Flannel Shirt

Saber-toothed squirrels

Don't mess with their acorns.

Cronopio was shrew-sized, about 4-6 inches in length, and was an insectivore with a diet of the insects, grubs and other bugs of the time. It lived when giant dinosaurs roamed Earth -- more than 100 million years ago -- and made its home in a vegetated river plain.

The skulls reveal that Cronopio had extremely long canine teeth, a narrow muzzle and a short, rounded skull. "These first fossil remains of dryolestoids … give us a complete picture of the skull for the group," John R. Wible, Ph.D., curator of mammals at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, said. "The new dryolestoid, Cronopio, is without a doubt one of the most unusual mammals that I have seen, extinct or living, with its elongate, compressed snout and oversized canine teeth. What it did with that unusual morphology perhaps may come to light with additional discoveries… ."

 

Bureaucratic bad dream

I went to get my Oregon driver's license yesterday. I had a lot of anxiety over this, mostly, I think, because this is an official cutting of ties with California, my home of the last 37 years. But I didn't get to apply for a driver's license.

You see, my license from California isn't sufficient ID. And more importantly, my birth certificate isn't the right kind. My birth certificate is the one that the hospital issued to my parents way back then. You know, 8 pounds, 10 ounces. That's not good enough. I have to get a birth certificate with a raised seal on it, while this one merely has a gold tin foil seal. The woman at the counter asked me if I had a passport. I said I had one from 1971.

"Is it expired?"

"Of course."

"Well, we can't use it."

So producing a birth certificate from sixty years ago is fine, but not a passport from forty years ago.

I was referred to a thing called VitalChek, which will issue you a birth certificate that you can use as identity. I called the 800 number, gave them my information, paid my sixty bucks by credit card. In order to identify myself to them I had to send them a copy of my driver's license, so I sent them a copy of my California driver's license. You can see it coming. They want my Oregon driver's license.

You see, I need my Oregon driver's license to get a birth certificate that will identify me in order to get my Oregon driver's license.

This really is incredible. I have lived in the U.S. all my life. I served in the army, I worked for the federal government for a third of a century. I'm collecting a pension from them. But to Oregon I'm a man without a country.

I realize that this is all the result of homeland security and also a means to combat illegals from getting official IDs. The problem I see is that after I find the correct bureaucratic hoops to jump through I will eventually get my driver's license, but if anyone wants to, especially someone who runs a driver's license mill, they too can jump through those hoops too, and a lot more efficiently.

For years I've been reading how hard it is to get off the grid. I didn't realize how hard it is to get on the grid. 

Last night I dreamed I was trying to get my Toyota repaired. It wasn't running. I went to some place in my old hometown of Keyport to get it fixed. Visiting me at the time were my old friends Don and Sandra, up from L.A. with their kids. This being a dream I was back in my childhood, with a friend from the army and his family, while trying to get my current car repaired. Times jumble up in dreams. The guy at the repair shop seemed indifferent about trying to even figure out why the car wouldn't go and just told me to buy a new one. Clearly, this was my subconscious trying to sort out my bureaucratic bad dream.

So this morning, with less anxiety and a resolute determination, I am doing my laundry and trying to suss out exactly what I need to do to prove who I am.

Monday Monday

Well, a new week. I look over my place and I only really need a file cabinet. Once that's in place my life is pretty much in order.

But my big task this week, today, is to go to the DMV and apply for an Oregon license and register my car here. This is the last step in becoming an Oregonian (oh yeah, and registering for vote too), so it needs to be done. For some reason I've got lots of anxiety wrapped up around this. I think it has to do with severing ties with California. My insurance agent suggested I go to the DMV in Lake Oswego. Shorter lines, although I have been told that nowhere in Oregon are the lines like in California's DMVs, especially since their budget crisis.

Well, I must gather up my papers to prove who I am and where I live.

Can technology save my hands?

Since I had to dip into my savings to move up to the Portland area my purse strings have been sufficiently loosened to buy the above, a Kitara synthesizer guitar. I didn't get it for the internal sounds, which quite frankly are underwhelming to my ear, but because it's MIDI and I can make notes on other synthesizers and, more importantly, because instead of strings it has buttons. I can make notes either with both hands, as a traditional guitar does, or with just my left hand. Since my repetitive stress came on in 1995 playing guitar has been impossible. The repetitive stress came on because of sorting and delivering approximately 13 million pieces of mail over my years in the Post Office (unfortunately not from practicing guitar!) and the hand that suffers most is my right. (Everything in the Post Office revolves around right-handedness. Take my word for it.)

So, as things up here in Beaverton get more comfortable and routine, I am beginning to add things to my life. My life's routine, if you will. I had the Kitara out on Thanksgiving morning while I watched some Turkey Day football. And I practiced some scales. I haven't practiced scales on the neck of a guitar in sixteen years. Let's say I was out of practice. The neck is a little smaller than my Fender Strat too so my fat fingers need to learn to navigate more accurately. Still, it's clear to me that for my purposes this should do just fine. I'll be able to create series of notes, feed them into my computer and create music. I won't have to rely on compositional software. And, I hope, I should be able to regain that connection between man and instrument that was so central to my songwriting process.

I've had MIDI guitars before. The first and one of the best I've owned was made by Casio. This was before my hands gave out. It gave me access to MIDI (musical instrument digital interface) and playing other sounds through synths. It eventually began deteriorating and I moved on to others, but this one seems to be the one that'll work for me.

Now that I'm retired one of the few useful purposes I have here on Earth is to write songs. This should help.

Duster

It was clear that having moved to Oregon I needed a really good raincoat. So I ordered a duster, like this one:

That's not me, just a guy posing in a duster. When I got home Saturday night it was sitting on my doorstep in its box. I put it on and it felt kind of like a costume. You know, you've got to become one with  your wardrobe. So today I wore it in the rain down to the recycling dumpster here. It's becoming me.

Now I have to get a wide-brimmed rainhat. Then I'll be able to hang out with the nutria in Nike World across the street even when it's a downpour.

In case you were worried

Don't.

That is, if you can believe them.

Joan and Bob, Thanksgiving 2011

Joanie holding her iPad, me holding Joanie.

This is the first time since 1972, when I was in basic training at Fort Dix, that there isn't hair between my nose and my upper lip.

Amish hate crime gang

Article here.

It's such a bizarre story. Especially since the ringleader is named Mullet.

Music Friday: Bert Jansch

When it happened the news didn't reach me. Bert Jansch, perhaps the greatest folk guitarist of our time, passed away recently.

I first heard his music back when I was in the army in the early 70s. My friend Don Estes had his first album. Jansch went on to make wonderful music both as a solo act and with the British folk group Pentangle. He never was comfortable with fame and did his best to avoid it. And he never crossed from acoustic to electric, although to even contemplate his fingers on the neck of a Fender is to dream glorious dreams.

My favorite recording of his is his version of "First Time Ever I Saw Your Face", recorded as a duet with Mary Hopkin. "First Time" was originally a folk song before Roberta Flack made it a world-famous torch song. Jansch's version inspired me to record a far inferior version of the song as a country tune. I wish I could say that I somehow mastered even a whit of his incredible talent on guitar. I didn't, couldn't. But I certainly could appreciate his music.

First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.

The economics of the music industry

Tim Harford has a post about the music industry and the quality of music, Music for love not money, relying on a recent lecture from The Who's Peter Townsend and a study by Joel Waldfogel of the University of Minnesota. I guess that everyone agrees that the industry is suffering. The question is whether it's because the business sucks or the musicians suck.

Waldfogel's study, and I'll let you read the article to understand the methodology, is that over the last fifty years the late 1960s were the best, the 80s were the worst and today's music is kind of "meh", about on par with the 90s.  He also says that despite the whining of the industry, three-quarters of the illegally downloaded music would never have been bought anyway.

I think for individual fans these generalities don't matter. The songs that were playing when you first fell in love will always resonate with you. Songs that your kids play over and over instead of doing their homework will resonate with you, but in a less positive way.

As for whether musicians make or don't make music because of the economics? Well, if you ask the question you probably never met a musician.