Songs

Bubby Fakes a Stand

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Today’s entry comes from our perennial sophomore at Wendell Wilkie High School, the one and only Bubby Spamden.

Hey Mr. C.,

I’m wondering if we can get some labor unrest stirred up here in Minnesota just like they have it in Wisconsin. I’d really like my teachers to go AWOL for a few protest days at the state capitol.

What a great deal for those students next door – they’ve already had two days off with the promise of more to come! PLUS, after a day of playing video games in your PJ’s you can turn on the TV news to see your English teacher freezing on the steps of a state office building, waving a hand lettered sign and screaming for the Governor’s head. I’ll bet when that teacher gets back to the classroom she’ll be too hoarse to do anything but have hours and hours of quiet reading time – which is my favorite kind of in-class assignment. I love opening a big, soft book and then putting my head right down on it so the words can soak into my brain.

And speaking of going AWOL, how about those Wisconsin democrats who got to go on a road trip to Illinois? They’re hiding in a hotel somewhere, but nobody knows which one. And now Wisconsin’s State Troopers are looking for them! If I were on the lam in northern Illinois, I’d pick a hotel with a water park and hot waffle machines in the breakfast bar. I had no idea being a member of the state legislature was so cool! I thought it was just boring meetings all day long – kind of like going to class, but with voting.

What a great learning experience. I demand equal treatment with the students in Wisconsin! Please, make it happen here!

In our Life Choices class on Friday, I told Mr. Boozenporn that I would have really, really respected him more if he had gone to Wisconsin to show solidarity with the public employees there. It looked like he was actually considering it for a moment, but then he switched the lesson plan and spent the whole hour talking about labor history and he made us watch videos of Pete Seeger! And he says he’ll bring in his Weavers records on Tuesday!

Not what I had in mind.

Your friend,
Bubby

I told Bubby I was impressed that he was following the news so closely, but distressed to discover that he only sees these monumental policy struggles as another possible way to skip a few days of school. I like Mr. Boozenporn’s approach. Subjecting helpless high school students to skinny banjo players doing pro-union songs is more subversive and possibly more effective than marching on the capitol.

I have it on good authority that these are two of the You Tube videos Mr. Boozenporn showed yesterday.

What’s your favorite song about work?

Uncategorized

Gravity Slows the Pace

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This past Tuesday I grabbed a shovel and headed into the back yard to address some of the difficult issues dog owners face when the thaw begins and it becomes horribly evident that Fido has not been telling the whole truth about his business dealings. I should have suspected that story about desperate, out-of-work squirrels acting as personal valets was a mere fantasy. I chose to believe it because it made my life easier. Temporarily.

Walking with grim determination down a south-facing hill that the sun had cleared of snow, I stepped on a patch of brown grass that turned out to be covered with ice. As gravity took over I felt a tearing sensation in one of the major muscles of my left leg. I’ll spare you the spluttering and thrashing around and the Biblical oaths that followed. The result is that I can’t drive my car because I can’t lift up the foot that operates the clutch. I am suddenly impaired, but feeling lucky. I might have hit my head or fallen on the shovel, or toppled into the area that the dog has been decorating for the past three months with … well, let’s just say it could have been worse.

Yesterday my dear wife was kind enough to give me a ride to the doctor, but then she had to go to work and I undertook my errands by hobbling from one city bus to the next. It opened my eyes to part of a public transportation system that I had overlooked – namely, the part where I climb on and use it. I went from Shoreview to Rosedale to the University of Minnesota’s St. Paul Campus, then to the Minneapolis campus, downtown Minneapolis and back to the northern suburbs. It all went smoothly and just as the Metro Transit website had predicted. The only drawback was my sudden inability to hurry from one thing to the next.

It was a pleasant surprise to be forced to take things very slowly. The weather was fine. There was plenty to watch. At one point I had to kill 40 minutes at the central library in downtown Minneapolis. Was that a problem? Yes, the bus came too soon. Next time I’ll try to arrange it so I have to waste a couple of hours. And then there was the U of M stop where I felt compelled to fill the interlude with a cup of coffee and an apple fritter. The wait was no problem but the fritter was about 30% too big. I should have shared the extra chunk with the campus squirrels, but a misunderstanding about squirrels and chunks had gotten me into this situation in the first place.

In between rides I got from place to place the way Marty Feldman did when he played Igor in Young Frankenstein. Remember when he said “Walk this way”? That was me, minus the hump.

When have circumstances forced you to slow it down?

Songs

A Spot of Sun

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I haven’t heard any complaints about warmer temperatures over the past week, as the sun shows its power and begins to melt our winter’s snow (to make room for our spring snow).

Now comes word that the sun is also spitting out increased amounts of charged electromagnetic particles (a Coronal Mass Ejection) in keeping with a predicted rise in turbulent solar weather that is expected to peak in 2012.

Over time, this could cause some disruption in our systems. Communications failures are possible. Navigation might be affected. There may even be power outages.

Great. Now we have to think about solar weather on top of our existing obsession over the more immediate and understandable local weather. Eventually there will be songs.

Oh the weather up there is spotty
Yeah, the Sun is one hot toddy.
And your eyes will melt if you stare.
Let it flare, let it flare, let it flare!

Oh the scientists are detecting
some Coronal Mass Ejecting.
Let’s put on our lead-lined underwear,
Let it flare, let it flare, let it flare!

When it finally settles down
2013 or 14 or so,
If enough of us are around,
we can re-fixate on snow!

Oh it doesn’t show signs of slowing.
Should the northern sky be glowing?
With charged particles in our hair!
Let it flare, let it flare, let it flare!

This is just a start, of course. Can you picture Gene Kelley dancing to “Singing in the Flame”?

And for those who enjoy a good informational science song, they don’t get any better than this one from They Might Be Giants.

The sun is our friend. A really, really volatile and intense friend who will burn you if you’re not careful.

How do you manage your exposure to the sun?

Poems

Let’s Not See All The Same Hands …

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Supreme Court observers have noted that Justice Clarence Thomas is about to reach the five-year anniversary of the last time he asked a question during oral arguments before the court. No other justice has gone that long without raising his hand.

What does this mean? It means that Supreme Court observers are desperate people who need hobbies.

I was a kid who didn’t ask questions in class, in part because all the other kids were so gabby. I thought I was doing a public service by keeping mum. Somehow I got it in my head that we’d get to go to lunch before Mr. Sinclair’s room if we got done with algebra first. Maybe that’s what Justice Thomas is doing.

Oh, and I also didn’t want to get laughed at. I never bought the line about their being ‘no dumb questions,’ because I knew my head was full of them.

For some unexplainable reason, the odd notion of a consistently mum member of the black robed Supreme Court made me think of Edgar Allen Poe.

Once into a court Supremely strode a man some call unseemly
Whether he is that or something else I cannot say for sure.
As he sat among his brethren, criticism he’d been weatherin’
Harsh words, like balloons untetherin’, floated upwards from the floor.
“I’ve no questions,” Thomas muttered. “Like so many times before.”
Any questions? “Nevermore.”

“Surely some things make you wonder as you sit, be-robed, to ponder,”
said a counselor whose well-wrought argument had been a bore.
Thomas gazed up at the ceiling, noticed that the paint was peeling
Feeling an un-curious feeling. A feeling he had felt before.
And for years and years and years and years and years before and more.
Any questions? “Nevermore.”

All the others on the panel – all three women and each man’ll
have at least one query every session, say those who keep score.
Roberts. Kennedy. Scalia. Each of them, in turn, will be a
questioner. Some repeat. Scalia. Scalia. And, of course, Sotomayor.
Only Thomas remains silent as the Sphinx of ancient lore.
Listening, and nothing more.

In they come, their black gowns sweeping. One of them is, maybe, sleeping.
Justices, like angry birds, are poised to pounce on those before.
All their intellect is pooling with each new, successive ruling.
Reasoned judgments come unspooling out the giant courtroom door.
Only one is known for what we know he does not have in store –
Questions, Clarence? Nevermore!

Did you participate in the class discussion?

Uncategorized

… And One Giant Lie for Mankind

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Former legit radio reporter Bud Buck has been sending breathless, fact-free, over-the-top dispatches for the past two years as he tries to find his place in the new world of digital journalism. Few have taken notice. I know he has been disappointed that none of his reports have “gone viral”. He can’t even get sued. In his latest act of desperation, he’s abandoning the pretense of reporting a story, and is hoping to gain our attention as a commentator.

“Fake” Mars Landing is Clearly Fake
by Bud Buck

What would you do if you were leading a government project that couldn’t be kept secret, that needed plenty of time and an incredible amount of luck to succeed? Something so dangerous it could easily fail and cause widespread embarrassment? Something so provocative and unsettling to the rest of the world that it’s completion could upset the balance of power?

You would lower expectations, of course. You would tell the story of your project in such a way that people would feel sorry for you. You would frame the discussion so that it centered around all the ways your efforts are probably inadequate. In short, you would perpetrate the biggest ruse in history with the most shocking surprise ending since they opened the Trojan Horse and all those soldiers tumbled out.

That’s why I believe yesterday’s “fake” Marswalk, staged by the European Space Agency and Moscow’s Institute of Biomedical Problems is, in fact, real.

Yes, they’re up there. And of course they’re saying it’s simulated. That takes the pressure off, and managing pressure differentials is crucial in all space travel. Had word gone out that this effort was an actual mission, every step would be covered live on global television. That would set the stage for a possible humiliation. Nobody wants to be the guy whose space suit springs a leak with three billion watching in prime time. And nobody wants to have to explain to people whose blood is boiling why they let a guy’s blood actually boil.

Better to pretend that it’s just six guys playing “space house” in a Moscow suburb.

Nothing is more attractive to the world’s press than an obvious effort to hide something, and that’s why the genius stroke in all this was the decision to invite coverage of the mission as a “simulation”. As soon as it appeared the scientists were desperate for our attention, interest from the world’s press faded to almost nothing.

Meanwhile, these space pioneers, masquerading as test subjects, climbed into what is obviously a child’s version of a rocket set up in some Russian warehouse, and immediately went out a secret exit in back, where they were piled into a waiting van and driven to a launch pad in Siberia where they began the real mission in utter secrecy.

Do I have proof? Of course not! The mere existence of proof would prove that there is not a highly competent and vast conspiracy to cloak the diabolical nature of this effort.

Look carefully at the photos they claim were made as part of the “test”. Check out the soil. That color red is not found anywhere on Earth. Not even in Russia!

Officials claim the crew for this 520 day “experiment” is made up of six “men”. But I’ve seen photos of the “Marswalkers” in their space suits, and I don’t think there’s any way you could get a European man to wear something so roomy, or to look so soft and adorable. Of course they’re saying all the guys are men. That keeps us from thinking about the real purpose of the trip, which is to populate Mars with aggressive Russians and haughty Europeans so they can look down their noses at us from even farther away.

When the first Mars baby is born, that’s when we’ll start to get the actual story.

The timing of this thing is perfect. America has just faced a “Sputnik Moment” with regard to school test scores, and other “Sputnik Moments” in foreign manufacturing, green technology, and telemarketing. We have “Sputnik Moment” fatigue. And we’re also running low on quotation marks to indicate something is “phony”.

All I’m saying is that we need to prepare for a shocker. Mark my words. The fake mission is REAL!

This is Bud Buck!

Bud is safe here in assuming that his commentary will have very few readers and almost nobody will “mark his words”. But if the impossible happens and his wild imaginings turn out to be true, he’ll be lauded as one of the world’s leading investigative journalists, and perhaps even a prophet!

Are you any good at keeping a secret?

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A Valentine for Mom

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Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone.

Many thanks to those who sent kind words and condolences on the death of my mother, who passed away on February 2nd. She was a good person who enjoyed simple things. My mom loved to laugh, and she was a bit unconventional. She anchored our little family, cared for her friends and did her best to create some fun in the world.

The daughter of a New York stockbroker, there was a bit of money and status in her family. Her grandfather was a preacher who died young. Her great-grandfather was an officer and gatekeeper for a society of Mayflower Descendants. There was a moral code and a distinguished lineage to uphold. For women born into such families in the late 1920’s, the expectation was that they would marry well and play their role.

Mom came of age just as WWII ended. A friend at work had a brother who had dropped out of high school and had just completed an uncomfortable stint in the Navy – a character clearly from the other side of the tracks. Mom’s parents were not thrilled, but she married him anyway. Her mother’s disapproval faded as she discovered this polite new son-in-law folded his handkerchief carefully and was very, very handy around the house. Stuff got fixed, and small things like that matter.

Mom stayed at home while my brother and I were growing. She dyed her hair blonde and smoked, like a lot of women did in the 1950’s. We accompanied her and watched while she did all the Eisenhower era housewife/mother tasks – laundry; cleaning; feeding us meat loaf and mashed potatoes; being the chaperone on school trips; doing funny, silly, crafty things.

She became a scavenger. We would make the rounds of local bowling alleys to gather up discards from the piles of debris in back. With paint and cloth and patience, she could turn a cracked bowling pin into a wacky character – a debutante in her frilly dress or a mustachioed singer in a barbershop quartet. Kitschy? Without a doubt. But there was no embarrassment. It was inexpensive, creative fun. My mom was the sort of person who did uncomplicated things like that. She loved plants and gardens and feeding the birds and sitting outside.

She went into an extended stuffed animal phase and produced a large number of plush critters to sell at craft fairs for not quite enough money to make a profit. In between fairs she was always ready to sew a bear for a new baby. Many of these teddies (and dogs and rabbits) were handmade and embroidered with the child’s name and birth date. It makes me happy to think that these are still out in the world, even if they’ve been placed under beds or pushed to the back of closets. It’s the memories they made along the way that matter most.

In the ‘70’s she worked in the cashier window at Sears, at a time when department stores had a separate, secure place where you could go to pay your bills. Because the job involved handling a lot of money, she worked behind a daunting pane of glass in a fairly humorless setting. To inject a little levity, she and her cashier friends would dress up for holidays and Halloween – poodles, fairies, firecrackers. Nothing was too dumb.

Mom with my brother, Lee

Day-to-day she wore sweatshirts and blue jeans. If an activity required getting more dressed up than that, you had to ask yourself if it was worth the trouble. A fun outing was climbing on the lawn tractor to mow the side yard.

Mom was an animal lover who made room in her home for numerous pets, including two gigantic St. Bernards. The door was always open for neglected and desperate wanderers. She and my father welcomed several abandoned dogs and far too many stray cats. There was no question about this. It was simply what they did.

For the past three decades we lived 500 miles apart. She relished using the visiting grandmother’s prerogative to do whatever came into her head without regard for house rules or discipline. When Grandma Barbara came to visit, one of the first activities would be a festival of misbehavior called “The Sock Game.” It involved letting her grandson jump on the bed while both of them ate M&M’s and threw socks into the spinning ceiling fan. Nancy and I knew the ritual had begun when the crazy laughter started and an occasional sock would come sailing out the door.

Like I say, she was a fun-maker.

One of my earliest memories of my mother is a trip we took to an upstate New York lake in summer. I was very young and couldn’t swim, so the only way to get out to the area over my head was to hang on to her neck. As her feet bounced across the lake bottom, we moved towards the middle of the lake and I sensed the dangerous chill of the colder, deeper water all around. I was excited but not scared because I knew I was safe in her arms and felt completely surrounded by her warmth. “I’ve got you,” she said. And I knew she did.

My mom meant love and home and acceptance to me. That’s what every parent hopes to be for their child, which makes it no less of an achievement. It is common as a sweatshirt and as goofy as a bowling pin character, and it constitutes everything that is most important in the world. It’s a gift I was very lucky to receive.

Love you, mom!

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Acoustic Resurgence

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I don’t really think acoustic music is about to have a resurgence in the popular culture, but it is nice to see that Bob Dylan, The Avett Brothers and Mumford & Sons will do a special “salute to acoustic music” as part of Sunday night’s Grammy broadcast.

21st century Folk Scare, anyone?

Here’s Bob using his unplugged guitar to do a familiar and uncomplicated version of one of his most resonant songs.

But why is his face so blue? Sunburn medication, perhaps? He looks like a love child of Woody Guthrie and one of the Na’vi from the film Avatar.

What does it mean to be “Tangled Up In Blue?”

The Baboon Congress

Faith

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Babooners are music lovers – that’s how this blog got started. But many of the artists we appreciate work out beyond the edges of the very intense spotlight that shines on the mega-stars who will get all the attention on Sunday night’s Grammy broadcast. Today’s guest blog revolves around one of those hard working musicians.
It was written by Steve Grooms

In the winter of 1995, a southern singer made a northern tour to promote her first CD, arriving in Minneapolis in the middle of a heavy snowstorm. Kate Campbell was born in New Orleans in 1961. She grew up passionately interested in civil rights and all the changes she saw going on in the South. She began writing intelligent songs, folk songs with poetic elegance. Kate called her first CD “Songs From the Levee.”

To promote her evening gig, Kate dropped in on the Morning Show, hosted then by Dale Connelly and Tom Keith. She performed three numbers and said she’d be appearing that evening in a little café that used to sit kittycorner from Odegards’ bookstore, on Grand Avenue in Saint Paul.

In spite of the cold and snow, I decided to go. When I go to the restaurant I had to feel sorry for Kate. She was an obscure singer in an obscure venue, performing in the middle of the week during a snowstorm. Her audience consisted of three guys, counting myself. At times like that I don’t think about whether an entertainer is amusing me; I always worry that they won’t have a good impression of Minnesota, and I clap with abandon to show them that Minnesotans have big hearts.

Kate, of course, was gracious. She played guitar and sang her favorite songs as enthusiastically as if this had been a White House concert. Ira, her husband, Ira stood at the back of the room with a box of CDs, enjoying the concert.

Kate Campbell

When the concert was over I clapped enthusiastically and then approached Ira to buy a CD. He showed me what looked like two different CDs but explained that they were both “Songs From the Levee.” The difference was that there were two versions of the cover art. A little confused, I asked if it mattered which one I bought.

Ira thought, then brandished a CD whose cover featured a yellow watercolor scene. “This is the original cover art,” he said, “and you might as well get it. If Kate’s first CD becomes a collector’s item some day, this one will have more value.”

I was speechless and I looked at him closely to see if he had been kidding. This man had just watched his wife spend an evening serenading three Minnesotans in puffy coats and drippy noses. If he felt humiliated, it sure didn’t show. Instead, he was talking about her first album becoming a collector’s item! I bought the CD with the original art but was too distracted by Ira’s faith in his wife to ask Kate to autograph the jewel case.

On Grand Avenue outside café the snows whirled dreamily like a snow globe. As I stepped into the night I was thinking, “Oh, lady, I hope you love him like he loves you! That man believes in you absolutely. I don’t know what kind of career you are going to have, but I would bet tonight that your marriage is going to go the distance.”

The new company created by Kate and Ira just released her eleventh CD.

Has anyone ever believed in you at a time when you weren’t sure you even believed in yourself?

The Baboon Congress

Singer in a Rock and Roll Band

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Regular readers of the Trail Baboon comments will know that distinct personalities are welcome (yours included, if you’ve never offered a comment). Today’s guest blog came as a single, massive block of text, which I have broken up a bit but otherwise left untouched.
It was written by the one and only tim.

the blog has helped me to remember a lot of my past history and keep it in perspective as to the role it played in getting to where i am today.

after doing my time with the nuns in catholic i was turned loose on the public schools in 7th grade and found out you could disappear and take center stage at the same time. when you want to be on you’re on, when you want to melt into the woodwork you can.

i made it through the middle school years and had a bit of a hard time because i was there when the country was in transition and a long haired hippy who was still interested in sports was new and the coaches in the program had rules like no hair over the collar that were starting to appear stupid but the coaches were not the ones who were noticing that. so it was frustrating to be able to kick butt in wrestling but not be allowed to go on match day because of the long hair rules.

football was no fun for a guy who could play but was delegated to the 2nd squad because jack armstrong with the whistle around his neck was such a twerp, baseball was fun, baseball, track tennis theater have always been different from football hockey and the other macho sports.

so the phone call that came the summer between 9th and 10 grade from joe, bob and bruce telling me that they would like to do a tryout for their band as the lead singer. i said yes, and after the tryout they couldn’t believe that i could sing every song no matter if it were cream, jethro tull, joe cocker, the beatles, the stones each and every one sounding just bob dylan ( i had been spending a lot of time in my room with a stack of lp’s the new nashville skyline rag on the top of the stack). well… the band was life changing for me, i got to be in front of people and do my schtick on the microphone and we had a great time doing rock for 3 sets and acoustic during the breaks.

so i was talking to joe years later and asked how that came to happen, i didn’t know these guys from adam and they asked me to come be the front man for the band. joe said they all realized they were not capable of being front man and that i had the long hair, was in concert choir and was certainly going to be an improvement over the last front man who was an organ player with a leslie (an expensive speaker) and an attitude that was taking the fun out of the group.

we had a blast. lasted for 2 years til they went off to college and then i became a living room performer who had ambitions to do something musical but was making money at a sales gig that was paying good enough to distract me from the calling.

today i look back and realize that the band was the turning point for me. my confidence , my enjoyment in being in front of people, my ability to do the best me i can be even if i’m not all there came about during those years. i have modified, refined and tweaked all of the stuff it took to get to today but this is where my taking the path where the roads separated began.

can you name an event or marker that was a turning point for you?

The Baboon Congress

Hey Nellie Nellie

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Yesterday Jacque got us to consider what we may have forgotten.
Now we’ll reclaim some of what was lost.
Today’s guest blog is by Barbara in Robbinsdale.

On MLK Day when Dale asked for our favorite “freedom” music, I dove back into the far reaches of my closet and found my beloved guitar songbooks, which gave me titles to the songs rattling around in my brain. It was like finding gold.

Not only were there songbooks, but there was My Guitar. Oh my! Hauled the case out, opened it to find only two strings missing. In my wisdom in some former life, I had bought a full set of strings, so for the next hour or so I tried to remember how to restring the thing. Did a messy job, but got it strung. I play by ear, so tuning is still, happily, not a problem. I was set to go.

Opened my homemade book to Hey Nellie Nellie – a Civil War song from a Judy Collins album – and tried out the C chord. Woops, that wasn’t a C chord. I’d forgotten how to play a C chord! You get the picture. It wasn’t pretty, and by the end of the next hour my fingertips were very sore (and the nails of my left hand clipped), but I could play, s-l-o-w-l-y, a C, G, D, F, A and A minor (Am), Em… I went to bed with aching hand, but determined heart.

Back in my twenties I learned from peers how to play by chording, hardly ever delving into anything complex. Guitars are like that – if you know six (6) basic chords, (especially if you can hear where they belong) and a couple of pick patterns, you can play 90% of the music you like. I got good enough to, say, lead small groups of singers (and primary school children are particularly forgiving). And I once got brave enough to sing a couple of songs with a friend at an Open Mike night at the Mirimar Beach Inn.

So this is a bit like riding a bike… it is coming back. In the couple of weeks that have passed, I’ve been trying to play a little every day. I bought a stand to hold my beautiful little Gibson when it’s not in its case, which means it’s visible and I remember to play. I have visions of learning lots of “new” songs I’ve absorbed over the years from The Morning and Dale Connelly Shows, teaching myself some new chords, maybe even taking lessons, which I’ve never done.

What kind of lessons (or classes) would you take if you had the all the time and resources needed?