Tag: Pearl Jam

Categories
Family

Happy Easter…where have the past two months gone! Much to report.

OMG it is Easter. No colored eggs, no chocolate’s or bunny paws around the house. Not even reservations for brunch. I did sleep in till 6 this morning, went to feed the horses and get some coffee at the local gas station. No Starbucks for me today.

It’s been a little over two months since my last post. Lots going on in the world. Russia decided to attack the Ukraine. I think Putin is trying to use war to restore Russia’s prominence in modern times. I think he is just wasting time. Biden is still running the US into ruin with the misery index at 12% (and rising). Worst president in American history. He should be impeached for his lack of action on the southern border alone! Hopefully come November, we can fix his sorry ass to a single term and get our country out of the ditch it finds itself in. Never heard so many lies coming from an administration that supports America last. The New York Times wants to end our beliefs in God. I am not a religious person but God does more than politicians do to help mankind. Sorry NYT, but there is more truth in the pages of the Old Testament as opposed to your Sunday edition. Elon Musk wants to buy Twitter to save free speech. I am pretty sure that the marshmallow and snowflake crowd will not support this because they do not like speech that while it is the truth, is considered vial and hateful. It is time the the participation trophy generation grow up.

With the COVID pandemic reduced to a reoccurring illness much like the flu, I think we are returning to a new sense of normal. The economy appears to be running even with inflation. The new normal is that there are plenty of job opportunities. Wait, are we not raising interest rates, inflation is near all time highs and economists are predicting a recession!

What do I mean by a new sense of normal. Well today we spend more time in lines waiting for service. I have spent more time in lines waiting for picking up a prescription, getting money from a bank teller, fast food, or getting in to see the doctor. This is the future America. Longer lines, and longer waits. We will no longer be separated by differences between the rich versus the poor. The rich will just end up paying more to not wait. As for the rest of us, bring a book as the lines and the waits will be longer in the future. I expect many more positions will be replaced by automation, or services to do your daily things. However, is it just me or has the postal service improved in terms of delivery. Amazon Prime and next day delivery is something that I have yet to experience!

As spring comes to New Mexico, we are reminded of high winds and the start of fire season. Ruidoso, a small town in the southern part of the state, lies in the mountains (much like Los Alamos), and yet has already experienced several deaths, houses and acreage burned with the first forest fire in the state, Or is it the second as fire burn east of Santa Fe (west of Las Vegas) in the Hermit’s Peak area of Santa Fe National Forest?

For me, these fires are the result of a lack of proper forest management. Sorry, but a controlled burn is not proper forest management. I remember Cerro Grande! We should be going into these area, reducing the brush and trees, actually using annual cutting of areas to manage the thickness of the forest and using the proceeds from selling the wood to defer the costs.

Closer to home, I continue to work. That said, I see that I am fairly certain that unless things change for the better, I will not be working much longer. The management team at Los Alamos is the most disingenuous of teams that I have ever experienced. They need to be replaced. Do not see that happening and so maybe it is time for me to call it a career and finally move on to the next stage of my life.

Our beloved dog Jewel may have a torn ACL. Earlier this week, she started limping and favoring her right hind leg. Upon closer inspection, it did not appear to be causing her too much pain and so I finally made our belated annual visit, Overall she is fine, put on a few COVID pounds (or is it table scraps), and is confined to rest for a few weeks to see if that doesn’t improve things. Otherwise we return for x-rays and probably surgery in a few weeks.

Jewel waiting for the Vet to check her out.

Better start saving my pennies because I am guessing that orthopedic surgery for a dog isn’t cheap.

Speaking of saving pennies and inflation, I have seen it in several examples of late. My family container of Oreo’s went up in price and there are less cookies. It is clear that my pizza, whether it is Domino’s or Papa Murphy’s, is using less ingredients. And I swear that the size of a medium or large is shrinking. And the Domino’s delivery charge went up. But my best example of inflation is with Banquet chicken.

I love fried chicken.

The box of frozen chicken was the usual amount, at $8.49 a box. However, I was surprised to open it up and remove only four pieces of chicken, not the usual six, seven, or eight. I previously wrote about inflation on October 6, 2019 and there commented on oreo’s, ritz crackers and a few other things. At least the chicken pieces were the same size. But if I was complaining about inflation in 2019 when Trump was President, just think how bad it is under Biden.

Not sure which is cheaper, hay for the horses or Doritos?

No, I didn’t feed Roman Doritos. But it certainly looks like he is interested. Recently we had to get delivery of hay for the horses. With the price of gasoline and diesel increasing, the cost of hay will certainly increase. I was able to get a nice mix of Timothy/Brome from Northern New Mexico (second cutting) delivered. Our normal deliveries from Southern Colorado, also Timothy/Brome, do not start until July. With two horses we are eating more and were running very low. I am glad that I was able to get a delivery. And the horses appear to enjoy it and do not notice a big difference.

Ruby and Roman this Easter morning before feeding. A beautiful spring day in New Mexico.

But it has been very windy and I have had to make some emergency repairs to the roof on the barn. Hopefully they will hold until I can make permanent and replace some rotted wood. This time, I think we can apply some paint to the wood instead of just letting it weather naturally. More work for me and son to tackle as spring turns into summer. Between the roof, the deck, the barns and the fence; I probably will need to work throughout the summer to pay the bills.

Son and daughter waiting for Dinner one afternoon at Denny’s. Today’s kids are glued to their iPhone’s and mine are no different.

The kids had late March/early April off for spring break. Daughter went to check out some colleges in Colorado. That prospect alone should make me think that I need to continue working for at least several more years. Son spent the week home with me as I worked and he played video games. He just wanted to rest from school. I am sure that he is anxious for the COVID years to become a memory, albeit a bad memory! However, we did sneak away to Albuquerque for a day to enjoy all the big city has to offer.

Son and I managed to get away for a day during spring break where we spend several hours at Dave and Buster’s for lunch and arcade games.

Daughter is growing up too fast. Yesterday it was driving lessons. Today it is the prom. Son is finishing up middle school; not sure what the summer will bring. As for me, I managed a return to normal by spending a recent afternoon in Santa Fe dinning at Red Lobster. When I first got to New Mexico, it was a monthly ritual that I looked forward to. With the kids, not so much. Still tastes good and something to look forward to in the years and decades ahead.

Returning to normal. I made it to Red Lobster. Yes…seafood in the Southwest.

And saving the best for last. I am looking froward to seeing Pearl Jam sometime this summer. While it has been about 8 months since Sea Hear Now 2021 in Asbury Park, NJ. It will be good to hit the road to explore some new place over a long weekend. There I will get to enjoy great music, take in some sights and sounds, enjoy food and rest from the hustle and bustle of life.

And saving the best for last. Pearl Jam will kick off a North American tour in early May and I have tickets for one…and maybe four shows.

I am still contemplating a return to Sear Hear Now 2022, where Green Day and Stevie Nicks are scheduled to appear. Until next time. It is mid April. I will turn 61 soon and so I want to wish all of my friends, relatives and colleagues (Scott, John, cousin Mike, and Jim…Happy Birthday).

Categories
ramblings of a madman

Music for the summer. A review.

Two new albums have have made the pandemic tolerable. They are Gigaton by Pearl Jam and Rough and Rowdy Ways by Bob Dylan. Yes, they represent two diametrically opposite music styles. But music somehow represents points that have helped me in different periods of my life.

Gigaton by Pearl Jam is comprised of twelve songs. I have to say that I enjoy listening to all twelve songs. The styles of the songs run the gamete in terms of the musical spectrum that is the Pearl Jam sound. While the album comes out at a time which is odd in the continuing story of America, with the rioting and the pandemic, the words sound genuine about this point in time, a reflection of the past and hope for tomorrow.

Gigaton Album Art Cover.

A hard thumping grunge sound sets the tempo of the album with the albums first two songs, “Who Ever Said” and “Superblood Wolfmoon”. This is that characteristic Pearl Jam sound that I have learned to love over the years. Suddenly, I am whisked back to my high school/college days with a sound reminiscent of the Talking Head in “Dance of the Clairvoyants”. Experimental for Pearl Jam but well conceived. Then it’s a round-trip change with a quasi-Zeppelin sound in “Quick Escape”. Throw in another style change with “Alright”. “Seven O’Clock” is probably my favorite song on the album, largely because of the words, the excellent annunciation by Vedder, and the crisp music to tie everything together. “Never Destination”, “Take the Long Way” and “Buckle Up” continue in terms of experimentation, a return to the past, and reflections of other musical styles. All over the map on these three tunes but clearly they need to be listened to multiple times in order to grow into them. Then we switch gears with “Comes and Goes, with its strong guitar and haunting words of loss. The album is then rounded out with “Retrograde” and “River Cross”. Both songs are offer a strong finish to a great album. I cannot wait until they are touring again.

Pearl Jam

In the end, I can only conclude that we have five talented musicians who actually like each other, enjoy their music and have not let success ruin them. I am glad. I hope that they continue for another 20 to 30 years because I need another band to help me navigate through life, much like the Canadian trio RUSH who stopped performing several years ago.

The other album is Rough and Rowdy Ways by Bob Dylan. Clearly a significant change from Pearl Jam. The 2 CD set contains his first album with new songs in eight years. The sound is the Dylan of late. The words are the Dylan of the ages. After listening to the nine new songs on disc one, I envisioned a future of hearing Dylan. Either on the stage at the Telluride Blues and Brews festival in September, or the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in late April. Both have been postponed because of the pandemic. Both are music festivals that I greatly enjoy, and can hope that my vision comes true in 2021.

Album cover for Rough and Rowdy Ways, by Bod Dylan.

The two CD set contains ten songs in total. Disc one has nine songs and Disc two contains a single song. “I Contain Multitudes” starts off the album and is not associated with the poem by Walt Whitman, or the book by Ed Yong. But they could be…

Whitman writes about” Song of Myself”. It is a poem was divided into fifty-two numbered sections for the fourth (1867) edition and finally took on the title “Song of Myself” in the last edition (1891–2). In section 51 there is the following:

The past and present wilt—I have fill'd them, emptied them.
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.
Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.
Who has done his day's work? who will soonest be through with his supper?
Who wishes to walk with me?
Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?

The subtitle of Yong’s book is “The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life”. In both cases, and in alignment with the Dylan song, they appear to be reflections on one’s self.

“False Prophet” follows up and one is left to wonder if Dylan is talking about himself. I think not. The music continues through “My Own Version of You”, “I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You”, and “Black Rider”. I find them as if Dylan is reflecting on old themes that I often hear in his music: people, places, the times and travels and roads taken. But “Black Rider extends those themes to envision finality or death, but it is unclear. “Goodbye Jimmy Reed” reminds me of a blues song, hitting those themes of people, places, times and travels. “Mother of Muses” pays homage to the ancient Greeks and I wonder if the Nobel Laureate is trying to get all classical on us. “Crossing the Rubicon” is probably my favorite song on the album. It represents a reflection of the past, and shows signs suggesting that all things, including life, are finite. Let’s remember that Dylan is almost 80 years old and perhaps even he feels his mortality. Disc one ends with “Key West (Philosopher Pirate)”, the second longest tune on the album, singing about themes as diverse as the town of Key West, places in Europe, and reminiscing about the age of poetry in Ginsberg, Corso and Kerouac, musicians like Armstrong, Hendrix, and Holly. Although several of the other songs on the album are intertwined with many people throughout history: Edgar Allen Poe, the Rolling Stones, Indiana Hones, Ann Frank, Leon Russell, Truman, Elvis, Martin Luther King, to Thelonious Monk, I wonder if Dylan is trying to find his own place in history. He should not worry.

Disc two, at just under 17 minutes, contains the single song “Murder Most Foul”. Here is Dylan reminiscing about the assassination of John F Kennedy in 1963. While it is lacking in music (overall it is very simple), it is the spoken words by Dylan, tying the horrors of that day in Dallas to the culture and period of the 60’s. I wonder briefly is this is his attempt at rap? The song itself covers the period in which Dylan was most vocal about the American experience: the war in Vietnam, injustices in our society. These are the tunes of Dylan’s past that I was introduced to in college that I enjoy listening to over and over. While the voice has changed over the years, the themes, and the power of the words have not.

I doubt that my kids will ever enjoy his music, and share the meaning behind the words as I do, but I can at least try.

Categories
life

People

I started writing this post several months ago. Put it on the back burner as I got tied up with other things. Distractions, work, my ongoing frustration and funk. Fascination about the third President of the United States. The unabomber and Henry David Thoreau. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Pearl Jam and Bob Dylan.

Now I come back to it during the COVID19 stay-at-home situation. I actually spent the morning in my office. TRUE. I went to work. I have been able to go there over the whole stay-at-home ordeal, if only for a few hours. Quite deserted, but on occasion, I would see colleagues that I work with. Face-to-face is so much better than over the telephone. It certainly is better with my kids. It is certainly better with people.

I will probably never understand people. I know that I may not be the easiest person to talk to. I am an introvert. I have no problem doing things on my own, exploring, hiking, going to the movies or museums. I do not do well in terms of making small talk, either in groups, or one-on-one. I tend to keep to myself. My communication skills are not polished. I deal with it and at different times I have tried to improve upon those skills. But I can still “um” right up there with the best of them. I hope to improve my writing skills through this blog.

Don’t get me wrong. On most days I don’t hate people. Well OK, on some days I might. On other days there are people who I will never like. So does my personality type influence people that I interact with, whether it is my coworkers or my friends? Are the people with whom I met over the years friends or acquaintances? Or are we like ships that pass in the night, forgotten or a desire never to meet again?

An article in Inc. ( https://www.inc.com/amy-morin/psychologists-say-there-are-5-personality-types-heres-how-to-tell-which-one-you-.html ) tells us that there are five personality types according to psychologists. One’s personality influences everything from the friends we choose to the candidates we vote for. Many people never really spend much time thinking about personality traits. I’m guessing that includes me. Understanding my personality can give me insight into my strengths and weaknesses, and that it can also help me gain insight into how others see me. Does it also help me understand others? Is this why some people are dog lovers and others are cat lovers, and there are others who like all animals. I’m in the dog-lover (and horse-lover) camp. OK son, I also like Johnnie the hamster.

At this point, I would venture off and talk about how this article ties into this posting. But as I researched the personality types, I found different types have been qualified and quantified. One article talks about four different types. Another talks about eight. Another has three, then there are seven, eleven, and twenty. Do I hear nine, fifteen, thirty-one?

This article from Northwestern suggests that there are four ( https://www.haaretz.com/science-and-health/there-are-only-four-types-of-people-psychologists-say-based-on-new-data-1.6489904 ). The four are: average, reserved, self-centered and role model. Another article ( https://www.today.com/health/personality-types-average-self-centered-role-model-or-reserved-t137902 ) quoted the same Northwestern study and provided more detail that the groupings make more sense. This article was altogether confusing because it went back-and-forth between personality types and personality traits. People fall into one of the four types based on how they rank on the big five personality traits: openness, agreeableness, extra version, neuroticism and contentiousness. Understanding how high or low someone ranks on each of the traits can be useful and predict things about people, such as their risk of mental illness or likelihood of divorcing.

In the end I suspect that a person’s personality is comprised of a great many types of traits. Each and every one is unique. One’s personality is comprised of a mixture of traits. Some are more pronounced than others, some are more endearing than others. I’m not a psychologist and I have already said that I do not understand people.

My spin in writing this post was going to suggest that there were only two types of people. There are people who like people regardless of their personality. The other are the people who only like themselves. Are these types, or traits? The workplace is full of different people, different personalities, different traits. How can I say this, and yet argue that there are only two types of people? Let me continue.

The genesis of the “only two types of people” was reinforced when I was walking the dog. I was thinking about the types and traits of people. Don’t you get up at 5am on a Saturday and then read obscure articles about the traits of people? Of course this was some months ago, but it is as true today as it was then. Jewel and I were about 3 miles into our walk near the East Gate dog park. I spied a former coworker, who I have known for 29 years. We worked together for about four years when I first arrived at Los Alamos. Now the lab is a big place, and we went our separate ways in terms of career, working on different projects in different parts of the laboratory. We followed different pathways, and over the years we would cross paths again at different times, albeit the interactions were very limited.

Anyway, I was walking Jewel, came across my coworker who was there with her dog. I said “hello” and she replied “hello”. I then ventured to ask “how was it going”, to which there was no reply, other than “I need to get my dog to the park to play”. No “take care”, “nice dog”, “how are you doing?”. That was it. Like two ships passing in the night.

Over the years, I have met and encountered many people. I find that I enjoy those encounters. As is often the case, people come and go. Whether those contacts continue over time is often guided by whether I liked them, or whether I felt used by them. Time causes people to drift apart. Time also allows one to to think, to reflect, to determine if it was a genuine positive experience, or was it mutual admiration, working towards a common goal, or just one of being used. It is also possible that time doesn’t leave people with the opportunity to catch up, to talk, to laugh.

In the case of the individual with whom I passed walking the dog, I immediately jumped to that type definition. I was the one who was being used. I have seen this individual use many people over the years to advance her career. We all characterize this person the same way. Those who have been able to get away have gone on to be successful. I think that I am in that category. Those who did not get away suffered, eventually leaving into obscurity. Clearly, in my opinion, this individual is self centered.

Now as the months have gone by since I started this post, I have read and reread the words that I put down. I have changed some of the sentences, added some qualifiers about today compared to several months ago to put things into context. My opinion of how I characterized the encounter has not changed, filtered through the passage of time. Still think that there are only two types of people. Weather hasn’t changed my feelings, my environment has changed since the COVID19 but that hasn’t altered my thinking about the types of people.