John Adams and musicians

Sabbath eve, July 2, 2010

It’s raining outside, once again. The country is green and the cattle look good. We managed to get about 4,500 bales stacked in the barn over the past two weeks and sold some hay directly from the fields as well. We also put up several hundred additional rolls of hay for our own cows.

The Southern Gulf states dodged a bullet this week when the first hurricane of the year veered west into Mexico some one hundred miles below the Texas border, in the process missing the huge oil slick floating off the coast of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. I don’t know what would have happened had the storm continued to track to the North. Let’s hope we don’t find out, for the hurricane season has just begun.

There has been a lot of speculation of late concerning the blown out well in the Gulf. Seems to me the real event is bad enough without a bunch of hysterical conjecture based on unfounded rumors circulating the Internet. Some I considered experts have proven themselves less astute than I would have expected. Despite what you may think about BP or big oil or the government, no one with an ounce of decency can be happy about what has happened and everyone worth the salt in their body wants to see the flow of oil contained. This is no conspiracy, but instead a tragic accident as human engineering and technology is pushed to its limits in search of ever harder to find sources of oil.

Leah and I have been watching a miniseries about John Adams that originally aired on HBO. I found the story interesting and inspiring. Adams is portrayed as a flawed but decent man who wrestled not only with foreign entities but also with his own people and his own doubts and shortcomings as the United States of America was founded. The way for these early American men and women was never clear; personal risk and danger accompanied decisions to revolt; joys of victory were tempered by endless new problems and trials. But somehow, Adams and the rest stood and fought for what they believed against great odds. The rest is history.

I wondered as I watched the film what a guy like John Adams or the other founding fathers would think of the country we have become.

Somehow, I doubt this is what they had in mind.

PS. Early Sabbath morn. Sorry for the worthless drivel I strained to get on a page last night. Contrary to opinion, evenings, especially Sabbath evenings are not a good time for me. I'm often tired; my mind a blur. Ray Wylie Hubbard sang of day people and night people. I am most decidedly a day person.

Concerning musicians. It has come to my attention of late that the music industry is falling on hard times. Big labels are poised to go under; along with them many "big artists". Having witnessed the kind of ass-holes some of these "big artists" become after fame comes their way, it couldn't happen to a nicer bunch.

As we slide over the edge of the peak oil cliff and into the long emergency, I envision them hiding their tour busses from repo men, probably without success and then hitching down the road, indignant that such an important person has been reduced to this. Most of these guys are in hock up to their fucking eyeballs, what we once called nigger rich (my apologies to you African Americans reading this). Plenty of bling--big shiny tour busses, fancy clothes and cars, and maybe a nice rented but never owned house walled off from the rest of the world, if not then a run down shack or an apartment they never stay at. They have forgotten where they came from, who they come from and who it is that pays their way. Here's a clue: it isn't those fucking ass-holes that run record companies, it's poor working class stiffs that scrape up a few extra hard earned dollars in search of a moment's respite from the difficult grind that life as a working man, or worse yet, an unemployed working man has become in this great land.

A word of advise to artists on the rise: you'd do well to remember where you come from. You may be headed back someday.

Soon.

PSS. Concerning the reference to nigger rich, I could just have easily used the rural white boy equivalent of a drug store cowboy: Big hat, fancy boots and spurs, no cows.