This time I decided to publish one of my dads books as an ebook (paper is “out” folks).

After a brief web search, I found Smashwords. One more click and I was reading their very informative guide to ebook publishing which, by the way, is free! Right up my alley! Also, they only accept “Word” files which is what I have. Perfect!

After joining the site, which would be a good idea even if you only want to download their books, I read a very informative and helpful guide to formatting your document and set about to editing the file. Here’s the fun part… My dad uses a word processor like a typewriter, formatting his documents with carriage returns and spaces. Not good! He’s not likely to change but, if I were you, I’d quit that practice right away, deleting those things is more time consuming than learning how to properly use a word processor.

So, after a couple of hours deleting spaces and carriage returns, formatting paragraphs to spec, and adding a title page along with the copyright information they suggested, I was ready to upload the manuscript. Oh shoot, I need a cover. Did you know ebooks have covers? I didn’t… Photoshop to the rescue!!! Done.

Press “publish”… Sounds simple but, in reality, it’s a moment where there can be some doubt. Is everything really ready? Ha! It’s comforting to know, at this point, that nothing is etched in stone. You are given the option of re-publishing and also replacing your book cover. All is good, go!

When you finish the upload your “book” is put in a queue where it waits to be processed into all the formats you chose to publish to. My “ranking” in the queue was #1987… For real? 1986 people were ahead of me. Good Grief!!! It was Saturday afternoon, probably the best time of the week for people with real jobs to be working on their projects and I was gonna have to wait. Not really a problem but a disappointment for me at the time. I want things to happen fast when I finally get around to doing them. I’d put this off long enough and I wasn’t in the mood to wait for the results. Oh well, I had to wait.

Sunday morning, at 8:00, I was #512, awesome, after church, I was #200. I took a nap and when I woke up the book was published, links were created and I was able to view the book in every format which, to my relief, all looked great! I did have to make a couple small changes to the book cover, it was and is still too dark. Thing is though, this project came out better by far to my previous experience and I’m already working on a second book. I’ll also be recommending this publisher to anybody who will listen and shows an interest. I’m a happy man!!!

Just about a week ago I thought I’d try to learn and use “Flash” from Adobe for creating web pages. I’ve had the program for a year or so and have used it for some simple photo “slide-shows” and also to edit/convert videos but the software is so much more capable than that. In other words, a waste in my hands.

My first project? I made a Christmas Card.  It can be viewed here as well as in this post but in a much more readable form (my reason for posting it here is “because I can”). I’ll say this much; Flash “swf” output files are magic!!! (My angst and frustration with YouTube could finally be coming to an end)

So… Onward and upward I go with my Flash manual on my left, hunched over a keyboard, creating content for web sites no longer “static” relying on dozens of pages and seemingly endless numbers of links and menus while accomplishing a more fluid, versatile, and pleasing product.

Oh, (I know it’s early but…) Merry Christmas!!!

Amidst the tragic, and sometimes fatal, violence directed at early trade unionists, Mother Jones uttered words still invoked by union supporters more than a century later: “Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.”

Happy Labor Day!!!

I have a dentist who advised me to get a root canal. He sounded sincere and even though he was aware of, and shared with me, all the risks, he thought I should do it.

In 1969 I had an accident while riding my bike. I was helping my friend “Shish-Ka-Bob” deliver his newspapers, his bike was broke… Mine was awesome. A gold “sting-ray” with butterfly handlebars and a banana seat. Perfect for the task at hand. Bob rode on the back.

One of his customers was a Catholic convent located on the top of a hill. The street was brick and so bumpy they had closed it off to traffic. I should have stayed at the bottom and waited for Bob to hoof it. I didn’t. We walked the bike up the hill, delivered the paper, and rode the bike halfway down the hill. It was really thrilling!

Halfway down the hill I remember my front tire getting stuck in one of the many holes. It stopped but we didn’t. I flew over the handlebars like Superman and landed on my face, hands, and forearms and skidded to a stop. Bob went butt first off the side of the street and into some bushes, a “soft” landing.

I wasted no time, jumping up to see how he fared (I’d been in accidents before and figured I’d survived this one too). He just looked at me. He couldn’t speak. I was covered in blood from my forehead to my waist, oh and the bike was bent (the part that bothered me most). I’m not sayin’ it didn’t hurt but now we had to walk (Bob drug the bike, a good friend). Bob’s house was closest and we figured his mom would drive me home after the shock factor wore off. She was really shaken but nothing like my mom. I walked in the back door which led to the kitchen, said “hi mom” and waited for her to turn around. I looked pretty bad…

I wish now that my mom’s first instinct would have been to grab the camera but that’s not what happened so, sadly, I have no picture to post. Instead she did what moms do, she washed my cuts and scrapes and looked me over pretty good. I guess the biggest deal was my right front tooth, I’d sheered it right off at the gum so we made an emergency trip to the dentist.

I ended up with what I thought was a temporary “cap” (peg tooth) which the dentist had to make, drill a hole and then pound in with his hammer. It’s still there.

That brings us to the topic of this article… My tooth has always been sensitive to cold and I’ve learned to compensate by backing it up with my tongue when drinking cold beverages and eating ice cream and was never a big deal to me until Dr. Mark Stabley got a hold of me. He said I should have a root canal or I’d loose the tooth someday (another thing I never really cared about). I had insurance at the time and now I wonder now if the money was what he was interested in rather than my well-being. Another issue was his research. He was trying to come up with a method of performing a root canal which solved a problem that had plagued the ADA since they started performing root canals. Infections, which occurred commonly, in the air gap  left behind when the “filler” material cured. He’s been unsuccessful so far.

This is what I’ve been left with. My tooth is still sensitive to cold. It’s infected by a bacteria which “poops” on my vocal chords, gumming up the works and limiting my range. I no longer have insurance and Dr. Stabley won’t answer my phone calls.

I never asked for his advice and now all I can do is blame him for my predicament. If I would have asked, I’d have myself to blame which would be a lot easier to live with. It’s really not nice to hold Dr. Stably accountable, or for that matter, Shish-Ka-Bob.

They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot & then once a day it was taken and sold to the tannery. If you had to do this to survive you were “Piss Poor”.
But worse than that were the really poor folk who couldn’t even afford to buy a pot……they “didn’t have a pot to piss in” & were the lowest of the low.
The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn’t just how you like it, think about how things used to be. Here are some facts about the 1500s:
Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and they still smelled pretty good by June. However, since they were starting to smell…
Brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.
Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it.. Hence the
saying, “Don’t throw the baby out with the Bath water”.
Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof… Hence the saying “It’s raining cats and dogs.”
There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That’s how canopy beds came into existence.
The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying, “Dirt poor.” The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance-way. Hence: a thresh hold.
In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get
much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme: Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old. Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, “bring home the bacon.” They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and chew the fat.
Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.
Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the upper crust.
Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a wake.
England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift.) to listen for the bell; thus, someone
could be, saved by the bell or was considered a dead ringer.
And that’s the truth….Now, whoever said history was boring?

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois_State_Fair

“Noted concerts held at The Grandstand include The Who as an opening act in 1968.”

I was there… Not to see The Who, I’d never heard of them. I went to see The Association. You see, I had just, one year before, moved from my hometown, Muskegon, MI, to Springfield, IL where my dad had entered the seminary. He was a big band fan and knew the importance of music in his life and has always been interested in sharing that “gift” with me. One of the things he had done to ease the pain of moving was subscribe to a record club. You join, get six records for a penny, then buy another one every month or… they send you one nobody wants.

Yep, six records and I got to choose two for myself, no restrictions!

One record, the one I ended up enjoying, was Insight Out by The Association. Loved it then, still do today so when I heard they were coming to the state fair I just had to go. I was 12 and entering the eighth grade.

Since I’m writing this I must have a reason, right? Well, I do… One of my favorite things is listening as “old folks” tell their stories of life “in the good old days” so I figure it’s my turn now and this story is a part of my own geezer training, really, I’m an “apprentice geezer”. The “good ol’ day” things include the ticket price, $2.00, and the fact that it was “general admission”.  Yea, that practice which allowed for stampeding and crowding the gate which has since been outlawed.

So there we were, my friend Don and I, early, smashed up against a chain link fence begging “the guy” to open up and let us go!!! I remember it well… I saw him unlock the padlock, pull out the chain which held the two gates closed, and off we went (I’m thinkin’ he got out of the way). There was a big pile of wooden folding chairs on what had to be a hay wagon just inside the gate so we each grabbed one and headed to the front of the stage. Got there too… With no real injuries.

Don and I somehow stuck together and wound up in what can best be described as the third row, opened our chairs and sat down. The stage was massive and set up for an orchestra in the back with lots of room for whatever would happen in the front which, much to our dismay, was not The Association. Nope. First we had to endure the “local” Kate Smith impersonator who was a relief from the boredom of waiting for the whole shebang to start. We survived several calls from the back to MOVE UP and ended up sitting on the backs of the chairs with our feet on the seat because there was no legroom between us and the row in front. We did have fun though throwing “45’s” that were handed out at the gate (I’m wishing I would have kept one now but at the time they seemed worthless… just from some band called The Who?). Damn…

Kate Smith, or rather her enormous likeness, was really awful. Not just to us kids but everybody was bored to tears by her performances most of which were the patriotic stuff she had probably hoped we would all sing a long with. Didn’t happen. When she finally left the stage the crowd erupted with applause so she came back for an encore. Big mistake!!! I’d never heard people boo like that before and I had, and still have, a big mouth. Oh yea, I booed too.

There was another break while the orchestra stuff was carried off. An emcee tried to keep us entertained talking about the fair but we were less than kind to him as well. Then the equipment started to show up. Man these guys, The Who?, had some serious stuff!!! Big amps, huge drum set. We knew we we’re gonna hear this band.

They played one set and I can’t remember any one song, they were all new to me at this point but they sure did rock. Pete introduced us to the “windmill” method of guitar strumming, Roger showed us how to handle and yes, tease us with the microphone and then they all showed us how to break everything they had. I remember Pete slamming his strat (or maybe a cheap copy) until the neck snapped which he tossed just over my head. I missed it but not for lack of effort. They broke all the drum heads, speaker cones… Basically everything on stage. There wasn’t an encore, just not possible, but what a show!!!

I remember wondering how The Association would ever be able to top that and I knew exactly which album I was going to order next from the record club.

The Association came on next, after the trash was moved, and they were fearless. Awesome with every note… Their harmonies were “right off the record” and you could hear a pin drop, well no crowd noise, as they sang “Cherish” (still my favorite Association song and my daughters name). It was really great… A perfect end to, what I remember was, a perfect night. My first and still best concert, ever!!!

Watch this first and then I’ll try to explain…

So…..The real story is not the one I told in the video. Oh, that one is true too… and the bit about my good friend “Mark the Bulldog” is more confirmation that I had little to do with this song.

My songwriting, some ten years or so ago, revolved around my hobby recording studio which I was learning to use, best described as experimental music and not even very good. The songs did however serve as my method of study, usually featuring my latest gear purchase or some newly learned technology. Not like this song at all.

My other passion was holidays. I didn’t like them. Not really the holidays themselves but what they have become. I’ve heard and read so many stories about how some conquering nation would push their beliefs on some “loser” which would then be pacified by being allowed to keep some pagan tradition incorporating it into the newly mandated belief system when they should have been left alone in the first place. Yup… I’m talkin’ Santa, The Easter Bunny, the family pet (yup, they get to go to church on their “special day” and get blessed by the preacher)… etc. We have even made Mothers Day into a religious event. Good Grief!!! Will “Saint Valentines Day” be next? Oh yea, I remember making valentines in sunday school. More Grief.

Yes… My songs were about those issues, very negative and very boastful about my beliefs.

This song is different though. It’s not negative. Quite simply it says what I believe is true, nothing more. Wow, what a concept!!! I wasn’t capable of that at the time. I was too busy making myself look better than everybody else because I knew what I knew (ever do that?).

I now know who wrote this song… and it wasn’t me.

They say that these are not the best of times
But they’re the only times I’ve ever known
And I believe there is a time for meditation
In cathedrals of our own
Now I have seen that sad surrender in my lovers’ eyes
I can only stand apart and sympathize
For we are always what our situations hand us
It’s either sadness or euphoria

And so we’ll argue and we’ll compromise
And realize that nothing’s ever changed
For all our mutual experience
Our separate conclusions are the same
Now we are forced to recognize our inhumanity
A reason coexists with our insanity
And so we choose between reality and madness
It’s either sadness or euphoria

How thoughtlessly we dissipate our energies
Perhaps we don’t fulfill each other’s fantasies
So we stand upon the ledges of our lives
With our respective similarities
It’s either sadness or euphoria