Guitarist Tyler Grant, a San Diego East County native, performed in concert Saturday night at the historic Valley Music venue in El Cajon. A member of the media was there and filed this report.
Tyler Grant presented a two-hour concert in the key of H Saturday night at Valley Music before a capacity crowd.
H for history. This was the last in a series of concerts that Grant has presented over the last seven years at Valley Music, providing the audience a stirring finale in this series of his emergence from a young player with skill and dedication to a world-class performer with command of his art and of the stage. Many in the audience were family and friends from Jamul, where Tyler grew up, and he was specific, between – and even during – numbers, in recognizing his old friends and family. The center of his fame as a multi-talented musician has risen from Nashville, his adopted home, but Tyler left no doubt Saturday night about where his roots were, and his heart still is.
History as transition. As well-known as he has become in musical genres such as bluegrass, flatpicking, and Americana music, Grant is struggling with a decision to take his music commercial. He has been the subject of a cover story in Flatpicking Guitar Magazine, and he is the reigning National and Merlefest Flatpicking Guitar champion, but those are niche accomplishments with minimal effect on CD sales. During this visit, he said he was looking for an agent, and he queried the local media, unsuccessfully, about coverage of the Valley Music concert.
It reminded this reporter of musicians like Elvis Presley and Randy Travis. Even Elvis, after his 1954 debut with "That's All Right, Mama," toured the small-town circuits before breaking out in 1955. And this reporter, specifically, remembers covering a Randy Travis concert at an El Cajon venue in 1986, knowing full well that the next time Travis visited San Diego, he would be playing at the Sports Arena.
For Tyler Grant, though, it's more than paying dues. It was clear Saturday night that he is very aware of what he leaves behind, if he decides to move forward. History: he played old country tunes (Waylon Jennings), rock and roll (Marty Robbins), primal bluegrass (Bill Monroe), classical guitar (Bach, for example), championship flatpicking (a la Doc Watson) and his original songs, with country, bluegrass and Cajun influences, from his first CD, "In the Light." He played all of these, in a two-hour concert (backed up by the great Josh Dake on mandolin), with facility and fire. It has been great fun, in his history, for his family and friends to observe his ever-emerging facility, to the point where his playing looks easy. But it was the fire, Saturday night, that revealed his love, and mastery, of the craft.
Agents, though, and the machine, show less interest, in the music business world, in fire than sales predictability. Saturday night, Tyler played the music he owns and loves, like a campfire he has built for friends, that he can manipulate with six strings into a slow glow, or into a hot chimney of flame, shooting up and twisting into a storm of fireworks that, at the end, sets off thunderous applause. Such chemistry and skill is so personal, and at risk of becoming history in the commercial vacuum, where stars may be made of skill, or of simple audience appeal, or the kind of media manipulation so obvious in a CMT-TV video like Justin Moore's "Back That Thing Up."
And so Saturday night will be held by those attending as a moment in the history of an artist they know and love. Grant took obvious pleasure, as he talked about it, in being the last artist to play on the stage at Valley Music, which has been in business at its present location since 1952, and will move this summer to a new site. Tyler is relocating also, from Nashville to Boulder, CO, and relocating with him will be Kathleen Harris, to whom he proposed, successfully, on a late winter day on a ridgeline above his beloved Jamul.
Showing posts with label Family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Family. Show all posts
May 30, 2009
May 22, 2009
Archives: May 17, 1983 - A Day to Remember
The archive below was published on May 17, 1983, when Tyler was six years old. Tomorrow, May 23, he will be 33. Still too young . . .
We had the house together, he and I. For lunch he had a hotdog. I had cold pizza. On his hotdog he had ketchup and pickle relish. You start to wonder from where these tastes arise.
The ketchup was Heinz, which he believes is too runny. "I'll be glad when we get some Del Monte ketchup," he said. I had put on two hotdogs, thinking he would be hungry after his game. His team won, 28-27, its first victory of the season. This is "tee-ball," where the hitters hit the ball off a rubber tee and the defenses are, well, forgetful.
He played catcher and had four hits. He has a nice stroke, he's a good thrower, and he catches all right, but he does not yet appreciate the concept of turning the glove over for low throws and ground balls.
He didn't want the other hotdog. "For lunch," he reminded me, "I always have only one hotdog, or sometimes one and a half." So I ate the other hotdog, with mustard.
"You have a big appetite," he said. "Let's go sit in the swing," I said. "That's a good idea," he said. "You can read me two stories."
He went by his room and picked out two books. I hoped they were not "Fish is Fish," or "How Engines Talk." He met me at the swing, and Terry the Pup jumped up also. The afternoon was warm, almost hot. But the canopy took the bright edge off, and at the back a little breeze wandered in. It was every bit of all right.
"Read this one first," he said and handed me "The Pumpkin Smasher." "And read this one second." This one – "Mouse and Tim" – he showed to me, but did not hand over. "The Pumpkin Smasher" is preschooler stuff. Every Hallowe'en Eve, someone smashes all the pumpkins in town. It gets so bad that the mayor is thinking about calling off Hallowe'en.
But a couple of kids have a plan. They paint a boulder to look like a pumpkin. Sure enough, the pumpkin-smasher – it turns out to be a witch – tries to smash this pumpkin. Then she gives up and flies away, saying she will never come back to this town again.
This book I handed back, and he handed me "Mouse and Tim," which is better. In fact it is terrific, if you have never read it. The trick is, both boy and mouse give points of view, the mouse in italics. Reading it aloud, toward the end, when Tim is going to let Mouse go, you have to stop every little while to let your sob reflex relax. More is going on than boy frees mouse.
"That's a great story," I said at the end. He didn't say anything. We rocked in the heat and watched the summer bugs dip and dart. I tried to see the afternoon through his eyes, and I almost could, having been there once. The view, I think, doesn't change. Sharing it with him was special.
We could have spent the afternoon, but I had things to do in the kitchen. Company was coming. "Well," I said. "I have things to do."
"No," he said. He rolled onto my lap and wiggled his cheek into my chest and pinned me with his arms.
I would not have had to move a muscle to get to heaven. Someday I will have to let him go, but now I clung to him, clung to the day, and the hour, and the minute, and the pressure of it squeezed free a drop that rolled down my cheek and plopped on the brown bill of his baseball cap.
I was not at this point just going to get up without a good excuse. After awhile I said, "Want to listen to the little records?"
"Yeah!" he said. The little records are 45s of mine, nearly all 1950s rock and roll, that he and I have been listening to for years. He likes it, and I tell him it is better stuff than hits the charts today. Some of these I am taping for a friend. I figured I could do that and other stuff too. He sat on the couch, and I loped between stereo and kitchen.
I was at the stereo when he said, "Dad, do you think I will die in the 20th . . . the 20th . . ."
"The 20th century?" I said. "Naw. I sure hope not." I told him that the 21st century would start in the year 2001, 18 years from now. "You will be 25," I said. "You'll just be getting started. And I will be, uh, 58. I think it will be exciting, living at the turn of a century."
He was not distracted. "I hope I die before you do," he said.
"Why?" I said.
"If you died before I did, I would be sad," he said. Psychologists say such statements are normal because the kid at that age sees the parent as hero. I trust it is also normal for the parent, hearing it, to feel mighty heroic.
"Now wait a minute," I said, and went over and leaned down in his face. "What about me? If you died before me, I would be sad. Ever think about that?"
"Well," he said, "we could just die on the same day."
"No," I said. "You will always be too young." And he always will.
We had the house together, he and I. For lunch he had a hotdog. I had cold pizza. On his hotdog he had ketchup and pickle relish. You start to wonder from where these tastes arise.
The ketchup was Heinz, which he believes is too runny. "I'll be glad when we get some Del Monte ketchup," he said. I had put on two hotdogs, thinking he would be hungry after his game. His team won, 28-27, its first victory of the season. This is "tee-ball," where the hitters hit the ball off a rubber tee and the defenses are, well, forgetful.
He played catcher and had four hits. He has a nice stroke, he's a good thrower, and he catches all right, but he does not yet appreciate the concept of turning the glove over for low throws and ground balls.
He didn't want the other hotdog. "For lunch," he reminded me, "I always have only one hotdog, or sometimes one and a half." So I ate the other hotdog, with mustard.
"You have a big appetite," he said. "Let's go sit in the swing," I said. "That's a good idea," he said. "You can read me two stories."
He went by his room and picked out two books. I hoped they were not "Fish is Fish," or "How Engines Talk." He met me at the swing, and Terry the Pup jumped up also. The afternoon was warm, almost hot. But the canopy took the bright edge off, and at the back a little breeze wandered in. It was every bit of all right.
"Read this one first," he said and handed me "The Pumpkin Smasher." "And read this one second." This one – "Mouse and Tim" – he showed to me, but did not hand over. "The Pumpkin Smasher" is preschooler stuff. Every Hallowe'en Eve, someone smashes all the pumpkins in town. It gets so bad that the mayor is thinking about calling off Hallowe'en.
But a couple of kids have a plan. They paint a boulder to look like a pumpkin. Sure enough, the pumpkin-smasher – it turns out to be a witch – tries to smash this pumpkin. Then she gives up and flies away, saying she will never come back to this town again.
This book I handed back, and he handed me "Mouse and Tim," which is better. In fact it is terrific, if you have never read it. The trick is, both boy and mouse give points of view, the mouse in italics. Reading it aloud, toward the end, when Tim is going to let Mouse go, you have to stop every little while to let your sob reflex relax. More is going on than boy frees mouse.
"That's a great story," I said at the end. He didn't say anything. We rocked in the heat and watched the summer bugs dip and dart. I tried to see the afternoon through his eyes, and I almost could, having been there once. The view, I think, doesn't change. Sharing it with him was special.
We could have spent the afternoon, but I had things to do in the kitchen. Company was coming. "Well," I said. "I have things to do."
"No," he said. He rolled onto my lap and wiggled his cheek into my chest and pinned me with his arms.
I would not have had to move a muscle to get to heaven. Someday I will have to let him go, but now I clung to him, clung to the day, and the hour, and the minute, and the pressure of it squeezed free a drop that rolled down my cheek and plopped on the brown bill of his baseball cap.
I was not at this point just going to get up without a good excuse. After awhile I said, "Want to listen to the little records?"
"Yeah!" he said. The little records are 45s of mine, nearly all 1950s rock and roll, that he and I have been listening to for years. He likes it, and I tell him it is better stuff than hits the charts today. Some of these I am taping for a friend. I figured I could do that and other stuff too. He sat on the couch, and I loped between stereo and kitchen.
I was at the stereo when he said, "Dad, do you think I will die in the 20th . . . the 20th . . ."
"The 20th century?" I said. "Naw. I sure hope not." I told him that the 21st century would start in the year 2001, 18 years from now. "You will be 25," I said. "You'll just be getting started. And I will be, uh, 58. I think it will be exciting, living at the turn of a century."
He was not distracted. "I hope I die before you do," he said.
"Why?" I said.
"If you died before I did, I would be sad," he said. Psychologists say such statements are normal because the kid at that age sees the parent as hero. I trust it is also normal for the parent, hearing it, to feel mighty heroic.
"Now wait a minute," I said, and went over and leaned down in his face. "What about me? If you died before me, I would be sad. Ever think about that?"
"Well," he said, "we could just die on the same day."
"No," I said. "You will always be too young." And he always will.
January 04, 2009
A tardy Happy New Year
Happy New Year! I have been trying to post these images since early New Year's Day, but it must be that the folks at Blogger took several days off. I hope we are now back in contact.
December 24, 2008
Yes, Michael, there is a Santa Claus
When I was nine years old, hopelessly jaded, cynical and wise, I told the six-year-old neighbor girl, Judy Hamilton, from across the street, and her little sister Laura, that there was no Santa Claus.
Later in the day, Martha Hamilton, a very tall woman, walked across the street and without referring directly to my world-weariness, told me from her great height that she wished I had not told her daughters that there was no Santa Claus.
From that day forward I kept my wisdom to myself and never ever again even thought about telling someone that there was no Santa Claus. Then, around the time I was in the 35th grade, a couple of things happened. By then I was a father; Jessie was 10 and Tyler was eight. We went to Disneyland on an off-season day when workers were repairing the Fantasyland Castle. They had erected scaffolding. Until that moment, whenever I had looked at the Castle from Main Street, it had soared into the sky like the spires of European cathedrals. But I knew the dimensions of scaffolding, and against that grid of data, the Castle seemed no bigger than an ordinary house.
I looked into the wide eyes of Jessie and Tyler and realized they didn't know the dimensions of scaffolding; they hadn't had time in their young lives to acquire such data. If they had, I was instantly convinced, Disney would put up that scaffolding only at night and take it down before opening the next day, so the kids would still believe in the Castle. For me, data had become the decay of imagination. And my imagination woke up when I screamed at it that day, still in good working order. I have kept it that way ever since. It may have been that very day that I decided the best possible life would be to have the imagination of a six-year-old, and the experience of a 65-year-old.
From that experience rose a teaching point. In discussing imagination, I will ask my students: "Can animals talk?" They remain noncommittal. I ask: "Who is the most famous talking animal in the world today?" One or two will say, "Mr. Ed." I have no idea where these 2008 college students learned of Mr. Ed, or why he should sport such qualifications, but there it is. Then I prompt them: "This talking animal oversees an international entertainment empire that has made billions of dollars. We gladly pay sixty-five dollars to go to his park and talk to him. We will buy his ears and take them home and WEAR THEM." And then someone says, "Mickey Mouse!" Correcto.
Actually my favorite talking animal is Hobbes, from "Calvin and Hobbes," and I have a developing affection for the rat who starts his own restaurant in "Ratatouille." But you get the point. A guy will pay $45 (including popcorn and a small coke) to take his girl to a movie starring Shrek.
Then, some time close to the Disney experience, at Christmastime, I was in a mall, shopping, when shoppers in malls were still shoulder-to-shoulder. I never go to malls. Going to malls and hip replacement surgery are only a couple of spaces apart in my list of preferences. I crawled under a bench and said to myself: "What am I doing here?" I knew that somebody like me was there for only one reason: to put presents under Christmas trees. That made me feel better. A jolly old spirit was with me. I wasn't entirely crazy.
Then I thought: if Mickey Mouse can talk, can't Santa Claus give? Absolutely. He just needs a lot of helpers. Elves, if you will. Do I believe in elves? Sure I do. I am one.
Later in the day, Martha Hamilton, a very tall woman, walked across the street and without referring directly to my world-weariness, told me from her great height that she wished I had not told her daughters that there was no Santa Claus.
From that day forward I kept my wisdom to myself and never ever again even thought about telling someone that there was no Santa Claus. Then, around the time I was in the 35th grade, a couple of things happened. By then I was a father; Jessie was 10 and Tyler was eight. We went to Disneyland on an off-season day when workers were repairing the Fantasyland Castle. They had erected scaffolding. Until that moment, whenever I had looked at the Castle from Main Street, it had soared into the sky like the spires of European cathedrals. But I knew the dimensions of scaffolding, and against that grid of data, the Castle seemed no bigger than an ordinary house.
I looked into the wide eyes of Jessie and Tyler and realized they didn't know the dimensions of scaffolding; they hadn't had time in their young lives to acquire such data. If they had, I was instantly convinced, Disney would put up that scaffolding only at night and take it down before opening the next day, so the kids would still believe in the Castle. For me, data had become the decay of imagination. And my imagination woke up when I screamed at it that day, still in good working order. I have kept it that way ever since. It may have been that very day that I decided the best possible life would be to have the imagination of a six-year-old, and the experience of a 65-year-old.
From that experience rose a teaching point. In discussing imagination, I will ask my students: "Can animals talk?" They remain noncommittal. I ask: "Who is the most famous talking animal in the world today?" One or two will say, "Mr. Ed." I have no idea where these 2008 college students learned of Mr. Ed, or why he should sport such qualifications, but there it is. Then I prompt them: "This talking animal oversees an international entertainment empire that has made billions of dollars. We gladly pay sixty-five dollars to go to his park and talk to him. We will buy his ears and take them home and WEAR THEM." And then someone says, "Mickey Mouse!" Correcto.
Actually my favorite talking animal is Hobbes, from "Calvin and Hobbes," and I have a developing affection for the rat who starts his own restaurant in "Ratatouille." But you get the point. A guy will pay $45 (including popcorn and a small coke) to take his girl to a movie starring Shrek.
Then, some time close to the Disney experience, at Christmastime, I was in a mall, shopping, when shoppers in malls were still shoulder-to-shoulder. I never go to malls. Going to malls and hip replacement surgery are only a couple of spaces apart in my list of preferences. I crawled under a bench and said to myself: "What am I doing here?" I knew that somebody like me was there for only one reason: to put presents under Christmas trees. That made me feel better. A jolly old spirit was with me. I wasn't entirely crazy.
Then I thought: if Mickey Mouse can talk, can't Santa Claus give? Absolutely. He just needs a lot of helpers. Elves, if you will. Do I believe in elves? Sure I do. I am one.
Some art is hard to plan for
In the 1990s, when the kitchen nook was being built, I should have caught the carpenters at work installing a light switch in the wrong place. I should have said, "Listen, on Christmas Eve, 2008, the sun is going to rise at just the right moment, and at a certain particular angle, that will cast a silhouette of Karen working on a crossword puzzle on the wall opposite the nook table. If you put the switch there, it will cut off part of her head."
But I didn't.
But I didn't.
December 16, 2008
One-car family
Karen was driving me to school this morning when she said, “I can’t pick you up this afternoon at 4; Oprah comes on at 4.”
She had a point. If I had to choose between watching Oprah and going to pick somebody up from work, I know which it would be, every time, even if I did love the person at work and slept with her every night. And I don’t even like watching Oprah near as much as she does.
“You make a good point,” I said, “but I am afraid I must insist.”
Karen was driving me to school because going into 10 months now, we have had only one car. The lease on my old ride expired last February and we figured no second-car expenses – lease, gas, insurance, maintenance – would add up to at least a grand a month, which was pretty good, and that was BEFORE the economy collapsed and we started considering keeping our cash in pillowcases. If in these difficult times you are looking for a bang-for-the-buck to cut expenses, getting rid of the second car is a pretty good way to go, even if it is the guy giving up the car and he has to deal with the emasculated crater where his manhood used to be.
“But hey,” I said to her, having an idea, “I bet Oprah would give us a car. You email her and say you love to watch her so much, but you have to go pick up your husband at work. And he says he insists. And then Oprah would invite us on the show and say, here is your brand-new Mercedes ML350. And free gas for a year.”
Actually I think I would hold out for a Toyota RAV4, with leather and bells and whistles but still a small engine that burns regular. I had an ML350 and it was a great ride with a German turning radius, but I burned out on $50 tabs for a tank of premium and in fact one day LONG before gas went over $4 vowed that when I got rid of this vehicle, I was going to get a Prius.
But then I went down to the Toyota lot and sat in a Prius. Cute car. Then the helpful salesperson reached over and pushed a button. Gauges and instruments and dash lights popped to life. “What did you do?” I said to the salesperson. “Turned it on,” she said. “It’s running.” “The engine isn’t running,” I suggested. “Yes it is,” she said. “Right now, it’s electric. Step on the accelerator and you’ll go.”
That was it for me and the Prius. I am too steeped in GTO geezerhood, and I think it probably has something to do with manhood as well, to feel comfortable in a car whose engine may or may not be running when you are seeing if she will get rubber in third gear. So I shifted my vision to a RAV4. I would consider a Pontiac. I have seen Oprah give away Pontiacs.
But it grows on you, this business of being up a grand a month and buying stuff other than gas and insurance. Our schedules have been more or less compatible, with a little coordination, and it was just a quirk in my schedule today that made me available to go home at 4. I imagine we will keep the arrangement this way for awhile, possibly even if Oprah insists.
She had a point. If I had to choose between watching Oprah and going to pick somebody up from work, I know which it would be, every time, even if I did love the person at work and slept with her every night. And I don’t even like watching Oprah near as much as she does.
“You make a good point,” I said, “but I am afraid I must insist.”
Karen was driving me to school because going into 10 months now, we have had only one car. The lease on my old ride expired last February and we figured no second-car expenses – lease, gas, insurance, maintenance – would add up to at least a grand a month, which was pretty good, and that was BEFORE the economy collapsed and we started considering keeping our cash in pillowcases. If in these difficult times you are looking for a bang-for-the-buck to cut expenses, getting rid of the second car is a pretty good way to go, even if it is the guy giving up the car and he has to deal with the emasculated crater where his manhood used to be.
“But hey,” I said to her, having an idea, “I bet Oprah would give us a car. You email her and say you love to watch her so much, but you have to go pick up your husband at work. And he says he insists. And then Oprah would invite us on the show and say, here is your brand-new Mercedes ML350. And free gas for a year.”
Actually I think I would hold out for a Toyota RAV4, with leather and bells and whistles but still a small engine that burns regular. I had an ML350 and it was a great ride with a German turning radius, but I burned out on $50 tabs for a tank of premium and in fact one day LONG before gas went over $4 vowed that when I got rid of this vehicle, I was going to get a Prius.
But then I went down to the Toyota lot and sat in a Prius. Cute car. Then the helpful salesperson reached over and pushed a button. Gauges and instruments and dash lights popped to life. “What did you do?” I said to the salesperson. “Turned it on,” she said. “It’s running.” “The engine isn’t running,” I suggested. “Yes it is,” she said. “Right now, it’s electric. Step on the accelerator and you’ll go.”
That was it for me and the Prius. I am too steeped in GTO geezerhood, and I think it probably has something to do with manhood as well, to feel comfortable in a car whose engine may or may not be running when you are seeing if she will get rubber in third gear. So I shifted my vision to a RAV4. I would consider a Pontiac. I have seen Oprah give away Pontiacs.
But it grows on you, this business of being up a grand a month and buying stuff other than gas and insurance. Our schedules have been more or less compatible, with a little coordination, and it was just a quirk in my schedule today that made me available to go home at 4. I imagine we will keep the arrangement this way for awhile, possibly even if Oprah insists.
December 04, 2008
A rose in my teeth, pizza in his
My dog bit my wife. On our wedding anniversary. Seriously.
Of course he’s my dog when he bites my wife or barfs on the living room rug. All other times, he’s OUR dog.
And we are HIS people, but only on dog world terms, whose inhabitants view life thusly: 1. food; 2. people; 3. everything else. And that is how he got in trouble.
Wednesday morning, Dec. 3, the third anniversary of the main people (the people who feed him) in Gulliver's life, he and I went down to the street to get the paper. I came back up with the paper, and Gully generally is right behind. Not on this morning. I stood by the front door and called him, then walked back down toward the street and called him again.
He darted past me with something in his jaws. I followed him back to the door. He was standing at the door but as I approached he moved away several feet and turned to face me. In his jaws was clamped a thick wedge of not very tasty looking pizza, probably of the frozen, bake it at home variety. Didn't matter to him. He had a prize.
I called him to come to me. Damned if he didn't, a step at a time, until I could reach out and get my fingers on the crusty rim of the pizza. He tore away and retreated. "Okay, fine, I don’t care if you do eat it," I said. That was true. In the back of my mind I viewed myself later in the day scooping up pizza barf off the floor, but that was okay, compared to actually wrestling him for it.
He was also telling me something in dog language. He hadn't eaten the pizza yet. Why didn't he eat it where he found it on the street? Because he wasn't hungry. He had just had breakfast, before we went out for the paper. He intended to bury the pizza for later. In fact he intended to bury it in the house. When I opened the door, he ran right in. I advised Karen, my lovely bride of three years that very morning, what was happening, then walked back down to the street to find where the pizza came from.
Karen sized up the situation for about one second and decided that Gully was not going to eat the pizza in her house, or bury it, or retain possession, or do anything else with it but give it to her. This of course was the last thing on his mind. Just a couple of days previously, we had watched a show on television featuring a brave man called the "Dog Whisperer," who was able to correct bad dog behavior by a routine of "exercise, discipline and affection." During the show he demonstrated several times. Unfortunately, they didn't include a male Sheltie with pizza clamped in his jaws.
I found no pizza evidence on the street, and when I returned, Karen described what happened. Gully is gentle but skittish when he doesn't approve of what people are doing to him, such as grooming or brushing or scratching him around the tail. He regularly snaps at me when I am trying to brush foxtails out of his coat. So when Karen, dog whisperer style, got him on his side and commenced to relieve him of his pizza, he took umbrage and actually snarled, she reported, as he struck at her hand.
It was over when I got there. Karen showed me a bloody scratch on the back of her wrist and another tooth mark farther up. The pizza was in the sink. Gully was brooding in the hallway. He now knew, as Karen had said to me, dog whisperer style, that he was in her pack, and not the other way around. He laid low for several hours, then was his old self, but I don't think he'll be bringing prizes to the front door any time soon, and never, I hope, on anniversary mornings.
Of course he’s my dog when he bites my wife or barfs on the living room rug. All other times, he’s OUR dog.
And we are HIS people, but only on dog world terms, whose inhabitants view life thusly: 1. food; 2. people; 3. everything else. And that is how he got in trouble.
Wednesday morning, Dec. 3, the third anniversary of the main people (the people who feed him) in Gulliver's life, he and I went down to the street to get the paper. I came back up with the paper, and Gully generally is right behind. Not on this morning. I stood by the front door and called him, then walked back down toward the street and called him again.
He darted past me with something in his jaws. I followed him back to the door. He was standing at the door but as I approached he moved away several feet and turned to face me. In his jaws was clamped a thick wedge of not very tasty looking pizza, probably of the frozen, bake it at home variety. Didn't matter to him. He had a prize.
I called him to come to me. Damned if he didn't, a step at a time, until I could reach out and get my fingers on the crusty rim of the pizza. He tore away and retreated. "Okay, fine, I don’t care if you do eat it," I said. That was true. In the back of my mind I viewed myself later in the day scooping up pizza barf off the floor, but that was okay, compared to actually wrestling him for it.
He was also telling me something in dog language. He hadn't eaten the pizza yet. Why didn't he eat it where he found it on the street? Because he wasn't hungry. He had just had breakfast, before we went out for the paper. He intended to bury the pizza for later. In fact he intended to bury it in the house. When I opened the door, he ran right in. I advised Karen, my lovely bride of three years that very morning, what was happening, then walked back down to the street to find where the pizza came from.
Karen sized up the situation for about one second and decided that Gully was not going to eat the pizza in her house, or bury it, or retain possession, or do anything else with it but give it to her. This of course was the last thing on his mind. Just a couple of days previously, we had watched a show on television featuring a brave man called the "Dog Whisperer," who was able to correct bad dog behavior by a routine of "exercise, discipline and affection." During the show he demonstrated several times. Unfortunately, they didn't include a male Sheltie with pizza clamped in his jaws.
I found no pizza evidence on the street, and when I returned, Karen described what happened. Gully is gentle but skittish when he doesn't approve of what people are doing to him, such as grooming or brushing or scratching him around the tail. He regularly snaps at me when I am trying to brush foxtails out of his coat. So when Karen, dog whisperer style, got him on his side and commenced to relieve him of his pizza, he took umbrage and actually snarled, she reported, as he struck at her hand.
It was over when I got there. Karen showed me a bloody scratch on the back of her wrist and another tooth mark farther up. The pizza was in the sink. Gully was brooding in the hallway. He now knew, as Karen had said to me, dog whisperer style, that he was in her pack, and not the other way around. He laid low for several hours, then was his old self, but I don't think he'll be bringing prizes to the front door any time soon, and never, I hope, on anniversary mornings.
December 01, 2008
An Idyllwildian Thanksgiving
We had a very quiet and restful Thanksgiving and only gained about 5 lbs. each. Hope you did the same.
We always spend Thanksgiving in a knotty-pine cabin in Idyllwild, a community in the Riverside County Mountains about two hours from here. Southern California is an amazing place to live. Any kind of atmospheric, cultural, economic and entertainment bioclimate is available within two hours of our front door.
With encouragement from the imps at the Weather Bureau, I had hoped for some weather, which in Idyllwild would have meant snow. But no, after some sprinkles on Thanksgiving Day it cleared up, nice blue skies, and temperatures that Idyllwildians would call suntanning weather.
We were in serious hibernation mode. Karen went up on Sunday after the closing ceremonies of the Breast Cancer 3Day and set foot out the cabin door one time, she said. I drove up on Thanksgiving morning, and it was a drive for a lifetime. Overnight rain had broken into patchy showers, enough to keep the interstate wet so it reflected the sky, with clouds letting enough light through to create an encompassing Impressionist smear of gray and rose and ivory. The highway was almost deserted at that hour, and the wet lanes became part of the sky smear, losing all suggestion of concrete, lane markers disappeared, flooding me with the impression of riding on the sky, words rolling over in my mind, looking for the ones that would best describe this suspension between earth and heaven.
I decided that if there was something I could be thankful for on Thanksgiving morning, it was being born into a species equipped with a brain that could seriously process its surroundings, admit they were too beautiful to describe, but possible to enjoy to the point of rapture even as it became convinced it was flying in total contradiction to the vibration of the tires on the interstate.
I also had hot coffee in a traveling mug and Slim Willet on the CD, so if you know who Slim Willet is, you realize my rapture was complete. I was in a moment unique to my life thus far, and I was thankful. And then I got to knock on a cabin door, and there was Karen!
Karen, with nothing more than a pot and a spoon, produced a turkey breast of considerable juiciness and she is hereby an honorary member of the Kettner Blvd. College of Turkey Surgeons and Airport Relocation Committee. We had stuffing, gravy, green bean casserole with real mushrooms, and Karen's special gorgonzola salad with pine nuts. Then pumpkin pie with walnuts and whipped cream. By then it was 4:30 in the afternoon and I was ready for bed. We watched a movie until 7, and then I did in fact crawl into bed and slept until 7 in the morning.
The Idyllwild community, augmented by a throng of flatlanders, has its Christmas tree lighting ceremony in the town circle every Thanksgiving holiday. On Saturday we stood bundled against shirtsleeve temperatures and precisely at 5 p.m., with the sun down and temperature dropping, the lights went on in a hundred-foot pine topped by a star of white lights. Above it, the sky was in evening blue, with Venus and a new moon in the background, and way up, the silver contrail of an airliner headed southeast.
We drove home early Sunday morning to beat the return rush, unlocked the front door, and there was Gully! Life is good.
We always spend Thanksgiving in a knotty-pine cabin in Idyllwild, a community in the Riverside County Mountains about two hours from here. Southern California is an amazing place to live. Any kind of atmospheric, cultural, economic and entertainment bioclimate is available within two hours of our front door.
With encouragement from the imps at the Weather Bureau, I had hoped for some weather, which in Idyllwild would have meant snow. But no, after some sprinkles on Thanksgiving Day it cleared up, nice blue skies, and temperatures that Idyllwildians would call suntanning weather.
We were in serious hibernation mode. Karen went up on Sunday after the closing ceremonies of the Breast Cancer 3Day and set foot out the cabin door one time, she said. I drove up on Thanksgiving morning, and it was a drive for a lifetime. Overnight rain had broken into patchy showers, enough to keep the interstate wet so it reflected the sky, with clouds letting enough light through to create an encompassing Impressionist smear of gray and rose and ivory. The highway was almost deserted at that hour, and the wet lanes became part of the sky smear, losing all suggestion of concrete, lane markers disappeared, flooding me with the impression of riding on the sky, words rolling over in my mind, looking for the ones that would best describe this suspension between earth and heaven.
I decided that if there was something I could be thankful for on Thanksgiving morning, it was being born into a species equipped with a brain that could seriously process its surroundings, admit they were too beautiful to describe, but possible to enjoy to the point of rapture even as it became convinced it was flying in total contradiction to the vibration of the tires on the interstate.
I also had hot coffee in a traveling mug and Slim Willet on the CD, so if you know who Slim Willet is, you realize my rapture was complete. I was in a moment unique to my life thus far, and I was thankful. And then I got to knock on a cabin door, and there was Karen!
Karen, with nothing more than a pot and a spoon, produced a turkey breast of considerable juiciness and she is hereby an honorary member of the Kettner Blvd. College of Turkey Surgeons and Airport Relocation Committee. We had stuffing, gravy, green bean casserole with real mushrooms, and Karen's special gorgonzola salad with pine nuts. Then pumpkin pie with walnuts and whipped cream. By then it was 4:30 in the afternoon and I was ready for bed. We watched a movie until 7, and then I did in fact crawl into bed and slept until 7 in the morning.
The Idyllwild community, augmented by a throng of flatlanders, has its Christmas tree lighting ceremony in the town circle every Thanksgiving holiday. On Saturday we stood bundled against shirtsleeve temperatures and precisely at 5 p.m., with the sun down and temperature dropping, the lights went on in a hundred-foot pine topped by a star of white lights. Above it, the sky was in evening blue, with Venus and a new moon in the background, and way up, the silver contrail of an airliner headed southeast.
We drove home early Sunday morning to beat the return rush, unlocked the front door, and there was Gully! Life is good.
November 20, 2008
I have a 6:30 a.m. assignment for you
Karen is naturally athletic, but she did not become an athlete until about a month ago.
It started in August when one day her brain overheated and took a wrong turn. She decided she was going to sign up for our 3Day Breast Cancer Walk in San Diego. The 3Day starts on a Friday, and the walkers go 20 miles a day until they reach the finish line on Sunday afternoon.
I have had big ideas like that, but they always go away after I lie down for awhile and have a few sips of cool water. Karen did take a cool soak at my suggestion, but when she toweled off, she still had that look in her eyes.
She has connections to breast cancer and the 3Day. Nataly Pluta, her great friend, is a breast cancer survivor and has done the 3Day for the last three years. Each year, Karen and I have driven down to the overnight camp to say "Yay!" to her and give her a bottle of wine to sneak back to the tent. Karen is married to me, and I am a man whose late wife, Meredith, died of breast cancer in July, 2000. Karen has other family, friends and associates who have experienced breast cancer. She made a list of names, 32 when she was finished, and showed it to me.
"These are the people I will be walking for," she said. To the original names, she had added three more: Caitlin, her granddaughter; Addie, Meredith's granddaughter; and Evie June, my granddaughter. The idea being that what Karen did now might mean these three little girls might go through their whole, deserved lives in a world free of breast cancer.
She started off at three miles. Then we drove to Miramar Lake, where lots of people walk, bicycle and skate the five miles around the lake. Off she went in one direction and 90-odd minutes later, back she came from the other direction. I started getting impressed. I walked, too, all of 30 minutes, and then I waited in the car, drank coffee and read the paper. In fairness, I am just getting back on the trail after hip replacement surgery, but I could have all my original parts and be 30 years younger, and would not voluntarily walk 60 miles in three days, or five miles in 90 minutes.
She bought special shoes and socks; socks with toes in them. Weekends came when she left the house before daylight to meet her team and walk 12 or 14 miles somewhere. She would get back at noon with the classic rode-hard look. One day during the week she dropped me at school at 8 a.m. At 1 p.m. my phone rang. "Just got finished," she said. "Dang," I said. I had taught two classes and eaten lunch. All that time, she had been walking a trail at Lake Murray.
Her body was changing. It was more than weight loss. It showed in her skin, her eyes, her smile, her mood. "Just going out for a short one," she would say at 5:30 a.m. Five miles later, she was back in time to take me to work. She shifted from cotton to a kind of garment that wicks away moisture. She had a waist pack, a special hat, a scarf, an iPod, water, other paraphernalia. She was not just going out the door now, she was carrying gear. She looked like a baseball player getting on the bus. I said to her: "You look like an athlete." And of course she was. I told her she was "dedicated," but an hour later decided I had used the wrong word. "What you are, is distinguished," I said.
About a month ago, she came home from a 15-miler looking like she hadn't done much more than a little gardening. "I feel different," she said. "I feel like I've got 15 miles under my belt." She was in a place most of us don't reach.
Last week, she and her team did back-to-back training, 15 miles on Saturday and 14 on Sunday. Her last week has called for only one three-miler on Tuesday, then rest. But she can't rest. She has dreamed about the 3Day every night. She started getting her gear ready on Monday. Today we double-checked it all. "My mind is doing a million things," she said. She is jumpy. She paces. She's in there right now taking a soak. Nothing special for dinner, she says. I hope she can sleep tonight. Before bed, we are going to watch "Chariots of Fire."
I will drop her off at 5:45 tomorrow morning. Starting-line time is 6:30. At 6:30 California time, if you have read this, I want you to go outside and yell, "Go, Karen!"
It started in August when one day her brain overheated and took a wrong turn. She decided she was going to sign up for our 3Day Breast Cancer Walk in San Diego. The 3Day starts on a Friday, and the walkers go 20 miles a day until they reach the finish line on Sunday afternoon.
I have had big ideas like that, but they always go away after I lie down for awhile and have a few sips of cool water. Karen did take a cool soak at my suggestion, but when she toweled off, she still had that look in her eyes.
She has connections to breast cancer and the 3Day. Nataly Pluta, her great friend, is a breast cancer survivor and has done the 3Day for the last three years. Each year, Karen and I have driven down to the overnight camp to say "Yay!" to her and give her a bottle of wine to sneak back to the tent. Karen is married to me, and I am a man whose late wife, Meredith, died of breast cancer in July, 2000. Karen has other family, friends and associates who have experienced breast cancer. She made a list of names, 32 when she was finished, and showed it to me.
"These are the people I will be walking for," she said. To the original names, she had added three more: Caitlin, her granddaughter; Addie, Meredith's granddaughter; and Evie June, my granddaughter. The idea being that what Karen did now might mean these three little girls might go through their whole, deserved lives in a world free of breast cancer.
She started off at three miles. Then we drove to Miramar Lake, where lots of people walk, bicycle and skate the five miles around the lake. Off she went in one direction and 90-odd minutes later, back she came from the other direction. I started getting impressed. I walked, too, all of 30 minutes, and then I waited in the car, drank coffee and read the paper. In fairness, I am just getting back on the trail after hip replacement surgery, but I could have all my original parts and be 30 years younger, and would not voluntarily walk 60 miles in three days, or five miles in 90 minutes.
She bought special shoes and socks; socks with toes in them. Weekends came when she left the house before daylight to meet her team and walk 12 or 14 miles somewhere. She would get back at noon with the classic rode-hard look. One day during the week she dropped me at school at 8 a.m. At 1 p.m. my phone rang. "Just got finished," she said. "Dang," I said. I had taught two classes and eaten lunch. All that time, she had been walking a trail at Lake Murray.
Her body was changing. It was more than weight loss. It showed in her skin, her eyes, her smile, her mood. "Just going out for a short one," she would say at 5:30 a.m. Five miles later, she was back in time to take me to work. She shifted from cotton to a kind of garment that wicks away moisture. She had a waist pack, a special hat, a scarf, an iPod, water, other paraphernalia. She was not just going out the door now, she was carrying gear. She looked like a baseball player getting on the bus. I said to her: "You look like an athlete." And of course she was. I told her she was "dedicated," but an hour later decided I had used the wrong word. "What you are, is distinguished," I said.
About a month ago, she came home from a 15-miler looking like she hadn't done much more than a little gardening. "I feel different," she said. "I feel like I've got 15 miles under my belt." She was in a place most of us don't reach.
Last week, she and her team did back-to-back training, 15 miles on Saturday and 14 on Sunday. Her last week has called for only one three-miler on Tuesday, then rest. But she can't rest. She has dreamed about the 3Day every night. She started getting her gear ready on Monday. Today we double-checked it all. "My mind is doing a million things," she said. She is jumpy. She paces. She's in there right now taking a soak. Nothing special for dinner, she says. I hope she can sleep tonight. Before bed, we are going to watch "Chariots of Fire."
I will drop her off at 5:45 tomorrow morning. Starting-line time is 6:30. At 6:30 California time, if you have read this, I want you to go outside and yell, "Go, Karen!"
October 26, 2008
Let computers wake up at human speed
News arrives in today's Times that the computer industry is working to introduce computers that boot up faster. This work is in response to human impatience with the time it takes a computer to boot up. Those three minutes, the impatient humans say, feel like "an eternity."
Let me go on record as believing this is not a good idea. For more than 65 years I have been operating a computer that makes the PCs and Macs look like a box of cotton wads. Operating at what researchers say is only 10 percent of its capacity, this computer provides me five, and sometimes six, senses, a huge memory cache, and an ability to turn blankness into thought into action at astounding speeds.
Yet there is one thing my computer is not very good at, and that is starting up. When I wake up in the morning, it may be not three minutes, but four or five, before I am alert enough to swing my feet over the edge of the bed and search for the floor. Then I hear my computer issuing sort of DOS commands: "Stand." "Walk." "Bathroom." "Kitchen." "Coffee." "Sit." It may be a full 10 or 15 minutes before the computer is ready to check email.
I know my computer can boot up a lot faster, but it doesn't like it. When I was in Army officer training, at 5 a.m. lights went on and voices boomed commands and threats of what would happen if we weren't outside and in ranks in 60 seconds. I think the point was to teach us that we could boot up that fast if we had to. I also knew, standing in ranks, that it would be another couple of minutes before I could point a rifle and hit anything.
Living in Southern California, I have been awakened by earthquakes, and the process was the same. Quick response, slow reaction. Computers have no choice but to jump at the first surge of electricity, but they stay groggy while circuits hook up. Functions in those moments are prioritized. So it was in the first moments after the 1994 Northridge quake: "Stand!" "Run!" "Warn children!" Not until I banged on the door of my teenaged daughter and step-daughter and, when they opened the door, followed their eyes, did I become aware that I was totally naked. I take solace, knowing they were also booting up, that they probably didn't register me very well.
I have never known, certainly never lived with, a human who could boot up in seconds, and I expect the first one I see will be in either a science fiction or an aggravation movie. It seems unreasonable to me to expect it of PCs and Macs, which, compared to our onboard models, are third-rate systems second to none.
I do feel the annoyance of being personally up to speed, then starting up my PC and twiddling my thumbs while it wakes up. It's the same annoyance we feel trying to get children out of bed.
But we have to watch what we wish for. Given the choice, considering the past decade and peering into the next, I think we're better off if we engineer computers to wake up like sleepy people, instead of engineering them to be instantly up and dressed and ready to work, thus allowing the digital age to whittle our patience even closer to the bone. We still will live in the analog world, and patience is the analog world's cartilage.
Let me go on record as believing this is not a good idea. For more than 65 years I have been operating a computer that makes the PCs and Macs look like a box of cotton wads. Operating at what researchers say is only 10 percent of its capacity, this computer provides me five, and sometimes six, senses, a huge memory cache, and an ability to turn blankness into thought into action at astounding speeds.
Yet there is one thing my computer is not very good at, and that is starting up. When I wake up in the morning, it may be not three minutes, but four or five, before I am alert enough to swing my feet over the edge of the bed and search for the floor. Then I hear my computer issuing sort of DOS commands: "Stand." "Walk." "Bathroom." "Kitchen." "Coffee." "Sit." It may be a full 10 or 15 minutes before the computer is ready to check email.
I know my computer can boot up a lot faster, but it doesn't like it. When I was in Army officer training, at 5 a.m. lights went on and voices boomed commands and threats of what would happen if we weren't outside and in ranks in 60 seconds. I think the point was to teach us that we could boot up that fast if we had to. I also knew, standing in ranks, that it would be another couple of minutes before I could point a rifle and hit anything.
Living in Southern California, I have been awakened by earthquakes, and the process was the same. Quick response, slow reaction. Computers have no choice but to jump at the first surge of electricity, but they stay groggy while circuits hook up. Functions in those moments are prioritized. So it was in the first moments after the 1994 Northridge quake: "Stand!" "Run!" "Warn children!" Not until I banged on the door of my teenaged daughter and step-daughter and, when they opened the door, followed their eyes, did I become aware that I was totally naked. I take solace, knowing they were also booting up, that they probably didn't register me very well.
I have never known, certainly never lived with, a human who could boot up in seconds, and I expect the first one I see will be in either a science fiction or an aggravation movie. It seems unreasonable to me to expect it of PCs and Macs, which, compared to our onboard models, are third-rate systems second to none.
I do feel the annoyance of being personally up to speed, then starting up my PC and twiddling my thumbs while it wakes up. It's the same annoyance we feel trying to get children out of bed.
But we have to watch what we wish for. Given the choice, considering the past decade and peering into the next, I think we're better off if we engineer computers to wake up like sleepy people, instead of engineering them to be instantly up and dressed and ready to work, thus allowing the digital age to whittle our patience even closer to the bone. We still will live in the analog world, and patience is the analog world's cartilage.
October 20, 2008
The bugs of October
I am in the 60th grade, and until yesterday, I never knew that ants could freeze to death.
They can. I went to the refrigerator for some ice and, reaching for the freezer door handle, I saw ants crawling around the sides of the door. I pulled the door open, and ants – little black ones – were crawling around INSIDE.
With ants, I always look first to see if I can tell where they are coming from. I saw a few ducking in and out of a seam, between the actual hard plastic structure of the freezer box and the white material that covers the refrigerator to make it look attractive. As you may be guessing, we are not talking about a top-of-the-line refrigerator.
The ants were arrayed across the entire width of the freezer box, but had not ventured in very far, except a dozen or so who had set off across the ice trays. These ants were dead. Against the white of the trays and the ice, they looked like crumpled, motionless explorers as seen from an airplane above the tundra.
There were two trays. I carried them to the sink and inverted them. The ant explorers slid right off. That was interesting. I thought they might have frozen to the ice. I ran water over the ice, a quick rinsing away of teeny ant tracks, if any.
I went to the hallway bathroom for the ant spray. I had left it there last week after a small invasion in and around the bathtub. October is a time of vigilance in Southern California. The days have been warm – even hot – and windy, with low humidity, so every time we step outside, we scan the horizon for smoke. In October, 2003, and again last October, we endured devastating wildfires. Inside, we constantly scan for ants. Last week, also, we found a scorpion in the house, a small one, in a large decorative bowl on a side table. First scorpion I have seen in 16 years in this house. But you have to be watchful. I had left the spray in the bathroom in the event the invaders returned.
This freezer entry seam was in an awkward position for spraying. I had an idea: I would spray a paper towel, then wipe the seam, and the rest of the ant populace across the width of the freezer. I enjoyed the idea; I thought it made up somewhat for a tiny mistake I had made on Saturday, leaving the car lights on all afternoon. We discovered it in the evening when we were about to go out and . . . well, that's another story.
Karen had been outside watering, and when she came in I called her over to "see something unusual." She took one look, immediately picked up the sprayer and aimed it at the entry seam. I protested, showing her my paper towel idea, but Karen is no-nonsense about bugs. She fired, carefully, to be sure, but there were drips to wipe away. Then we found more ants on the door itself, around the edges and a few on the storage shelves. Karen removed all this material and blasted those ants a good one. We carefully wiped down the door and let it air awhile. I put the spray in the corner by the sink, in case we needed it again in a hurry.
We have spiders, too, but no tarantulas yet, thank God. A tarantula once trapped me in a bathroom for half an hour until I was rescued. No solpugids, either. I lived in an adobe house for 20 years and you could count on several solpugids every summer and fall. A solpugid is like a giant cockroach, only segmented, like an ant, and the very devil to kill. You never want to see one peeking over your windowsill.
They can. I went to the refrigerator for some ice and, reaching for the freezer door handle, I saw ants crawling around the sides of the door. I pulled the door open, and ants – little black ones – were crawling around INSIDE.
With ants, I always look first to see if I can tell where they are coming from. I saw a few ducking in and out of a seam, between the actual hard plastic structure of the freezer box and the white material that covers the refrigerator to make it look attractive. As you may be guessing, we are not talking about a top-of-the-line refrigerator.
The ants were arrayed across the entire width of the freezer box, but had not ventured in very far, except a dozen or so who had set off across the ice trays. These ants were dead. Against the white of the trays and the ice, they looked like crumpled, motionless explorers as seen from an airplane above the tundra.
There were two trays. I carried them to the sink and inverted them. The ant explorers slid right off. That was interesting. I thought they might have frozen to the ice. I ran water over the ice, a quick rinsing away of teeny ant tracks, if any.
I went to the hallway bathroom for the ant spray. I had left it there last week after a small invasion in and around the bathtub. October is a time of vigilance in Southern California. The days have been warm – even hot – and windy, with low humidity, so every time we step outside, we scan the horizon for smoke. In October, 2003, and again last October, we endured devastating wildfires. Inside, we constantly scan for ants. Last week, also, we found a scorpion in the house, a small one, in a large decorative bowl on a side table. First scorpion I have seen in 16 years in this house. But you have to be watchful. I had left the spray in the bathroom in the event the invaders returned.
This freezer entry seam was in an awkward position for spraying. I had an idea: I would spray a paper towel, then wipe the seam, and the rest of the ant populace across the width of the freezer. I enjoyed the idea; I thought it made up somewhat for a tiny mistake I had made on Saturday, leaving the car lights on all afternoon. We discovered it in the evening when we were about to go out and . . . well, that's another story.
Karen had been outside watering, and when she came in I called her over to "see something unusual." She took one look, immediately picked up the sprayer and aimed it at the entry seam. I protested, showing her my paper towel idea, but Karen is no-nonsense about bugs. She fired, carefully, to be sure, but there were drips to wipe away. Then we found more ants on the door itself, around the edges and a few on the storage shelves. Karen removed all this material and blasted those ants a good one. We carefully wiped down the door and let it air awhile. I put the spray in the corner by the sink, in case we needed it again in a hurry.
We have spiders, too, but no tarantulas yet, thank God. A tarantula once trapped me in a bathroom for half an hour until I was rescued. No solpugids, either. I lived in an adobe house for 20 years and you could count on several solpugids every summer and fall. A solpugid is like a giant cockroach, only segmented, like an ant, and the very devil to kill. You never want to see one peeking over your windowsill.
September 24, 2008
National guitar champion
When Tyler Grant was youth soccer age (an age I thought would never end), I used to harp on him about moving his feet. He had very slow feet.
It would be years before I realized I was watching the wrong parts. If I wanted fast, I should have been watching his hands. Those were the hands that last Saturday picked up a guitar at the National Flatpicking Guitar Championships, and when they set the guitar down again, Tyler had won first prize. There were 32 contestants. He was awarded $2,000 and a guitar of his choice. He chose a Collings, hand-made by a company in Austin.
I figured he chose the Collings because he had a space in the Collings Room for it. He must have rooms for all the guitars he has won – the Martin Room, the Gibson Room, etc. Me? I am making room in the Pride and Envy corners of my head to allow for the kind of swelling created by the news that your kid is the National Flatpicking Guitar Champion of the United States of America.
Many fathers can take credit for guiding or coaching or inspiring their kids to this sort of success, and I feel highly motivated to try. We do have a guitar connection, but it is a flimsy one. I have been crashing through three-chord progressions since I was 12 or 13 and wanted to copy the rock and roll that overnight had started pouring out of the radio. I learned a few Elvis songs and a few Johnny Cash songs, establishing a repertoire that has changed hardly at all to this day. I tried to play the guitar licks between verses, but my hands were as fast as Tyler’s feet would someday be, and I gave that up and just stuck to the chords.
So Tyler heard his dad play guitar from the time he was born, and he may have been inspired by the sound, or by staring through the bars of his crib, thinking somebody really needed to teach me how to play that thing, and it might as well be him, someday. I do know that on Tyler’s MySpace page, he lists me fourth among the people who have inspired him, behind Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys, Jerry Garcia, and David Grier.
That is pride enough for me. I think the inspiration that brought Tyler to becoming a guitar champion started the same place that mine did, listening to music he liked. When he heard bluegrass, he knew what he wanted to do. Then he did the work.
It has been a lot of work. Tyler started when he was 16 or 17. Now he is 32. He has degrees from Grossmont College and California University of the Arts. He knows music theory. He plays classical guitar. He practices three or four hours a day. One day years ago he was playing and I asked him what the tune was. “Just notes,” he said. He was practicing what he called a pentatonic scale. Sounded like music to me.
I have watched Tyler’s hands through these years. They weren’t nearly as fast in the beginning. About a year ago, I heard him reach a fluidity that gives the impression that playing the guitar isn’t work at all. The reward for all the work is that playing starts to sound easy. When I hear Tyler playing on a CD, I see his fingers on the strings, and that connection is a gift for a lifetime. There is a very good photo of him at his sister’s Website at oliveme.wordpress.com. You will also find there a very good summation of the winning ways that Tyler brought to the stage with him last Saturday.
It would be years before I realized I was watching the wrong parts. If I wanted fast, I should have been watching his hands. Those were the hands that last Saturday picked up a guitar at the National Flatpicking Guitar Championships, and when they set the guitar down again, Tyler had won first prize. There were 32 contestants. He was awarded $2,000 and a guitar of his choice. He chose a Collings, hand-made by a company in Austin.
I figured he chose the Collings because he had a space in the Collings Room for it. He must have rooms for all the guitars he has won – the Martin Room, the Gibson Room, etc. Me? I am making room in the Pride and Envy corners of my head to allow for the kind of swelling created by the news that your kid is the National Flatpicking Guitar Champion of the United States of America.
Many fathers can take credit for guiding or coaching or inspiring their kids to this sort of success, and I feel highly motivated to try. We do have a guitar connection, but it is a flimsy one. I have been crashing through three-chord progressions since I was 12 or 13 and wanted to copy the rock and roll that overnight had started pouring out of the radio. I learned a few Elvis songs and a few Johnny Cash songs, establishing a repertoire that has changed hardly at all to this day. I tried to play the guitar licks between verses, but my hands were as fast as Tyler’s feet would someday be, and I gave that up and just stuck to the chords.
So Tyler heard his dad play guitar from the time he was born, and he may have been inspired by the sound, or by staring through the bars of his crib, thinking somebody really needed to teach me how to play that thing, and it might as well be him, someday. I do know that on Tyler’s MySpace page, he lists me fourth among the people who have inspired him, behind Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys, Jerry Garcia, and David Grier.
That is pride enough for me. I think the inspiration that brought Tyler to becoming a guitar champion started the same place that mine did, listening to music he liked. When he heard bluegrass, he knew what he wanted to do. Then he did the work.
It has been a lot of work. Tyler started when he was 16 or 17. Now he is 32. He has degrees from Grossmont College and California University of the Arts. He knows music theory. He plays classical guitar. He practices three or four hours a day. One day years ago he was playing and I asked him what the tune was. “Just notes,” he said. He was practicing what he called a pentatonic scale. Sounded like music to me.
I have watched Tyler’s hands through these years. They weren’t nearly as fast in the beginning. About a year ago, I heard him reach a fluidity that gives the impression that playing the guitar isn’t work at all. The reward for all the work is that playing starts to sound easy. When I hear Tyler playing on a CD, I see his fingers on the strings, and that connection is a gift for a lifetime. There is a very good photo of him at his sister’s Website at oliveme.wordpress.com. You will also find there a very good summation of the winning ways that Tyler brought to the stage with him last Saturday.
September 09, 2008
The Willie circle
Jessie posted a terrific photo of Willie Nelson on her blog last week. She was given a ticket to go to his concert up in Humboldt County where she lives. She snapped the picture just as he was going onstage, and in the blog, she wrote that seeing Willie sing changed her life.
It closed a circle for me. I don’t think parents realize they have these things like circles closing with their kids to look forward to. The thing has to happen, the circle has to close, before you see it. Now that it has happened, I must say that it is the coolest thing. I now know, also, that, if I wanted to, I could probably look forward to other circles closing involving Jessie and me, but I don’t think I want to. It would be smug. Yick. For better or worse, as a father and grandfather I am not a doter.
This particular circle started its long journey on July 4, 1980. On that day, seeing Willie sing changed my life. It was, and remains, the longest day of my life. I apologize again to my companions that day, my ex-wife (Jessie’s mom) and a splendid couple, Lynne and Bill Schwind, from San Antonio, who came along because I told them it would be fun. Bill even drove, poor devil.
The occasion was Willie’s Eighth and Last Annual Fourth of July Picnic, celebrated at Bee Cave, Texas, southwest of Austin in the Hill Country. I went down there to write about it for my newspaper. I talked to Willie, and he did sing, but I don’t remember that very well. It’s an interesting thing about memory. The memory is created more by the rememberer than the thing remembered. Willie is the memory’s bookmark, but what I, the rememberer, remember, is heat and stench, or, as they say around Bee Cave, “steench.”
Scientists just last week announced some findings about the brain and memory which could help explain this. They found that memory of an event resides in the same brain cells, or neurons, that activated, or “fired,” most furiously when the event was actually experienced. It is as if the memory neurons are actually re-living the event. It is possible, therefore, that, remembering that event, my talking-to-Willie memory neurons aren’t firing as furiously as my heat and stench memory neurons. It means I am re-living the heat and stench more than I am re-living Willie. I am sad about that, but relieved that, given the furious-firing premise of these memory findings, that I can remember anything at all besides sex.
The heat neurons were fired by the famous Texas Heat Wave of 1980 – they made T-shirts about it – and the fact that it took us, and the other 30,000 patrons in attendance, four hours to go the 10 miles on a two-lane road from the main highway to Bee Cave, and then four hours to get back out. A human can’t love Willie any more than that. The stench neurons were fired – many of them fusing in apoplexy – by a telephone booth on the edge of the concert grounds into which I ducked to phone my story to the paper, to find a temperature of maybe 130 degrees and a steench left by some bad Texas boys and girls who as the beer flowed and the day went on couldn’t hold it any longer. It took many days and showers before I didn’t smell like that phone booth. Thinking about it, I can smell it right now. Hey guys, your findings are right! Damn, I need a shower.
It closed a circle for me. I don’t think parents realize they have these things like circles closing with their kids to look forward to. The thing has to happen, the circle has to close, before you see it. Now that it has happened, I must say that it is the coolest thing. I now know, also, that, if I wanted to, I could probably look forward to other circles closing involving Jessie and me, but I don’t think I want to. It would be smug. Yick. For better or worse, as a father and grandfather I am not a doter.
This particular circle started its long journey on July 4, 1980. On that day, seeing Willie sing changed my life. It was, and remains, the longest day of my life. I apologize again to my companions that day, my ex-wife (Jessie’s mom) and a splendid couple, Lynne and Bill Schwind, from San Antonio, who came along because I told them it would be fun. Bill even drove, poor devil.
The occasion was Willie’s Eighth and Last Annual Fourth of July Picnic, celebrated at Bee Cave, Texas, southwest of Austin in the Hill Country. I went down there to write about it for my newspaper. I talked to Willie, and he did sing, but I don’t remember that very well. It’s an interesting thing about memory. The memory is created more by the rememberer than the thing remembered. Willie is the memory’s bookmark, but what I, the rememberer, remember, is heat and stench, or, as they say around Bee Cave, “steench.”
Scientists just last week announced some findings about the brain and memory which could help explain this. They found that memory of an event resides in the same brain cells, or neurons, that activated, or “fired,” most furiously when the event was actually experienced. It is as if the memory neurons are actually re-living the event. It is possible, therefore, that, remembering that event, my talking-to-Willie memory neurons aren’t firing as furiously as my heat and stench memory neurons. It means I am re-living the heat and stench more than I am re-living Willie. I am sad about that, but relieved that, given the furious-firing premise of these memory findings, that I can remember anything at all besides sex.
The heat neurons were fired by the famous Texas Heat Wave of 1980 – they made T-shirts about it – and the fact that it took us, and the other 30,000 patrons in attendance, four hours to go the 10 miles on a two-lane road from the main highway to Bee Cave, and then four hours to get back out. A human can’t love Willie any more than that. The stench neurons were fired – many of them fusing in apoplexy – by a telephone booth on the edge of the concert grounds into which I ducked to phone my story to the paper, to find a temperature of maybe 130 degrees and a steench left by some bad Texas boys and girls who as the beer flowed and the day went on couldn’t hold it any longer. It took many days and showers before I didn’t smell like that phone booth. Thinking about it, I can smell it right now. Hey guys, your findings are right! Damn, I need a shower.
August 24, 2008
"Ooby Dooby" a flatpicker's way
No way I am not going to say this sooner or later, so I might as well go ahead and say it right now. I am the father of the New England Flatpicking Guitar Champion of the United States of America. I don't know why it wasn't in The New York Times. Tyler only mentioned it to me yesterday in an email about something else.
"Flatpicking" is a kind of guitar playing involving an acoustic guitar, a plastic guitar pick, and individual notes played at high speed. The term might refer to the pick, which is flat, but it might also derive from the playing itself, as in, "That boy can flat pick that thing." Tyler can pick more notes in three seconds than I have picked altogether, and I started when I was 15.
But that wasn't why he emailed us. The New England news was a "btw" in a seven-line email. He mainly needed to say he couldn't be here for a breast cancer fundraiser we are hosting in September. He said he was proud of us for doing the fundraiser. He also said he saw Parrish and Branan at a gig in Salt Lake City, played at the Grand Targhee Bluegrass festival, told me he was glad I was recuperating okay, and he couldn't come in Sept. because that was the weekend of the National Flatpicking Championships. "Much to catch up on," he said, "but I gotta go catch a flight to Missoula right now." The boy (he's 32 years old) lives the kind of life where you have to be a flatpicking email champion too in order to stay in touch.
Then at the end he said: "Have you seen my Ooby Dooby?" Below that was this link to YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6-mriYnBoY
"Ooby Dooby" was one of Roy Orbison's minor hits in the 1950s. I thought it should have been a major hit, but that's demographics for you. It was one of the 45s I always played whenever I got the "little records" out of the closet, so Tyler knew how I felt about it from shortly after birth. It has grown in popularity since Roy's death because it is one of the few songs that rock bands play because there is no way ordinary humans like Bono and Paul McCartney are going to try to sing "Pretty Woman" the way Orbison could. Even "Ooby Dooby" has its vocal demands. Tyler in his email warned me about this. "Not quite Roy quality," he said, "but the guitar breaks are pretty good."
Pretty good? Did I tell you Tyler was nominated for the Mother Teresa Humility Championship? Karen and I watched the video three times and then I emailed him back: "To have Roy Orbison's voice, you gotta be born Roy Orbison. But you know your way around the breaks as good or better than he did."
Actually I only put the "as good" in there because I'm a father and fathers aren't supposed to just gush openly. Toward the end of the second break, Tyler puts a high-speed riff in there that could only be played by the New England and possibly soon to be National flatpicking champion. Tyler will always prefer bluegrass, but put a Fender Stratocaster in his hands and the boy becomes a born rock-and-roller.
"Flatpicking" is a kind of guitar playing involving an acoustic guitar, a plastic guitar pick, and individual notes played at high speed. The term might refer to the pick, which is flat, but it might also derive from the playing itself, as in, "That boy can flat pick that thing." Tyler can pick more notes in three seconds than I have picked altogether, and I started when I was 15.
But that wasn't why he emailed us. The New England news was a "btw" in a seven-line email. He mainly needed to say he couldn't be here for a breast cancer fundraiser we are hosting in September. He said he was proud of us for doing the fundraiser. He also said he saw Parrish and Branan at a gig in Salt Lake City, played at the Grand Targhee Bluegrass festival, told me he was glad I was recuperating okay, and he couldn't come in Sept. because that was the weekend of the National Flatpicking Championships. "Much to catch up on," he said, "but I gotta go catch a flight to Missoula right now." The boy (he's 32 years old) lives the kind of life where you have to be a flatpicking email champion too in order to stay in touch.
Then at the end he said: "Have you seen my Ooby Dooby?" Below that was this link to YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6-mriYnBoY
"Ooby Dooby" was one of Roy Orbison's minor hits in the 1950s. I thought it should have been a major hit, but that's demographics for you. It was one of the 45s I always played whenever I got the "little records" out of the closet, so Tyler knew how I felt about it from shortly after birth. It has grown in popularity since Roy's death because it is one of the few songs that rock bands play because there is no way ordinary humans like Bono and Paul McCartney are going to try to sing "Pretty Woman" the way Orbison could. Even "Ooby Dooby" has its vocal demands. Tyler in his email warned me about this. "Not quite Roy quality," he said, "but the guitar breaks are pretty good."
Pretty good? Did I tell you Tyler was nominated for the Mother Teresa Humility Championship? Karen and I watched the video three times and then I emailed him back: "To have Roy Orbison's voice, you gotta be born Roy Orbison. But you know your way around the breaks as good or better than he did."
Actually I only put the "as good" in there because I'm a father and fathers aren't supposed to just gush openly. Toward the end of the second break, Tyler puts a high-speed riff in there that could only be played by the New England and possibly soon to be National flatpicking champion. Tyler will always prefer bluegrass, but put a Fender Stratocaster in his hands and the boy becomes a born rock-and-roller.
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