order to stay friends with her? Maybe Angie does like me after all if she’s telling her peeps to lie to impress me!
If she even knows who I am, which I’m pretty sure she doesn’t.
I”m kind of all over the place with my thinking right now.
Anyway, Saturn. What is there to say about it other than, “Wow, is that a gorgeous planet, or what?” I hear it’s kind of cold and gaseous, which wouldn’t be very nice qualities in a person. But get a load of this picture!
How can you not be impressed with that? Of course, that’s how Saturn looks from 1.3 million miles away. I’ll bet if you were kissable close it wouldn’t be nearly as nice. I’d like to try, though. But there are so many moons! Lots of competition, just getting into an orbit. You’d probably feel like a chump. Do you think those rings are real? I don’t see how anything could be so perfect.
Anyway, time for bed. Let me know if you’ve got any advice for my report on Angie.
I know you’re tired, but here’s another article about how we should get more sleep.
Prop your eyes open, take a moment, and read it. Or at least start it before your FIRST SLEEP and then finish it after you wake up and before you start your SECOND SLEEP.
Segmented sleep is going to be the latest trend. We used to call it insomnia but now waking up at midnight is natural and right and we will all want to change our schedules so we can do more of it – especially since long-dead medieval people are now telling us that the wakeful interlude between sleeps is the best time for sex. We have generally dismissed medieval wisdom but now that they’re giving us advice for the boudoir, we’re allowing them all kinds of sexy credit. After all, they had to have relations with other smelly medieval people thousands of years before we started putting cocoanut scented body wash in squeeze bottles. That couldn’t have been easy! Must have known a few tricks back then.
There’s lots in the New York Times about sleep problems. Obviously something is keeping the NY Times editors awake – severe sleep deprivation may be the only thing they have in common with Rick Perry. But the research appears to be undeniable that something fundamental happens inside the brain when it is asleep – something consolidating that makes thinking clearer.
Since no one is really listening, now is as good a time as any to re-issue my call for the candidates to take the lead on these insomniac issues by embracing the idea of more sleep research and by actually being brave enough to sleep in public.
Yes, in public.
Let’s put Obama and Romney in a hot middle school gym and subject them to a string of endless, praiseful speeches given by local potentates. If either candidate is truly human, he will nod off. In this way the next President can immediately and unconsciously get a head start on leading the nation towards more healthy sleep patterns. And he could de-mystify the taboo about conking out in a public place.
Yes, the “optics” would be bad, especially for those who think the president should always appear to be in control, super alert and otherworldly.
But I say let it go. No matter who wins, the President of The United States and your weird uncle Ted are made of the same stuff. They need their naps, especially in the afternoon. Some people don’t want to see their leader unconscious, but for the rest of us – a snoozing Prez may be just the image we need to restore our confidence that the head of state will have his head on straight when he wakes up.
But I do enjoy reading about interesting personalities, and participating in an organized sport is one way to express your uniqueness. Maybe it’s the pressure of competition that brings interesting qualities to the fore. And for some reason, the sporting world attracts individuals with remarkable names. Especially baseball, where fan and jazz pianist Dave Frishberg was inspired to set to music this list of compelling monikers.
This comes up because I noticed today marks the birthdays of some sports figures from the past who had outstanding names –
And German soccer coach Wolfgang Wolf (who spent five years managing the Wolfsburg Wolves)
British athlete and five-time Wimbledon winner Lottie Dod
All of Lottie Dod’s wins at Wimbledon came against the same player – the imposingly named Blanche Bingley Hillyard.
As an amateur sing-song poet and shameless creator of too many stupid little rhymes, I find this pair irresistible. And of course one of them has a perfect name for this justifiably unappreciated form.
Blanche Bingley Hillyard
Some sports can hinge on state of mind,
like tennis, golf and billiards,
Opponents can get in your head.
ie: Blanche Bingley Hillyard’s.
Though BBH was quite a champ,
(they will not soon forget her),
Each time they played at Wimbledon
Another girl was better.
The focus and the discipline
that Blanche brought to the game
was poised and stately, and it is
reflected in her name.
Lottie Dod
So it’s not fair that winning was
(if tennis has a God)
A major task for BBH.
And fun for Lottie Dod.
For Lottie didn’t practice
or prepare in any way.
She danced around the tennis court
and sang her name all day.
Lottie Dod, Lottie Dod,
Dotty Lottie Dod
Doodly Doodly Doodly dee
Lah dee Lottie Dod.
Beth-Ann sent a link to this video that has been viewed on You Tube well over one million times in the past two days. A baby goat at a petting zoo is in distress. Apparently the goat’s foot is stuck underwater and the animal can’t get out of the pond.
For reasons that will soon become clear, a pig is sent to the rescue.
Some people (and animals) are just good in a crisis. Others (like me), tend to stand around and watch, not knowing what to do.
Researchers have studied crisis situation response and based on their reports most people misjudge how they would respond in an emergency. We all tend to think we’d behave better than we actually do. A more common response is to over-think the situation, resulting in paralysis.
it is obvious that this heroic pig, let’s call him Wilbur, refrained from pre-judging the conditions and simply responded with common sense to the facts as they presented themselves to him.
Goat in trouble. Goat needs a helping push. Let’s swim out there and push the goat.
Not a lot of agonizing there about a possible lawsuit or getting in trouble for jumping in the pond or privacy worries should this wind up on You Tube or that a tabloid photographer would snap and distribute a topless pig photo or any squeamishness at all over possibly swallowing some goat flavored water – the pig simply did what had to be done!
Or maybe the pig thought the goat had found something good to eat and went out there to investigate. Heroism sometimes happens by accident.
A potentially drowning baby goat is not the same thing as Hurricane Katrina, but this is a good opportunity to note that what is left of September is still part of National Preparedness Month.
Of course, if I was a different sort of person, I would have been prepared to observe this several weeks ago!
I wrote to you a little over one month ago with a serious question about the life I had led in the field of politics, and how I felt under appreciated by just about everyone I encountered in that world.
I had just been rejected as a potential vice presidential nominee in favor of someone younger and prettier – and this happened after spending a ton of money in a failed bid to become president. When I wrote to you, I wanted to know if I should walk away from the relentless striving for attention and approval, or quietly position myself to run for some other office, like Senator.
And yet I’m writing to you again because I think you’re one of the few people who takes me seriously.
I’ve just decided to leave politics and take a high paying job in the private sector. This is the right thing for me to do after years on a government salary. The gravy train is at the station!
And yet people are acting like I’m some sort of traitor because I had to quit my unpaid volunteer political job as co-chair of a big campaign. Critics say I’m “jumping ship” and hurting the candidate’s feelings in his time of need.
Trust me, the candidate doesn’t know what it means to have a “time of need” – he’s a super rich guy with a big ego. And frankly, guys like him can be a bit distant and clueless, feelings-wise.
But I’m not running away from my troubles. Now, instead of dealing with just one I’ll get to pal around with a whole bunch of super rich guys with big egos who can be a bit distant and clueless, feelings-wise. Some things never change.
I got into public service to help people, Dr. Babooner. I admit it didn’t always work out that way, but my intentions were good. Like most people, I wanted to be a hero and do something big and memorable. That’s why my new job is going to be so great. I get to sit at a round table!
Growing up as an American child, I knew I could never be one of the REAL Knights of Camelot. But this will be the closest thing to it! We’ve got a whole publicity staff just to the promote the idea that all we do is noble deeds!
If you had this opportunity you would take it too!
So why is everybody being so mean to me about it?
I told P.O.O.R.T.I.M. that he needn’t apologize for taking the money. Everyone needs to pay the bills and people are sometimes mean when they feel jealous, so maybe they just envy you. Getting paid AND getting to be the leader of the roundtable seems like a dream job, but be watchful over how much chain mail and armor they put on you.
That stuff can chafe!
But that’s just one opinion. What do YOU think, Dr. Babooner?
You know we live in unusual times when the big sex news continues to be topless photos of a hot princess, instead of this – two women in Sweden have received uterus transplants. From their mothers.
Let that sink in.
If the new organs remain healthy and intact, these women will be walking around carrying the wombs that they themselves were carried in. And if they’re able to get pregnant, their children will spring from the
very same fertile ground that mom did. That’s got to be a little eerie.
And how would it feel to the two older mothers? They’re each giving a wonderful gift to their 30+ year old daughters – one young woman lost her uterus to cancer and the other was born without one – but how would you process the thought that your daughter is growing your grandchild in your womb?
I don’t know what manual the 10 Swedish doctors used to perform this operation, but it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the illustrations were by M.C. Escher.
Hearing the kerfuffle about Mitt Romney’s comments at a supposedly private fundraiser about the freeloading 47%, I was reminded of this ballad about a train wreck. The Wreck of the Old 97 is something that really happened back in late September of 1903. An engineer, Steve Broady, was urged by his superiors to get the mail delivered on time even though he was well behind schedule. The results were disastrous.
Every political candidate who has handlers is constantly under pressure to stay “on message”, even if it means following a rather narrow track. I can only imagine how tempting it is to simply push the throttle forward and feel the wind tousle your beautiful hair!
Here’s the original version of The Wreck of the Old 97.
Well they fed him the numbers for his target percentage
sayin’ “don’t speak this out loud.”
But you can never appeal to the frail 47
They’re a whiney liberal crowd.
So he turned around and said to his hoity toity funders
“We can win it with 53
If we pick up every voter between Lynchburg and Danville
that’s including you and me”
There was someone in the crowd taking pictures with a camera
of the whole off-record speech.
Then he posted it online just to cause a lot of trouble
What a lazy, shiftless leech!
So they backpedaled all day. Every interview on cable
started with that thing he said.
About victims and entitlements and living on the dole
and how cheesecake is not like bread.
So now all you politicians better keep on your message
’til your eyeballs start to burn.
Never say another word about the pampered 47
or your older tax returns.
Edith was widowed in about 1924 with four young children when her husband dropped dead at the age of 36 of a heart attack. Fortunately his life insurance covered the cost of the house, but only that. She survived with the magic she could do with the stove. She cooked for many rich families and made it through the Depression mostly by running a bootleg bakery, “bootleg” in the sense of unlicensed. And, oh, how she could bake.
Edith
She had a son shot down over Germany in WWII and another son came home deaf. When her daughter ended up in a bad marriage and badly crippled from arthritis, she took them into her home, now doing all her magic in a tiny kitchen she had built upstairs. She shared her upstairs bedroom with her two grand daughters, one of whom is my wife.
She was described as always upbeat, giggly, and girlish. In her early fifties she seemed to have developed a sort of mild senility, which made her delightfully, charmingly dingy. I could tell thousands of stories about this, such as the fact she long carried around a piece of paper with my name on it because otherwise she called me Claude. Here are a few stories, in which you will notice forty years of widowhood had made her confused about sex.
My wife, the world’s most beloved human being, was packing for our honeymoon, including all the negligees she had received in her 13 bridal showers. Gramma Edith kept pulling them out of the suitcase and telling her to save them for something special.
She once told my wife not to undress in front of me because one day we may get divorced and then my wife would be walking down the street and see me and say, “Oh, no, I undressed in front of him.” After that she called several times in tears insisting she did not think we would get divorced, including more than once in the middle of the night.
In our poor but fun college years we would go over to the house to wash our clothes and take my mother-in-law for an outing. Edith would fold our clothes and take out and hide all the negligees. So I called up Edith and told her that Sandy was sleeping naked. She demanded that we come right over and get them. She would also hide food for us in the laundry, and once hid butter in my wife’s purse, which fell out of the purse when my wife was paying for groceries on our way home. My wife did not even try to explain. The clerk carefully ignored it, perhaps because my wife was purchasing such a modest amount of basic stuff.
Edith once ran short of apples for her famous apple pie, so she substituted watermelon pickles. She did not think we would notice. She made a famous torte, the recipe for which she stubbornly took to her grave.
Generation Two: Mugs, the Crip
Marguerite became pregnant at age 19 and rushed into a bad marriage, giving birth in March of 1940 to my wife Sandy. Four years later after giving birth to a second daughter, she developed severe rheumatoid arthritis, which over the next 42 years dissolved the bones in her hands and feet and gave her terrible pain. But she refused to let it limit her and not once in anyone’s memory ever complained. She went to everything she could at the Courage Center, where she hung out with the other “crips,” as they liked to call themselves.
Mugs
She once took an assertiveness class, from which she was excused for her assertiveness. In my college years she spent many months at the U of M having her knees and hips replaced, among the first to have the operations. She and I had lunch together every day while she was there and became close friends. She spent the rest of her time there seeking out those who needed an encouraging friend.
It was my—is “pleasure” the word—to do her funeral, at which I told many of other inspiring stories about her I am not telling here.
Generation Three: Sandy, the Most Beloved Being on the Planet
In my wife’s yearbook,despite a very difficult childhood, it said by her picture “Everyone wants to be like Sandy.” Everyone loves my wife. Everyone. Loves her.
Sandy
Our friend Lori recently went to one of my wife’s many doctors and told the doctor that she knew Sandy. The doctor acknowledged that she should not talk about another patient but told Lori how Sandy inspires everyone in the office, that after Sandy had been there no one complains about anything for the next few days. My wife goes there with her progressing lupus and five other illnesses and greets everyone by name in her perky manner. Sandy asks about their joys and problems, about which she has learned over her many visits. The doctor has to argue with my wife to tell her symptoms because then she would be complaining.
Trail Baboon 