A Long Story

Once upon a time in a land faraway, which I lovingly refer to as the armpit of America, I went to the Mulberry Mountain Music Festival. It was up the pig tail in the Ozarks near Fayetteville, Arkansas. The venue was still under construction, with bulldozers grading roads, electricians wiring campgrounds, and plumbers piping the restrooms. Thunderstorms blasted overhead during the nights, bringing lightning strikes into the trees around us and knocking out the main line to the stage once. It was a rip-roaring time, in the summer of 2006.

My tickets came in return for a donation to KABF, "the voice of the people, 100,000 watts strong, out of Little Rock, Arkansas," and I went mainly to see Big Smith, the only name I recognized on the schedule. I had seen them in The Revolution Room in LR and loved their funky sound. Check them out here.

Members of Big Smith

One day, I'm sitting out in left field, chatting with a new friend, when a sound reached out and pulled me to the stage, where I found My-Tea Kind in mid-song. Up front was a beautiful, young woman who launched into French, as I arrived. She was producing amazing rhythms from a washboard, and playing it faster than anyone I had ever seen, except maybe Washboard Jackson, but that's another story.

Her name was Bonnie Paine, and two other members of the group were her sisters, Anna on the bass and Sarah on the drums. They and their cohort, James Townsend, were creating a sound like nothing I had ever heard. The key seemed to be right up front on the washboard and djembe. I was captivated. A few weeks later, I would drive two hours to reach George's Lounge, in Fayetteville, to see them again. Next, it was to Hot Springs to Maxine's, an intimate venue, where we fans outnumbered the band almost four to one, part of the time. They would play a few songs, and we would drink and chat some, before they played some more. I had photos for each of them from the Mulberry Mountain event.

At that point, Bonnie and Anna were moving from home in Tahlequah, OK, to somewhere in Colorado. I ordered their CD from CD Baby, and I also ordered a CD from Wakarusa, which contained their performance there.

I hadn't forgotten My-Tea Kind, but I hadn't played the CDs in a while, and I hadn't checked their website, either.

The last time Elephant Revival played the Top Hat, I took some pictures of their bus broken down in the alley, but I had a previous commitment, when the music started and only met the band, as they worked on the bus. When I saw them listed for a return to the Top Hat, I vowed to be there, and be there I was. I strolled in to check out these guys, whom some friends called their favorite band, and what did I see...?

No doubt about it--that's Bonnie Paine up front. She's still a spark plug, a ball of energy. Her sisters aren't here, but this band has a ton of ability and live to play for the love and fun of it. Holy shit, what a good time, and now Elephant Revival is one of my favorite bands. I await their next visit to zootown.

I love those magical times, when the energy begins to build with band and audience feeding each other, and the music begins to fly lifting folks off the floor. Let the record show one of those times occurred at the Top Hat on Friday, August 21, 2009.

Technical Difficulties & Longing for Analog

It's a lazy Sunday. I slept in a little, which is hard for me, because I am still on Daylight Savings Time, having trouble sleeping past 5 am, and ready for bed by 9:30 pm. For brunch, I baked a sweet potato, the way Uncle Bill told me to and cooked one of his Jamaican Jerk sausages. Bill makes some of the best sausage I have ever tasted. I bought these at the final Saturday market.

Kitchenpoet has been battling technical difficulties all week, the biggest being the crash of the desktop computer. I preferred working on it, rather than my laptop, for many reasons, starting with still liking XP over Vista and its having twice as many USB ports to allow everything to be connected. Down it went, taking my current work with it, declaring the system32 folder missing or corrupted, and instructing me how to repair it using the original set-up cd-rom. Said cd is in storage, in Arkansas, and there's no way I can get there before spring.

All the online experts I consulted agreed the original disk was necessary, and I responded accordingly. The first step was to rearrange computers, putting the laptop in the center of the connections for printer, portable HD, external HD, and card reader with a wireless mouse taking one of the three ports. Like I said, the other computer had enough ports to have everything hooked up. Then I began sorting, deleting, because the laptop HD had less than 2GB available. One card full of photos would overflow it. So far, I've opened up another 10GB, and the other drives have been carefully rid of debris and duplication. The palm-sized drive has 140+ available, and that will be my main working area for a while.

My laptop was a first edition Vista, and has been a pain in the ass from the beginning. I went to the stores looking for XP, but they had all been updated. Some smart sellers, in other places than Arkansas, kept some XP machines and sold all they had immediately. A cottage industry sprang up among hackers of restoring Vista machined to XP. My laptop has a little hiccup, when it loses contact with the USB ports. My warning is a bubble onscreen, which says the built-in thumb-reader, which I've never used, is disconnected and must be plugged into a USB port.

I long ago learned the simple procedure of going to the most recent restore point, and was ready, when it burped that bubble in the lower left corner. I checked my ports and found them dead as doornails. Wireless mouse won't work, along with all peripherals. Did I mention before how much I hate this little pressure pad, too? Now, all is restored, and I can get back to business.

Thinking about the cd-rom in storage, made me remember with longing my books stashed in a climate-controlled space, also in Arkansas. Those are the pictures I just found. Did I mention I've been a bookworm most of my life? I wish I could curl up next to my wood stove with some of those books, now.

We Paid for Another Swindle

Everybody keeps saying $700 billion, but the bill passed at $850 billion and that is a minimum, not a maximum. In short, we just poured another trillion dollars down another rat hole, and the economy continues to sink. Kiss that money and the promised benefits good-bye. The only benefit will be to make the rich richer. Timeslip: amount may double.

Thank the powers that be, Bush and his neo-con cronies didn't get social security privatized, or it would be gone, too!

Note: McCain has campaigned for privatizing social security. Of course, he might not bring that issue up right now. Note: Obama supported the bail-out, in spite of the overwhelming public opposition.

I came to Montana from Arkansas, where the congressional delegation was particularly wimpy towards Bushite legislation, but I thought it was different here. Tester is different and I like him a lot, but Baucus appears to be another corporate democrat. I must recontact the Backbone Organization and get more of their "spineless tickets" to send to representatives who sell out. My first one goes to Baucus. That is just because he is the closest and most recent example of a Democrat being a wuss. I want tickets for Pelosi and Reid, too. Who put them in charge?

Our system no longer rewards excellence; it rewards mediocrity. Our leadership is mediocre in every category, on both sides of the aisle. Will someone, please, have the guts to step forward and say we must end this war. I'll send Obama a ticket for saying the "surge" worked. Bullshit! We've segregated Iraq and built walls to keep everyone separated. It's a reverse of the cold war, when the Soviets built the walls.

Wal-Mart touches my life, again

I thought I was through with Wal-Mart, except for an occasional shopping venture, because, damn it, their prices are lower. Some of the ways they keep their prices lower piss me off. Wal-Mart is a leader in the reduce-American-workers-to-serfdom movement. They brag about the jobs they create and now employ one and a half million workers, excuse me, "associates," in this country. Studies show for every job they create, however, 1 1/2 jobs are lost. Thus, Wal-Mart has caused 750,000 people to lose their jobs.

When my parents moved to Arkansas, I told them they wouldn't see much of me, because I didn't care much for the place. I was true to my word and could count on one hand the number of times I visited them over the next 20 years. Yes, I know I was a bad son. Taking a sabbatical from the crowding and pollution of southern California, I headed out to tour the country, in 1998, and included a visit with my parents.

On a previous visit, my Pop, then in his mid 70s, was building fence. He was building fence from scratch, cutting down trees, sawing them to length, splitting them into posts, digging the holes, planting the posts and stretching the barbed wire. He was unhappy he couldn't do it as fast as he once did.

This time, he was approaching hip replacement surgery with some apprehension. I'll never forget him, afterwards, in that hospital bed, looking like a scrawny bird in a nest of cables and tubes.

Mom outweighed me by nearly 100 pounds and did not leave her recliner except to go to bed, eat her meals and visit the restroom, in spite of the constant entreaties from doctors to exercise some. It would have taken a cattle prod to get her moving, and I didn't have the toughness to use one. She later would slide to the point of being late to the restroom, if you catch my drift.

What does this have to do with Wal-Mart? I stayed, in Arkansas, to nurse my parents for the next eight years, and Wal-Mart was the only game in town for employment. They were constantly hiring, because their annual turnover ran above 60%. Don't be intimidated. I'm not going to detail all the crap I experienced over those years, or the many times management lied. I would like to give a warning. If a boss tells you a business is run like a big, happy family, he has incest in mind and you are going to get fucked.

To be fair, the insurance was not bad, and I signed up to have the cost withheld from my meager wages. It paid $70,000 for a hospital stay in 2005, when I learned about abdominal adhesions and how painful they can be. After Pop died the following May (Mom was already gone in 2002), I dithered about continuing to work for Wal-Mart in order to keep the insurance coverage. A month later, I walked.

I received two paychecks the month I walked, insurance was withheld from both, and my insurance should have been paid through the end of the month. I saw a doctor that month, and my insurance paid. This month, I received an invoice for that office visit, because last month Wal-Mart took their money back, saying my insurance had been terminated. Two years later, they decided I wasn't covered, even though they took fees for the coverage.

Writing is good therapy. When I started this, I was cussing a blue streak and ready to rip someone's head off. Transcribing events makes them a little more palatable. It also makes me realize I have a lot more to say about Wal-Mart. I'm sure I have enough material for an article, and I'm wondering about a book.

Next month, University Press of Mississippi is publishing a book entitled Covering for the Bosses: Labor and Southern Press, by Joseph B. Atkins. Joe sent an email saying I am quoted "at some length" in the chapter on Wal-Mart. Not wanting to repeat myself, I need to read that book before I say more about the world's largest retailer. I may have to wait a while, due to the $45 price tag on the book.

I have to say a little more, now. The first year I worked at Wally World, the Tire, Lube, Express department, in the course of a standard oil change, forgot to replace the oil. The omission considerably diminished the quality of service, as the engine seized up within a short time. It didn't make the news, but I heard a rumor and asked a TLE associate for confirmation. Not only was it true, but he admitted the same thing happened twice the year before. At that point, I began to collect articles about the company I worked for and continued to do so for the full eight years. Maybe, I could write a book.