Oily Boys

The last few times I have seen Greg Brown he has done his song Oily Boys.

I love Greg Brown

Although the last time I saw him at Kent Stage he seemed just a little too close to the edge.

I hope he doesn't fall off.

The song is a great tribute to what is going on and at least he sees it.

Sometimes it feels like very few do.

When all the spinsters are ramping up with the mass media to make a push on unlimited drilling for more petrol, with the promise that it will relieve our burden at the pump, it makes one wonder, does anybody see what Greg sees.

This is about money and cash flow for a few select corporations and individuals.

It is not about perpetuating our quality of life.

When I see the ads of prime time TV, either a rage or a moment of sanity sets in and I think surely to God, the general public isn't swallowing this.

I mean with oil producing companies hitting record high profits something doesn't seem right with giving them the green light to increase off shore drilling, great lakes drilling, tar sand extractions and on and on.

What for to make more money?

Is this going to fix the problem and perpetuate our lifestyle? I don't think so.

When you get up and go outside on a warm August day, is it so far fetched to think we should be looking up to the warming sun and realizing that is where we should be turning there to get our energy needs.

Even simple organizims like plants do it. They turn to the sun.

It makes the wind blow and the water flow, not to mention just warming the air.

Seems so simple to me.
I guess that is why I am a pedestrian.

But then again, all of the hydro carbon engineers I have ever known have said the same thing.

Petrol chemicals effect our lives in so many ways that it is ridiculous for us to burn this remarkable resource up as transportation fuel.

I often think while I am gassing up the car what 15 gallons of liquid looks like, and how that is strapped under the Rav 4 in the gas tank.

And how every car that is going down the interstate is shelleping along with a large quantity of gasoline sloshing underneath them.

The volume is staggering.

And we think that drilling more will release this demanding pressure for more gas?

We need to change.

When Jimmy Carter called for Americans to reduce our consuption of gas, we did. And the results was the end of the last energy crisis.

We super insulated our houses and were aware.
We broke OPEC by wearing sweaters and driving more fuel effiecent cars.

Gas prices came down and then we let go of what we had achieved.

We choose to forget or simply didn't learn anything at all from the experiece.

Now here we are in the same situation with a couple small additional complications called the growing energy demands of India and China.

There is no opportunity for the US to so dramatically and easily effect the global consumption of oil and gas like there was 30 years ago.

Now there is a need for much more radical action.

We have to change.

Petrol chemicals are critical to our manufacturing, food production and nearly every other element of our lives.

Is it wise to choose to burn it up and reduce the end product to tail pipe emissions?

That of course is a whole other story.

If you have ever wondered about a simple analogy for the negative results of tailpipe emmissions and how this relates to the enviroment, consider sitting in a car and starting it up in a closed garage.

This is a remarkably easy way to kill yourself.

I suppose this is a much too simple analogy to think about with regard for what we are doing to the biosphere.

I just recently read that 90% of all the energy consumed in the average US vehicle is used in the moving of the vehicle itself.

In other words, the person getting 10 miles to a gallon is using over 9/10ths of a gallon just to move their Hummer a few miles. While 1/10 is burned moving the occupants of the car.

All the while filling up the "garge" with wonderful tailpipe exhaust.

Remarkable isn't it.

Until we embrace change I suppose we are all just Oily Boys

How I have been spending my time

http://lmelc.wikispaces.com/ELC+Updates

This is the Environmental Learning Center that is currently under construction and needs to be completed before school starts this year.
An estimated 15,000 3rd 4th and 5th graders will attend science and math classes here this year.

Let's go drill some holes

I have, like most of us in this country have seen countless ads pitching our need for energy dependency.

Hey these are appearing on prime-time TV
Check this out!!

More to follow

http://www.oilcrisis.com/duncan/road2olduvai.pdf

Why are we so afraid of change?

I keep having this feeling when I am listening to the news that is very hard to describe.
It is deep down inside and difficult to explain, but I feel like shouting something is wrong. Something is terribly wrong.

When I hear the spin that is being put on reducing restictions on drilling for more oil and gas, so that we can reduce the price at the pump, it is like a great diversion from the real issue, and that is we need to change the way we are consuming things.

I have thought about these issues for many years and I suppose that it comes down to one simple concept.

And that is waste is not good. By definition it is not a good thing. It's bad!

I don't mind people/corporations being successful, or making money but for crying out loud, when we have gotten to the point where a box store can walk away from a 10 year old store to build a bigger version less than five miles away, that is wrong.

Or why are there even such a thing as a Hummer?

Or perhaps a better question is a not working Hummer?

It the most simple terms this behavior and these trends are just wasteful.

And you don't have to be a anything but honest to see this.

But for whatever reasons, this society for all it's greatness and potential, is consumed to a large degree with with rationalizing this behavior.

About the best I can come up with is the fear of changing.

Finding Balance

I read Ralph Ellison’s book The Invisible Man in college, and I recall his description of a helical advance of society over time. How things come around and maybe the conditions are the same but the whole place or view is elevated.

Recently that image came to mind in thinking about my own life.
It seems that I have always been pulled between music and conservation and of course family and social circles.

Right and left brain, I don’t know?

As life has gone on these forces have ebbed and flowed, been adipose to each other and been in support of each other, or sometimes one has been strong and the other quiet.

Now is one of those moments when they are both quite forceful.

The image of Ellison’s book came to mind the other evening while thinking about my challenge to reconcile or accept these forces on my life at this present moment.

There may have been times when these forces have been stronger than they are now, but I am at a different elevation in my life.

It seems like happiness is sometime matter of choice, and I never really new that until recently. I hope that some of my efforts help others as well as myself make that choice.

The contribution of any life has ongoing potential for inspiring good and finding hapiness on many levels.

Is there a universal desire to want to "do good"?

With regard to music and my work, I would like to believe that I do not have to choose one or the other, but the challenge it to manage or work to find the balance that enables both to thrive and neither to become a distraction to the other.

What Happened to Tuesday?

I forgot to enter anything for yesterday and it wasn't so much that there wasn't anything going on.

As a matter of fact, I did catch a very cool PBS show on talking.

Scientist were studying the wiring in the brains of people and birds as well and the genes associated with speech.

One of the coolest things they touched on was the possible source of inspriation for Beethoven's 5th. It may have very well came from the song of a European Wood Wren.

Dun dun dun dunnn

Which led to a interesting discussion between Mj and I.

For quite some time I have maintained
the believe that there are these universal song themes that come to us all. And what happens is some song writers and composers catch them and when they recreate them, the song resonates with people and become popular because these tunes represent something much bigger than we understand.

I sort of think the same thing about lyrics.

I don't know how many time people have explained my lyrics to me and made perfect sense doing it.

There has been many times when I have heard very similar melodies coming from very different places. It was almost like humanity was "ripe" to hear that particular musical phrase or there was something that just needed to be manifested and different people caught it and put it out there in their interpretation.

I did a musical presentation for a group of scientists a few years ago and the number one thing that they all wanted me to talk about was where my songs come from. Were they bolts of inspriation or were they assembled piece meal.

I have had some songs come in the morning and before I could walk across the room and write down the lyrics it was all completely in my head, others have taken years to ripen.

For me they come many different ways, and sometimes they come and I can't catch them. Too many distractions, just a fleeting tune or a lyrical passage that I can't stop and respond to.

It is a little sad when that happens, but I think someone else will hear it and catch it, and let it develop into a song.

The thing I found fascinating about the wood wren was the notion "Does this happen to animals too?"

Over the ages have the songs of birds and wolves, and whales been influenced by some greater force?

I wonder what other musical pieces have been inspired by the songs of animals?

Monday Monday

Wasn't it the Carpenters that recorded that song?

I never really understood what they were singing about. 

 

I suppose it is about having a plan for the week evaporate on the first day of the work week.

I had one of those days a few weeks ago when I had gotten up at some ridiculous hour in the morning to start working on a report or something.  

 

By the time I was done with it and ready to head for the office I thought I was on top of my game and feeling like I had the whole day pretty much laid out.  

As I was leaving the garage a landscaping crew came pulling into the driveway completely unexpected, and I found my plans evaporating because I had to stay at the house and lay out their work for the day. 

Forty-five minutes or so later I was heading to work to drop off my report only so I could turn around and come back home.

Years ago, actually just a few months ago, I would have had elevated blood pressure and a very bad attitude from the unexpected turn of events, but I found myself thinking, hey who am I to be upset that my agenda got adjusted.  

  

Sometimes the universe has other things in mind.  Why should that bother us?

I think it is often the results of putting completely arbitrary expectations on things.

I mean why should any day of the week have great value or expectation than any other?

 

A few decades ago, I was working for Hobart Brothers in their warehouse.   I found myself fighting to keep from the trap of living for the weekend.  It seemed like I was screwing myself out of enjoying every other day of the week.

Don't get me wrong, work is work and if it wasn't it would be work, but hey baby life is not a dress rehearsal.  

I figure it is pretty good advice to enjoy each one for what it is.

Even Monday.

Life is a journey, enjoy each step of the way. 

Steve

A more flexible format to work with!

I decided I had to do some thing to deal with the frustration I was having with putting pictures on my web page.  I was having a difficult time posting them without a severe loss of quality.  

I also wanted to be a position to add photos to my journal entries.... which I couldn't do.  

And as most of my journal entries had little or nothing to do with music I set up this blog where I can write about anything and not confuse a visitor to my music site. 

So here I am and hopefully all the more fun for it.

First and foremost I do want to thank everyone who has given me encouragement to keep writing my blast emails.  

I must admit I was feeling a bit awkward because some of them were so long winded.  

I started to back them back in size and set up the long ones in the journal and referred interested folks to the journal site.

Then several people asked me if I was starting a blog.  I wasn't really planning to but hey some things just happen.

I posted in my journal this week a little piece on one of my friends back in Xenia, Gary Pack. Gary and I shared more than one adventure.  

He was a real character and my life is richer for the time we spent together. 

I remember one time we were fishing on the upper Little Miami and I stopped fishing and was just sitting on the bank....

Oh I suppose that I should explain to the non angler there are people who sit in boats and fish, sit on the bank and fish, and then there are the wading stream fishermen who walk their ass off flipping a fly or lure into the most likely holding water for fish.  After a few casts, and no one seems to be home, off you go slipping off through the water to the next likely spot.

That is the way Gary and I were fishing, and I just climbed up on the bank of the stream and sat down.  Gary came up to me and asked what was up?  I told him that that I was so mentally exhausted from work and life in general that I just wanted to stop and let go of every thing.  I went on to say I felt like taking my clothes off and running through the woods.

Gary said "Why don't you?"

I told him "Gary, I know so many people around here I would probably run into some on I knew".   Without missing a beat Gary said "no problem man, I would just tell em the park ranger has had a rough day!"

Gary was cool and I am glad we got to spend a little time together. 

I hope you enjoy the topics I intend to present and explore.

Life is a journey enjoy each step of the way!

Steve