The Rhinos

 Yar, I agree those names for musical genres change from time to time and are not tight like those in science and law.  If you choose to you can sing a rock song like it is a country song and vice versa which I have never understood.

The difference between the extremist factions of the dems and reps is the dem's shoot their mouths off a lot, but when it comes down to voting they vote with the party.  Well except for Coal Joe, an extremist on the right of the party, who frankly I don't mind seeing him go.  You might say he was an early user of rep right method, if your party lead is narrow any old oddball can become a big deal.  It all went to his head and now he thinks he can run for prez.  Fucking asshole.

Where was I, oh yes, the extreme factions of the party.  Dems shoot their mouths off, but toe the line.  Reps shoot their mouths off and take over the party.

I think as long as Trump is alive the republican party we cannot know what is next.

Libertarians, you hardly ever hear that word anymore.  It was big with the tea party, but none of the guys who called himself that thought the same thing as the next guy.  I thought it was just a word that a guy who didn't want to pay his taxes used to make himself sound distinguished. There was an official Libertarian Party (The Tarians) which appeared every four years to run some kooky unknown who would get one or two percentage points in the election.  

I think if there is post Trump republican party they should call themselves Rhinos, you know like gay people turned queer into a word of pride.  The elephant is majestic, but kind of slow and ponderous (though in person I hear they can do quite the charge), and the donkey, even I, a rampant one, have to say it lacks charisma.  But a rhino, now there is a mascot to be proud of.  

What's in a Name?

 I am familiar with the "A-A-B" format, but I consider that only one form of the blues.  I know that a schoolteacher of musicology would agree, indeed insist, that the definitions of musical genres listed on Wikipedia are the only correct definitions.  Nevertheless, the nomenclature in common usage suggests differently.  For instance, the "classical" music of the 19th Century is more properly called "romantic", with the term "classical" more properly applying exclusively to music of the 18th Century.  Before that, there was something called "baroque".  I am not making this up!  If you tell most people, however, that you like "romantic" music, they will likely think that you mean sappy love songs.  Back in the 60s, we used to argue long and hard about what constitutes true folk music, a practice that came to be derisively called "the folkier than thou" attitude.  The contemporary folk group Peter, Paul, and Mary had little use for it, as the following song implies.

PETER, PAUL & MARY ~ Blue ~ - YouTube

I agree that the Republican Party under the leadership of Donald Trump has gone to hell in a hand basket, and I'm still not convinced that was not his original intent.  Both major parties have assimilated their extremist factions in the last few decades, but the Democrats have been more successful in keeping theirs under control.  Of course, nothing lasts forever, so what's going to happen next?  Will the Republicans recede into the background, yielding their second-place position to somebody like the Libertarians?  Unlikely, but not impossible.  Will the Democrats eventually spin off their extremist faction, thus restoring the two-party system that Americans seem to prefer, after the Republicans have crashed and burned?  We'll just have to wait and see, providing we live long enough.

Nikki, Nikki, Nikki

 What Gillian Welch is singing is nowhere near the blues.  The blues has a rather tight format and here is a description from wiki:

Blues, as a genre, is also characterized by its lyrics, bass lines, and instrumentation. Early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times. It was only in the first decades of the 20th century that the most common current structure became standard: the AAB pattern, consisting of a line sung over the four first bars, its repetition over the next four, and then a longer concluding line over the last bars.

I don't understand a lot of musical terms, but as you can see this is not Gillian Welch.  One thing Gillian and the blues have in common is that they are both included in a kind of music called Americana, which wiki tells us:

Americana (also known as American roots music)^[1] is an amalgam of American music formed by the confluence of the shared and varied traditions that make up the musical ethos of the United States, specifically those sounds that are emerged from the Southern United States such as folk, gospel, blues, country, jazz, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, bluegrass, and other external influences.

Which is kind of vague especially when you include and other external influences.  A lot of these musical genres pretty loose, but I maintain you can tell Americana music when you hear it because it comes close to the bone.  I hope that clears everything up.

I have tried on several occasions to promote various songs and movies to my colleagues with not much success.  But that's to be expected, most of us like to find our own stuff.

Speaking of esoteric interests I have seen all three republican debates.  Without the big dog they are awfully boring, especially since none of these guys want to go after the guy overwhelmingly in first place.  I suspect that they are all hoping to be VP, or even better the big dog will drop dead, and there they will be, leading the pack with maybe 12 percent, the likely successor.

Of course I don't like any Republican, but with the recent turn of the party from bad issues towards pure evil there is now a wide gradient of Republicans from pure evil at the bottom to wrong-headed fool at the top.

I never understood why Pence ever thought he had a chance.  Normally a guy does not look in favor on a guy who tried to get him hung by thugs.  Was he a Trump apologist or foe?  Was he a breath mint or a candy mint?  

I guess the one in the current bunch who I like best is Christie, very oily, but saner than the rest.

And Haley is not far from him in sanity.  She wants to bomb Iran, but then so does the rest of the party.  But I thought she had a moment of clarity in the last debate.  The rest of the candidates were all howling about abortion and she said something like. "Look guys, 60 percent of Americans want abortion legal, and dislike that as we may, there is nothing we can do about that.  And all this howling is losing us elections and not bringing a ban on abortion a scintilla closer."

Well I don't like this because I love seeing republicans lose elections over abortion, but it would do the republicans a lot of good to listen to her.

But of course they won't.  They think howling about something is the same as doing something about it, and more important really because then they get a lot of ink and have a good chance of winning the primary, though of course they will have no chance in the general election.  How about Tuberville guy, shredding the leadership of the our armed forces over some arcane anti abortion issue which he will never get repealed anyway?  How about the house, spending time toppling their chairmen for sport instead of passing bills that might have a chance of becoming law?  How about those increasingly bizarre investigations which proceeding from no evidence but they don't like the guy?

I'm going to say, I am kind of in agreement with Beagles on this Haley woman, though I would like her a lot better if she kicked Trump's tiny nuts with her five inch heels.

Singin' the Blues

 Sorry, but the song didn't do anything for me, even now that I have the lyrics.  I'm no musicologist or anything, but I think it would be classified as "blues", so I understand how it would mean something to Uncle Ken, who has recently lost something near and dear to his heart.  

I am reminded of a line from a song that I once heard on the radio:  "I like my dog, I like my pickup truck, I like my girlfriend, but I love this bar." I've seen lots of bars come and go in and around Cheboygan in my day.  Some of them burned down, some of them were torn down, and some of them changed ownership.  Either way, none of them were ever quite the same again.  Of course, nothing lasts forever, even us.  You can't go backward in time, you can only pick up the pieces and go forward.  Here's hoping that Uncle Ken can find another venue for his art, and for his life as well.

Since my first choice (Pence) for the Republican presidential nomination has dropped out, this one is shaping up to be my second choice.

Nikki Haley scoffs at Trump's lead in 2024 GOP primary: 'Drama and chaos follows him' (msn.com)

If Trump gets the nomination, I'm voting Libertarian, not just for president, but for everybody.  If the Republicans ever get rid of Trump, I'll start voting for them again.

another sad song

There was a camp town man, used to plow and sing
And he loved that mule and the mule loved him
When the day got long as it does about now
I'd hear him singing to his muley-cow
Calling, "Come on my sweet old girl, and I'd bet the whole damn world

That we're gonna make it yet to the end of the row"

Singing "hard times ain't gonna rule my mind
Hard times ain't gonna rule my mind, Bessie
Hard times ain't gonna rule my mind no more"

Said it's a mean old world, heavy in need.
That big machine is just picking up speed
They were supping on tears, they were supping on wine
We all get to heaven in our own sweet time
So come all you Asheville boys and turn up your old-time noise

And kick 'til the dust comes up from the cracks in the floor

Singing, hard times ain't gonna rule my mind, brother
Hard times ain't gonna rule my mind
Hard times ain't gonna rule my mind no more

But the camp town man, he doesn't plow no more
I seen him walking down to the cigarette store
Guess he lost that knack and he forgot that song
Woke up one morning and the mule was gone
So come on, you ragtime kings, and come on, you dogs, and sing
And pick up the dusty old horn and give it a blow

Playing, hard times ain't gonna rule my mind, honey
Hard times ain't gonna rule my mind, sugar
Hard times ain't gonna rule my mind no more

She is no hillbilly or anything, but she has taken on one of the things I like about that down low old folk music which is the way she sings it in that deadpan manner like just the facts Ma'am, and of course that inner sadness.  There is no song like a sad song.  

So how do you like her?

So, the Ten Cat officially got sold.  Connie told me that she would be running the window art even after it was sold.  But he is filling the windows with stuff like a big balloon cat, so I texted Connie and she said that her and Dick no longer have anything at all to do with the place, so likely I will not be having my yearly show there anymore.  Breaks my heart and hurts my image as the Great Artist who puts on boffo shows at the Ten Cat.  Every morning as I am painting I am thinking of the next big show and pushing to get in my sixteen paintings for it.  Now I don't know what I am living for.  I'll ask him about it tonight but my hopes aren't high.

I understand that if you sell a bar you cannot tell the new owner how to run it, and the new owner has the right to do with it what he will.  I don't feel that I am being treated unjustly or anything like that.  But, I don't know, it is a sad thing.

As to what direction Bob, the new owner, is going, it looks to me like what I used to call the Bud Light gang, though I guess they drink something else.  Old Dog made some graphic adornments to the Ten Cat and now it looks like they will now be some other things that we have lost. Get a load of this.

https://www.tencattavern.com/

No Comprende

 I listened to the song that Uncle Ken recommended, but I couldn't understand a word of it.  I've been having trouble with accents for a long time, not in person so much, but on TV and the telephone.  Funny thing is that I grew up hearing accents, as did we all.  In fact, I don't recall ever meeting somebody's grandparent who didn't speak with a foreign accent until I moved to Cheboygan.  A certain amount of hearing loss is normal at my age, but I seem to hear everything okay, I just have trouble understanding it. 

My grandfather never had to replace his tractor, it lasted longer than he did.  Grandma was allowed to drive the tractor, but never the pick-up truck.  After Grandpa died, she sold both the tractor and the truck and bought a little Nash Rambler with an automatic transmission.  After a few frustrating lessons from her grown children, she determined to teach herself how to drive when she was 65 years old.  It was a rural area with lots of low traffic back roads, so she had lots of room to practice.  When she felt she was ready, she drove to the sheriff's office in town to get her license.  When she told the person behind the counter that she had driven there unaccompanied, she was informed that was not allowed on a learner's permit.  "So how am I supposed to get home, then?", she responded.  The clerk assigned a deputy to ride home with her, telling him that somebody will follow them and bring him back to the station.  On the way home, the deputy told her to turn around and head back to the station.  "Give her the license", he told the clerk, "She is an excellent driver."  Grandma never got tired of telling that story to her dying day.  Of course, it was a small town and a long time ago.  Add that to the list of things we have lost.

Things we have lost

 Had a new rug put in last year.  In order to get that done I had to move stuff out of the front room and that entailed dismantling the big box of cords and plugs that lives behind my computer screen and keeps my tv and computer running, which of course horrified me because everything is working just fine the way it is with each little connection singing together in a grand chorus which allows me to post on The Beaglestonian and to watch trash tv from my Prime account before I turn in at the end of the day.

I would have to disassemble everything which would not be that difficult, but then I would have to reassemble it all to exactly the way it had been before or else I would be as out of touch with western civ as a guy at the very top of Michigan with a busted modem.  

I did a thorough study of what was back there.  I Scotch taped a little note at the end of each cord, which due to the nature of cord and tape did not stand up well, untangled the Gordian knot and laid them out in a semblance of order, crossed my fingers and went to bed because the rug guys were arriving early the next morning.

I had a good thick book about the early beginnings of various religions and how they developed into oh, civilization.  It was heavy reading but it was good reading, it explained stuff I had wondered about before and sparked new thoughts about my take on the universe.  I sat in my Lazy Boy now tucked into my bedroom and read.

Of course the rug guys did not arrive early in the morning, or mid-morning, or late morning, more like a gentlemanly noonish.  But I didn't care.  I had my big fat book of deep thoughts.  You know this is the way things used to be.  I would sit in a comfy chair with a big book in my lap and the time would fly by and I would finish my session enlightened.  Anymore I spent my time checking email, and reading little snippets of breaking news and cat videos while on my right the tv blasted CNN all morning and afternoon.  I had lost my way.  I would get back to the fat chair and the fat book, maybe peeking at the computer and the tv from time to time, but just a little.

And then the guys were done.  Everything looked fine.  But now I had to put the whole shebang together again.  There were maybe two or three setbacks but I got it done.  I was reconnected to the world, I had access to everything that was going on.  Well I might as well check what I had missed and then I would go right back, right back to the Lazy Boy and the fat tome.

The book sat on the chair for a few days, then I tucked it into the bookshelf just temporarily to make room for something, and finally ended up in the bathroom where I get all my reading done these days.

Touching story about your grandfather.  I imagine when that first tractor died he just shoved it into some dusty shed or sold it for parts, an annoyance for sure, but nothing like losing a living animal whose butt you followed with a plow for twenty years, but then you fed him, made sure he had a warm place to sleep, maybe looked into those huge eyes and wondered what he thought.

Reminds me of a song.  Have you guys heard of Gillian Welch?  As a fan of folk, pure folk and none of that damned old rock and roll, I expect Beagles might like her act.  And without further ado:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sL6OWZSNuI

Back in Business - Part Two

 So, I called VIASAT the next day.  I had a particularly hard time getting through to a human because the machine couldn't find my account.  As I explained to the human when I finally did get through, the reason the machine couldn't find my account was because I didn't have an account with VIASAT, I had an account with DISH.  Even after I explained the whole thing to him, he still insisted that I should be calling DISH instead of VIASAT, while I kept insisting that I had called DISH, and they told me that I needed to call VIASAT.  To his credit, the guy offered to set up a conference call between him, myself, and somebody from DISH, which he did. 

 For some reason, the DISH lady got the impression that I had a problem with my TV service, which is also carried by DISH, although it comes through a different dish from a different satellite.  It took a while for me to convince her that my problem was with my internet service, while the VIASAT guy waited patiently at his end.  Then he spoke to her in her native tongue and explained the situation from his perspective.  Then she put us both on hold while she tried to find somebody who knew what was going on.  She came back in a few minutes and explained that DISH had been phasing out their internet service for some time, and now they are no longer servicing their old VIASAT equipment.  The only way to resolve this was for me to cancel my DISH internet service and sign up with VIASAT, which I did.  After spending a solid hour on the phone talking to people who probably didn't understand my accent any better than I understood theirs, I was totally exhausted, and I ain't over it yet.  I am hoping that writing about it will bring me some closure.

A few days later, VIASAT sent a guy up all the way from Houghton Lake, some hundred miles south of here, to install my internet service.  He didn't have to change the dish on the roof because it was already VIASAT equipment, but he wondered why my broken modem had the DISH logo on it.  Apparently no one had explained the situation to him, and he thought he had been sent up here on a simple repair call.  The good news is that he spoke fluent Michigan English, so it didn't take long for me to bring him up to speed, and he installed my VIASAT service forthwith.  

Funny thing, before I had been dragged, kicking and screaming, into the 21st Century, I never missed being on the internet, but now I go into withdrawal when I lose it.  Rural electrification didn't hit Cheboygan County until the about 1950, and I understand that nobody missed having it before then.  Now it's a genuine emergency when the power goes out.  I suppose, though, people in olden days were just as dependent on whatever they had at the time.  I am told my grandfather worked his ten-acre farm with a big old draft horse for 20 years.  When the horse finally died, Grandpa replaced him with a tractor instead of getting another horse.  He said that the death of the horse caused him so much grief that he didn't want to experience anything like that again in his lifetime. 

Back in Business - Part One

 I suppose it's been a month or so since I posted anything, but the last two weeks were not my fault.  It was a dark and stormy night when I lost my internet access.  That happens occasionally when you get your internet from a satellite dish, as I do.   It's not the rain that causes it, it's the tall thick clouds that frequently accompany a thunderstorm that interfere with the signal.  It usually comes back in 15 or 20 minutes, but not this time.  Since it was late and I was tired, I soon gave up and went to bed.  I began to suspect something else was wrong when I still didn't have access the next night and the following day.  It was then that I noticed that the four winky-blinky lights on my modem were not shining in their usual fashion, leading me to believe that my modem was dead.  We used to have a guy right here in Cheboygan who fixed things like that, but he has since retired for health reasons, so I had to call the DISH people.

After navigating past the recorded messages, I finally got to a human guy who obviously spoke English as a second language, as so many of the telephone people do nowadays.  He told me to try a few things, which I did after my wife helped me untangle the 50-foot cord on our phone to reach the computer room, which is on the other end of the house.  It was only later that we remembered we have another phone jack in that room as well as a spare telephone that we could have plugged into it.  (I understand that a certain amount of memory loss is normal at our age.) After all that, the guy agreed that my modem was probably dead, and scheduled an appointment for somebody to come over and replace it in a few days.

  The day before the appointed time, a different guy from DISH called and told me that they no longer work on VIASAT equipment, and that I need to call the VIASAT company instead.  I suspected this was some kind of scam, since I assumed that VIASAT was a competitor of DISH.  I found out later that, when DISH went into the internet business some years ago, they bought all their equipment from VIASAT, but I didn't know that at the time.  I then called the DISH people, found out that this guy was on the level, and that I indeed needed to call the VIASAT people.  It was late and I was tired by this time, so I gave up for the night and resolved to call VIASAT the very next day.   

---To Be Continued---