I have this old beat up guitar, my brother carried it with him around home back in the late 60's. Yeah I am that old.

My mom took all the fun out of music. We had to learn scales. My brother conquered my Mother, a steel string classical guitar. I stole his guitar. He died in Viet nam.

No one knows how I play. That is ok. My uncle Carl got me a few gigs in the studio. My Mom paid for 16 years of lessons....and I have spent much time in the wind and rain...much time laughing about a personal harvest.

I have never cried for Kenny while holding his guitar, I don't think that would be right. I have seen Water Street in Skowhegan plain as day, I have felt salt and spray from the Peaks Island mail run, but I have never cried. He danced across the things I fret about. But I never cried holding his guitar.

It is a dark thing held in for so long. I survived Vince Gill in a closed environment and never cried. There must be something wrong with me? Because that guitar tunes perfectly.

Transitional Offices

There is an old line from an older song "you don't know what you've got till it's gone". I use to have a 30'x30' office in a business that I get a "no-show" check from. It was a business that I had to do nothing for and still made me money. It is funny how life works out.

The business has had to recently expand, which suddenly demanded my involvement. A new building was acquired, and thus the transition of moving. My large office is now two smaller offices. One in the old location and one in the new location. Now granted my office in the new location is going to become a larger three room affair. But today, it is frustrating. This is strange considering I never used the old office for anything more than glorified storage for things I have collected throughout my life that demanded formal display.

Sure I would occasionally go there sit around pondering things and making others nervous. But now, it seems like a weight that demands attention. It isn't the social club for the crew that it use to be. I am actually having to work, correspond, and network with the movers, shakers, and money changers of the glass industry. I gotta tell ya, growth sucks when you are comfortable. I suppose that is where the phrase "growing pains" comes from.

In another corner of my life I am an hourly employee in a job that I just phreaking love. (Don't ever tell the folks at Greenlife grocery, but I would pay them to work there.) I watch my co-workers hungrily struggle to advance....it makes me wish I had someone like that to growl and grab to the point that I could just go back to a large office I rarely use.

When it rains, it pours. I have got to review the Department of Energy's DE-FOA-0000259 Funding Opportunity Announcement. I have until the 27th of September to understand the questions and until the 5th of October to have the proposals in. On top of that Natalia wants her hard wood floors that we have discussed for the last two years in by the 8th of September. She has even bought the wood flooring and hired the contractor......damn I miss my big no show office.

What really scares me is? I have these offices in three other states with growth issues in each.

Life is a bitch....

So I am closing a million dollar deal. I had no idea I was worth so much. I mean I knew I was worth 1.2. 6 years ago. Today my signature alone is worth 3.5. Not counting research or arguments. My wife who works for my bank....stands amazed behind me. I just bought a building for 1.1 million. Been negotiating for months.

My whole life smells of this deal.

It has been long ago photographs, It has been seasons
a long way down this road.
Traces of history
things believed in
passed along the way
a signature worth so much
I am not young enough for this
I can't even pray on my knees
but I am worth this?

My Grandmother told me
Angels sang the day I was born
she asked me everyday what damage I did
what I loved? What was tho color of crusades
Rivers we all jump into...

sunshine drying to 3. 5 million.

But I stood my ground
understood directional freedom
remembered every word ever said
by hero's and sorry newspaper headlines.
mortal lightening never impressed me.
I was the consummate diapered
trust fund baby. I learned young
to say "Fuck You".
I was photographed on stairways.
with mirrors around chasing feelings
announcing today I am what i have always hated.

questions and reasons, reflections of strangers
seeing it happen, forgiveness is to blame
soft as tenderness, along a Stone coast of youth?
A paper is slid to you and by signature?

you become what you loath.

Embed with or Inbed with

Here is a picture of General Stanley McChrystal. It was taken during a news conference. Notice the wire going to his ear? It attaches to a staff of personally chosen spooky operators who provide him with answers to questions asked by reporters. Why? Because he is a total control freak.

Which makes it all the funnier that his 30 year career in The United States Special Operations Command was ended by a Rolling Stone reporter named Mike Hastings. Hastings was a reporter "embedded" with McChrystal and his band of merry operators when they all got a little buzzed in Paris. Hastings wrote an article for Rolling Stone Magazine where he quoted McChrystal and staff making statements that were obviously violations and offenses under the UCMJ. McCrystal was fired and his staff are presently under investigation by the Army's Inspector General. Which means that our "Free Press" did it's job.

However now the Pentagon has determined that Mike Hastings is no longer allowed to be "embedded" with troops in Afghanistan on the grounds that he cannot be trusted.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100804/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_mcchrystal_rolling_stone_writer

The reason we have a free press in this country is so that the public will be informed when our Generals cross the line concerning our civilian authority over our military. This incident proves the value of our free press and proves that Hastings can indeed be trusted to do what the press is suppose to do in a free society; report.

Someone needs to tell the Pentagon the word is "embed", and does not mean "in bed with". A free press is not something we should be prepared to surrender to those stalwarts of honesty that make up our military leadership.

http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/media/rolling-stone-writer-mcchrystal-pals-were-lying-about-ground/19574011/

One last thing? I think the Army's Inspector General should also take a good long hard look at what McChyrtals band of merry operators were up to when all those classified files were released to wikileaks, unless of course they really think we are going to believe that was all done by a private first class? They should look into that before McChrystal announces his Presidential Candidacy.

A Poem That Has Nothing To Do With It's Title!

A Turtle Riding The Bus When The Bike Broke Down...

I know cowardice, have personally tasted it
In the deep end of the soul
Fear does not get you on the big things
It is far more insidious, like the tentacles of cancer.
Slow bus rides recalling strange sounds
That shouldn't be so alien
When by circumstance you are broken down
Huddled fear has time on it’s side
and nibbles away unexpectedly comfortable
Like foot and heel skin eating fish you pay for at the Spa.

True Fear? The sinful horror that charges you?
You never see it coming,
It is like crab grass growing up on you daily
Till one day you look around and it is all you see.
In the disconnection you hear
they give medals for instant courage
Jail time to thoughtful latter day hero’s?

I don’t think shelled Poets, should be allowed to touch guns
Little own aim them, with a trained finger.
The confusion would be overwhelming
A spiritual discourse of unwanted questions
posed to the 6 o'clock news and tomorrow's headlines.

Tinctured killings? Should be left to
17 year old Marines and
frat jock wannabes to worry about.
Homicidal Poets are just uncomfortable
like surplus combat boots purchased
for the stories they can tell...

Almost insulting.

Treading Water

Tiredly Treading Water In A Storm

When I was young, I never thought I would get this old
Swimming had more to do with suns than moons
Nothing was considered, it took an explosion
To get me where my parents wanted me.
Their solid beach footing.

Yet there were shadows
Sacrifices to the dark side of their currents
As an ant in the sand of their raising
I spent too much time crawling in damp tracks
Belly knowledge is sticky piss poor growth.
My legs only grew to walking
When I got away.

When I did it was classic
Fire to frying pan
My head, everything about me
Sizzled with freedom.
I was I in the Navy.
Every droplet was about me, but today?
I have a better kindness towards drowning.

Home was a cold wet memory
Cards flipped traditionally at Tea
Snow and burdened pine trees.
A coastal dog whistle in the wind.
That’s not to say it was all bad
There were days I pranced.
Inland unity cornfields I will drag to the end.
I will die smiling at Peaks Island
Mail Ferry’s, and a stone cottage
By circumstance I own on a stony beach
Shit happens when you live long enough.

Rivers and oceans, breathing must be down above water
Or you simply drown, even in two inches depth.
They say it is painless, filled with best wishes
At that last gasp? Are there Gale Winds?

ROFLMAO

Hey Folks, meet Bradley Manning, a 22 year old Private First Class serving with the 10th Mountain Division, as a clerk. Private Manning is the fella that the United States Military would have us believe gave Wikileaks 150 thousand secret documents concerning our war in Afghanistan.

This 22 year old Private managed according to his arrest documentation to compile an extensive archive of secret documents from the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, The State Department, The CIA, the Agency for International Development, The DIA, the Whitehouse and other agencies including private contractors. This child in uniform then managed to disseminate all of these "secret" documents to wikileaks. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2548077/posts

http://bellum.stanfordreview.org/?p=2615

NO WAY! No phreaking way in hell could this guy have pulled this off. To even contemplate it is silly. To gather 150 thousand secret documents guarded by the US Military and then disseminate those documents would take a whole team of special operators. If a 22 year old Private can do this? Then we need to bug out of Afghanistan at once and review our entire military, quite possibly drug testing our military's Officer Corps.

I am just an old retired Sailor. My short term memory is in many ways shot to hell. But I do seem to recall that a couple of months ago there was a General who was in charge of our nations war efforts in Afghanistan that was fired? This General spent his entire career in The United States Special Operations Command and according to the Rolling Stone magazine article that got him fired carried nun-chucks and surrounded him self with an extremely loyal collection of Green Beret, Navy SEALs and other soldiers, sailors, Marines and civilians that the Military designate as "Operators". What makes more sense? A 22 year old Private, with less than one term of enlistment did this? Or a Command General with his team of "Operators" pissed off about what happened to their leader did this? Keep in mind that in the same Rolling Stone article General McChrystal spoke about how "computer weenies play an important part, and need to be brought into the fold of Special Operations". Also keep in mind 150 thousand files were collected, caroused, compartementilized, and downloaded to wikileaks...150 thousand files? All by a private first class?

I think this incredible leak of classified information is where General Stanley Allen McChrystal, announced his Presidential Candidacy. I also think that Barack Obama is in a tight spot. President Obama will not be able to campaign on "governmental transparency", or "change" ever again. President Obama also can not publicly and therefore politically admit that he has been played by a General he fired. That's a big time rock and hard spot by 2012. Welcome Mr. President, to the world of "Special Operations".

As for PFC. Bradley Manning? I am sure after the proper "motivation", and advice from counsel, he will plead guilty to all specifications of the UCMJ against him. He will receive a General Discharge under Honorable Conditions and just disappear into Corporate America.

The whole affair is sad, if you think about it. But yet it is brilliant, today the press is fixated on 90 thousand files released.

Makes you wonder about the value of the 60 thousand documents still laying out there in the tall grass?