Interstate Overdrive

Gone But Not Forgotten

Grand Canyon
Originally uploaded by Iburiedpaul

Happy Birthday Dad

A Life Ends

A week ago today I got a phone call that I'll remember forever. It was my brother calling to tell me our father had died. I stood on the street in the rain and tried to comprehend the news.

Here's the obituary we wrote for the local paper:

Wendell Harvey Jones, 70, of Ridgefield, husband of Barbara (Johnson) Jones died on Thursday evening, April 3, 2008 at his home.

Mr. Jones was born in LeSeuer, MN on July 21, 1937. He was the son of Harvey and Clara (Haas) Jones.

While attending the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, he met his wife, Barbara. They were married in January of 1960. After graduating from the University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in History in 1960, he served as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1960 to 1963. In 1964, he obtained a Bachelor of Foreign Trade from Thunderbird School of Global Management.

In 1966 Mr. Jones joined the U.S. State Department as a Foreign Service Officer. From 1967 through 1968 he served as Vice Counsel and Second Secretary at the American Embassy in Jidda, Saudi Arabia. After returning to the United States, Mr. Jones pursued a career in international finance in New York City, working as a banker until 2000. He later became a substitute teacher in the Ridgefield and Danbury School systems and was briefly director of the Ridgefield Discovery Center.

Mr. Jones was an avid outdoorsman, hiking many of the peaks of New England in the summer and cross-country skiing in the winter. He instilled this love of nature in his children, who accompanied him on many family camping expeditions, from California to Maine.

As a lifelong music fan, Mr. Jones was particularly fond of country and western and rock and roll. His favorite artists included Johnny Cash, Neil Young and the Rolling Stones. He was known to often have his nose in at least three books at once, preferring historical tomes over fiction. On the weekends, he liked to cook, often following recipes clipped from the New York Times.

An area resident since 1976, he had been a resident of Ridgefield for the past twenty-two years, coming from Redding. He was a member of the First Congregational Church of Ridgefield.

In addition to his wife Barbara of 48 years, he is survived by two sons; Barrett Wendell Jones and his wife Gabriela Schneider of Washington, DC and Brendan Ronald Jones and his wife Susannah of New York, NY, a brother, Ronald A. Jones and his wife Kay of Lake Jackson, TX as well as nieces and nephews.

A memorial service will take place at noon on April 9 at the First Congregational Church of Ridgefield.

The family will receive friends following the service in Lund Hall of the First Congregational Church.

Internment will take place in Mapleshade Cemetery, Ridgefield at the direction of the family.

In lieu of flowers, his family asks that any contributions be made to the Appalachian Mountain Club, 5 Joy Street, Boston, MA 02108 (617-523-0655; http://www.outdoors.org).

Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library

I needed a book for a project and since I just needed a few pages, I decided to go to my public library. I checked online and found a copy available at the central library: Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library. I took the Metro to Gallery Place, crossed the street and entered the building. inside the door I put my bag through the x-ray machine and stepped through the metal detector, which I set off. the officer made me spread my arms out while he wanded me for guns, knives or whatever.

the central library of D.C. is not a pretty place. it may have been once, but now it's dark, grimy, and stale. after a few wrong turns I found the section I needed (Sociology). the doors were locked with a note explaining the section was closed until further notice due to maintenance. I went back downstairs and asked a librarian if a staff member could retrieve the book for me. the answer was no.


it's been forty years since James Earl Ray did what many feared and some hoped for. by 68, King had turned to economic justice for all people, black and white. he was in the midst of organizing the Poor People's Campaign, which he envisioned as the "second phase" of the civil rights movement.

the poverty rate in America has not changed since 1968. today 36.5 million Americans live in poverty (link). in the District of Columbia, 19% of the city's population live in poverty.

walking down G Street I thought about how the condition of the library reflects the condition of King's ideas of economic justice. both have suffered from years of neglect.
the leaders who gather to pay tribute to King on the anniversary of his death have done nothing to lower the poverty rate in America. when we remember Martin Luther King, Jr. we should remember his unfulfilled dream of economic justice for all Americans.

They Say It's Your Birthday

Don Cherry

help me out im just learning to sing
Originally uploaded by stereogab

my appreciation for early seventies jazz just grows and grows as time goes on. the Miles Davis stuff from those days is heavy and powerful: Live/Evil, On the Corner, A Tribute to Jack Johnson- any one of these records can peel the paint off walls.

Don Cherry was also doing some interesting stuff in the seventies. Orient is a live recording from Paris in 1971. it isn't as heavy as Miles but it is just as powerful, and more approachable. the pieces range from chaotic breakdowns to deep grooves to audience sing-alongs.

in 1971 he staged a series of jam sessions inside a geodesic dome on the grounds of the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm. this became the album Organic Music Society, also released in 1971.

Stratocaster

my new guitar
Originally uploaded by Iburiedpaul

my church is everywhere

happy easter

Video Of A Protest This Morning

Stop Bitching and Create Something Interesting

If you live in D.C. you've probably encountered someone like this woman standing on a downtown sidewalk.

these people are from Zendik Farm, a commune in West Virginia.

their slogan is "Stop Bitching Start a Revolution". this command doesn't appear to have worked so far. maybe because starting a revolution requires more than putting on a t-shirt.

I'm not bothered by hippie artist commune dwellers selling t-shirts on the street. we need more weird people selling art in our public spaces (instead of FBI t-shirts and hot links). what pisses me off about the Zendik people is their lack of imagination. they've been selling the same black t-shirt with white slogan ever since I came to D.C. ten years ago.

if you drop out of society to create art then create something interesting.

SXSW Tuesday

the music people are starting to arrive...overheard two agency guys on cell phones going over the "talking points" for some celebrity: "We'll run a voice over where she talks about how important Walmart is in her life as we show pictures of a family in a backyard"

new word learned yesterday: administrivia

fact learned today: the tune of the American national anthem is based on an old English drinking song

Glenn Otis Brown of YouTube did a really good presentation on soundtrack licensing issues for film.

ok, ya'll... I've reached the end of the last day and I'm going offline to recuperate after living like a twentysomething these past 4 days. I encourage anyone reading this to check out this conference next year. the mix of people is fantastic and Austin is a helluva party town.

SXSW Monday

at this morning's panel on "beyond the blogosphere" I got to thinking about the money thing again. is advertising the only way to generate revenue? maybe some of these big entertainment conglomerates who are getting content from the blogosphere should pay the bloggers for what they take...wouldn't that be nice?

the Taco Shack on 4th street has been key to surviving this conference

more guys in dockers and bellies are checking in at the hotel...

the afternoon's keynote by Frank Warren (postsecret) was a real tearjerker. at the Q&A a guy proposed to his girlfriend and a woman cried for her dying sister...new age secular revivalism.

last night made more recordings of jam sessions...this will eventually be edited and released on CD-R under the name Client 9

SXSW Sunday

last night on my way home from the opening party I passed a line of 7 cars each with the drivers side windows smashed...demon alcohol at work I guess. SXSW interactive conference attendees wouldn't do this, would they?

ok, here's my excuse: the hotel left a flyer in my room saying they were changing the clocks on sat when they cleaned my room, but they didn't. so I missed all the morning sessions but had a great breakfast of huevos rancheros at the counter of a bustling diner, so all's well that ends well.

today's keynote went off the rails with Sarah Lacy (Business Week) interviewing Mark Zuckerberg...as the audience becomes increasingly hostile she says "this is the problem with web 2.0"... MZ uses the word "communicate" over a dozen times...I don't buy his line; no one becomes a millionaire who's not in it for the money.

12 steps content panel: if I knew who these women were I'd probably be thrilled but not knowing who they are it didn't mean much to me.

meant to go to geek bowling but got caught up in a tide that brought me to emos which turned out to be fun...one newcastle brown too many, though...

SXSW Saturday

this morning's panel on videoblogging was really inspirational. bre pettis especially.

kinda so-so panel (The Suxorz) on the worst social networking ads of 2007.... didn't really flow...too bad, it was a great idea.

sat's keynote address: Henry Jenkins and Steven Johnson- the dilemma of "pink collar" workers (librarians were cited as one example) who have advanced education but are not challenged by their jobs so they put their energies into online gaming, fan works (organization of transformative works)....the authorities (government, corporations, educators) assume the populace is dumb. this view needs to change 180 degrees, working instead off the premise that people are smart. they might be annoying but they are not dumb.

right after that was Bryan Caplan talking about how people are dumb....go figure.

last of sat was the Onion News Network folks talking about how they do their show....got to see a piece they'd rejected as too controversial (because of the hardcore porn clips...) yet, though.

SXSW so far

Sitting on the floor of the Austin convention center, here are my first impressions:

• my hotel lobby was full of guys in crewcuts and dockers. luckily they turned out not to be SXSW conference attendees
  
• the young are taking over, or at least the young-looking
• the "Silver Dillo" runs to Whole Foods for free!
• Whole Foods Austin beats Whole Foods Silver Spring by a mile
• these people are friendly and enthusiastic, I want to give each of them my business card
• grackles make me cackle
  

Battledecks II panel: a speaker makes up a presentation on-the-fly to a random assortment of weird slides.

The Naked Cowboy's Work Ethic

I read somewhere how each morning The Naked Cowboy reads a set of inspirational snippets before heading out to play in public in his underwear. The texts are bits from classic self-help books by Anthony Robbins, Dale Carnegie etc.

D.C.'s Bad Brains (the best punk band this town ever produced) based their work ethic on a single book: Napoleon Hill's "Think and Grow Rich", a work that emphasizes the importance of Positive Mental Attitude (PMA).

I guess my inspirational text is a novel called "I Served The King of England", originally written in Czech by a wild writer named Bohumil Hrabal. That's the book I've re-read most often. It's a hero story about good fortune happening by chance amidst the random tragedies of life.

But an absurdist Czech novel doesn't seem like a good template to work off of right now. I need something more constructive...

Then again, maybe not.

Meditations on the Lunar Eclipse

As Stereogab and I stood outside watching the lunar eclipse, I thought about how much things have changed.

In other ages, an eclipse was a terrifying event.

American Indians believed that a lunar eclipse spawned a negative essence that spread over the world. If a particle of this essence landed on a cooking pot, sickness would result. So they turned all their pots over to avoid contamination and threw out their water supplies, believing they'd been tainted with this negative essence.

While we stood outside watching the moon disappear, our neighbors sat inside watching television. Cars drove by, the Metro came and went, life went on just like any other Wednesday night.

I suppose I should be glad that Science has triumphed over Superstition. But is science the reason people don't get up from the couch to watch a lunar eclipse? I read recently that 1 in 5 American adults believe the sun revolves around the earth. So maybe science isn't the reason. Maybe people have become so disconnected that they don't notice (or don't care about) the patterns of nature.

That is really terrifying.

The Next Terrastock

My Favorite Record Stores

two record stores I frequent:

True Vine is my new favorite record store and I've only been there once. The place is chaotic, almost an anti-store, which would make it more like someone's living room, which I think describes it pretty well, come to think of it. I got into a discussion with the owner/manager/clerk/head conversationalist about Wacky Packages, which was cool, especially when it devolved into a story
about riding around naked listening to Psychic TV ( I won't say whose story that was).... PURCHASES: Incredible String Band "Changing Horses" (LP), Six Organs of Admittance "Shelter from the Ash" (CD)

Another chaotic store that I love is Joe's Record Paradise. It has a completely different vibe from True Vine- more frumpy Rockville than arty Baltimore. Joe's is a maximalist place. There are the record bins, then below the bins are shelves, and in front of the shelves are cardboard boxes, all stuffed with records. I tend to spend either 10 minutes or 5 hours. It can get overwhelming. Although I recognize some of the staff after repeated visits, there's no acknowledgment that I've ever been there before.... PURCHASES: 13th Floor Elevators "Demos Everywhere" (LP), Curtis Mayfield "Back to the World" (LP)

I guess what I like about these stores is that they are completely unpredictable. You can't go in with a particular title in mind, or a shopping list. You have to just be open to whatever you encounter while flipping through the stacks. It's a cultural field trip through hairstyles and fashions, cover photo moods ("we're having fun", "we're cool", "I'm serious") and graphics.

Tune In Across the Universe

Today at 7 p.m. EST, NASA will transmit the Beatle's song "Across the Universe" towards Polaris (the north star), which is 431 light years away from earth.

The song will travel across the universe at a speed of 186,000 miles per second

according to the news release.

(Paul McCartney says: "Send my love to the aliens")

John Lennon wrote the lyrics after listening to his wife Cynthia "go on and on about something". The song was recorded forty years ago today- February 4th 1968 - at Abbey Road studios in London. It was intended for release while the Beatles were in India.

It's not my favorite Beatles song, but I like the idea of transmitting it out across the universe. It's an optimistic act; kind of egocentric, but that's what we humans are all about. We're adding a track to the Cosmic Jukebox, the Fab Four are representing Earth in an intergalactic Battle of the Bands.

Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup,
They slither wildly as they slip away across the universe
Pools of sorrow, waves of joy are drifting through my open mind,
Possessing and caressing me.

Jai guru deva om

Nothing's gonna change my world,
Nothing's gonna change my world.

Images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes,
That call me on and on across the universe,
Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letter box they
Tumble blindly as they make their way
Across the universe

Jai guru deva om

Nothing's gonna change my world,
Nothing's gonna change my world.

Sounds of laughter shades of life are ringing
Through my open views inciting and inviting me
Limitless undying love which shines around me like a
Million suns, it calls me on and on

Across the universe

This post is dedicated to my cousin Matt.