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.