Giant leaf-sucking vacuums

Last week it seems the concept of doing away with the giant leaf sucking vacuums was being bandied about by the city.  It really only makes sense.  I, of course, turn all that carbon into compost, and would encourage others to do the same, if they garden. But not everybody like plants, or flowers, or food, or saving the planets, so we can expect everybody to do so.

This is a good example of a service that is nice but unnecessary. People have been raking their lawns for a long time, or paying some neighborhood kid to do it. A newer service like this is kind if cool but not necessary. I bought an electric leaf blower for $25 that can be reversed and used as a mulcher. The biggest pile of leaves can be turned into a pile less than 1/4 of the size in no time at all. Compost them, fill in holes, spread them on your lawn.

In my readings on compost, wide ad varied that they are, I have read about communities starting their own compost piles. IF these leaves were going to something like that then it might be worthwhile, however, I'm pretty sure these are ending up in the landfill.

This could be a good service for someone to get into. A monthly yard waste and non-toxic bio-waste removal (as in everything that is kitchen waste except for meats, bones and oils, the basic non-compostable stuff)with a composting facility where yard waste couple be mulched and mixed with kitchen waste. Stir, add water, and bada-bing. You got yerself a product to sell- compost.

Fucking sleep study

DAMMIT. I have to go back for the SECOND time to that creepy fucking clinic and have wires stuck all over me AGAIN and have some technician monitor me all night so I can spend a thousand fucking dollars on a goddamn machine to help me sleep better.

Or maybe, more pertinently, to make my wife sleep better.

I, of course, won't care if I die in my sleep. I'll be dead. Darkness at the top of the stairs, etc. But my kick-ass wife et al might bum on that, and meanwhile, while I DON'T die in my sleep from Sleep Apnea, my wife wakes up when I start sawing down the rain forest. So fuck it. Hopefully I'll sleep THIS time.

Men are Predominatly Slackjawed Chickenshits- An Assessment of the 'Yelling Shit While You're Driving Past Phenomena'

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Mompocalypse-Alzheimer's is a bitch, and Death ain't much better

It's been building up to this for some time, but yesterday's attempted visit with mom quickly turned violent. We are setting up a new care plan meeting but our visits only agitate her and she hit both Blythe and I and went of on an obscenity laden tirade. She had to be restrained by staff.

Later that day, 9 Below Zero played at an interesting event for a guy named Bill Niswander. This is a guy who was a fixture around town for many years on the blues and jam scene primarily. I don't really know him or know if we ever played together at a jam or even really met. Recently he received a sudden terminal cancer diagnosis.

Sunday's event at the Player's Pub was both a benefit and an awareness event, but it also served as something of a living wake.

I did not want to go after the scene at the nursing home. But Mom, when she was still REALLY Mom, the person she no longer is, was a firm believer in nothing so much as "the show must go on," and so I put my depression on a back burner and dragged my ass in to Player's. It was pretty full. Bill is obviously a man loved by many people, and if there is any mark of of the worthiness any human being that is it. I got there in time to see quite a bit of Bill playing with David Baas, Cathy Spiaggia, and 9 Below Zero's own Paul "Wine" Karrafa.  As they ran through a set of songs by Dylan and the Band, Pure Prairie and others, I was extremely impressed by Mr. Niswander.

Here was a man getting up to play music with his friends for quite possibly the last time. And there were tears in the audience, as any such event combined with booze will do, and who's to say those tears weren't fitting or appropriate? But from the man himself, I felt nothing but calm and dignity, and when he sang happy birthday to his son, who turned thirteen yesterday, a sense of real joy and gratitude tha he'd brought this young man into the word.

Love, dignity, and sharing music. No ego, no self pity, no anger. A mighty lesson; the end comes for all of us one way or another, quickly or prolonged.  Love your people while you can, and face the darkness with your head held high.

My gong fu

My gong fu is strong, but unmotivated.

About that title

I have discovered over the years that I learn more on my own than in a class... or do I?

"It's pronounced..."

We've all heard that once or twice in our lives. I went through school up until college an avid reader and bullshitter. It didn't work in college. The specificity of topics and the quality of work demanded made half-assing it no longer an option.

So out into the real world I went after a few years of half-assed attempts at college.

Back part-time and then full -time years later, older than most students by 10 years and fairly motivated to succeed I walked away after 3.5 years with an undergraduate degree. A couple years later went back for most of a graduate degree.

Looking back now, my choices were not great. Not terrible, but not great. Not great in that I did not choose either an undergraduate degree (Geography) or a graduate degree (Criminal Justice) that led to an immediate career path, though I have worked in the criminal justice field for almost a decade now and anticipate continuing to do so for another decade.

Not terrible, in that my degrees have served me in my work to some extent or another since I have earned them/mostly earned them, and continue to do do, and my second college lives did teach me how to learn in a more focused and disciplined fashion.

Learning, as they say, is a lifelong activity. Ultimately, all learning is done within the individuals brain case... but it does help to have a good guide. Maybe the biggest benefit of structured education is ultimately emerging from that experience with the ability to be your own guide.

Here's to Autodidacticism.