From Serenades to Solos: My Musical Evolution

When I was younger and living in San Rafael, my father occasionally serenaded us. He played guitar and sang.  Most often, it was songs by Jim Reeves or Hank Williams- people like that.  I say serenade us, but we were not always in the room. The sound carried to all parts of the house. Other than Reeves or Williams, one he played and sang that we all liked went like this,

“Whiskey, Rye Whiskey, Rye Whiskey I cry.

If I don’t get Rye Whiskey, I think I will die.”

Here is Pete Seeger’s version of Rye Whiskey.

Tex Ritter did it more the way my father did; see that here.

This was a favorite. There is a part where the singer howls in a drunken stupor. Then, he has a pronounced “Hiccup.”  The way he did it always made us laugh.  We gathered to clean his apartment after he had died. My brother, sister, and I sang it again. We sang it just the way he used to.

Listening to my father sing was entertaining, but sometimes you wanted to escape it. The repetition of the songs could get tiresome. This was especially true if he was attempting to learn a new one. As far as I recall, my mother was almost always in the room. He needed an audience, even if it was only one person. A couple more listened, even though they were trying to do other things.

One of his other favorites was “Tumble-weeds.” This is the Sons of the Pioneers version. My father always sang it alone.  But once, when my brother and his son visited him, they worked up a version in three-part harmony. My father later played a tape made that day for me over the phone. It sounded as good as any time I have heard of it done professionally.

My father played the trumpet as a kid, and I remember him playing when I was young. I think he gave up on it, though, after losing his two front teeth in a minor traffic accident. Having tried to even get a sound out of it, I can understand why it had to be given up. After he died, we were visiting our aunt. She told me how he had just picked up an old trumpet as a kid. He started playing it one time. She said she was out in the yard one day while my father was playing the trumpet.  She told me a neighbor stopped by to ask her who was on the radio. She said, ‘That is not the radio; it is my brother.’ As I remember, he sounded like he knew what he was doing.  How he learned to do this, I am not sure.  I don’t think they had the money for any kind of lessons.

My mother was also musical. She played flute in High School, but she was not quite the exhibitionist my father was. She would play occasionally when we were younger. However, she usually did not participate in any family gatherings. We also had an old, beat-up piano that everyone banged on from time to time. We grew up among these instruments. It was only a matter of time before we started to get interested in playing something ourselves.  

My sister was the first of us to officially pursue a musical endeavor.  Elementary schools still had music programs at this time. The big thing to start with was the violin.  She got one of the violins from her class and was off.  We would hear her in her room practicing.  She also tried to play the piano after learning the basics of music. As she grew older, she transitioned to the viola. She got up very early for school so she could go to practice. She would attend a full day of school, come home, do her schoolwork, and practice some more.  I remember attending many concerts where she played.

My brother was not interested in the violin, or maybe he was. But he took a different path from my sister. He was more interested in my father’s guitar. Initially, this was an old Harmony archtop.  When my father found a used Harmony Sovereign at a pawn shop, my brother inherited the older model.  They even sent him to an official lesson. Eventually, my brother got an electric bass guitar for his birthday.  Soon, he joined a rock band with a couple of friends. They actually played and won a local “Battle of the Bands” and also played at my seventh-grade dance.

My brother went on from there, of course.  He eventually got a tenor banjo for his birthday. He was disappointed that it wasn’t the five-string banjo he had asked for. As a result, he never took it out of the case. After the rock band split up, he joined a folk group where he served as the guitarist. They did a few regular folk songs and some novelty songs. They had fun playing, but it never went anywhere. Rock bands were still in demand, not this type of stuff. By college, he had gotten himself into a bluegrass band playing guitar. They played at pizza restaurants and one time opened for Doc Watson.

Where was I in my musical upbringing? Nowhere.  For some reason, no one was interested when it came time for me to get my musical instruction.  No one wanted to get roped into spending money on a school-sponsored violin.  When I picked up the guitar, no one wanted to show me a few chords. They were not interested in my attempts to make music. I knew nothing about music.  No one figured I was really interested enough to actually stick to learning anything.

I am not sure why no one took my interest seriously. Sitting and listening was the closest I could get to doing anything related to music.  I listened to my father, mother, and sister with her various orchestral offerings and a succession of my brother’s bands.  Occasionally, with my brother’s group, I was responsible for adjusting knobs and pushing buttons. I recorded the session on a tape recorder. But that job was only needed when they practiced at our house. No one seemed interested in my desire to learn to play anything seriously. They didn’t let me decide how serious I wanted to be. What about that neglected tenor banjo my brother had? He wouldn’t let me use it even if he had no interest in it. If I were to do anything musically, I would have to do it alone.

There was one time we got together and did something musical. My sister was not there because she had moved out to attend college.  Among the other musical interests mentioned, my father sang in barbershop quartets. (One of the groups he was in agreed to sing at my wedding, discussed elsewhere here.)  There is a song that quartets sing as a novelty piece.  It is called the “Nursery Rhyme Song.”  It comprises four nursery rhymes, one for each singer and all in different melodies. These interlace in an intricate manner when sung. One part by itself is not particularly interesting. But when taken together, the parts form a really neat-sounding, albeit very short, song in barbershop harmony.

My father was the baritone. My mother would have been the lead. My brother was the bass, and I was a falsetto tenor.  I say falsetto because my voice had deepened at an early age. I could control it well enough at a range much higher than my speaking voice would suggest.  It took us hours to get the parts right.  Then, for hours more (or it seemed), we sang it all together. We continued until the changes and interlaced lines merged correctly.  It was a lot of fun, one of the more enjoyable things I remember doing as a family.  Then, we stopped for the night, and we never did that or any other singing again.  Here is a link to a group doing this song. It’s not exactly how we did it, but you get the idea. Our version did not include the cheesy choreography. We also skipped the short rendition of the Mickey Mouse Club theme song at the end.

My father returned to his childhood home for a funeral. He brought back a small tenor banjo. He had had it as a kid.  It was dirty, scratched, broken, and generally unplayable.  That was the instrument I was given to express my musical talent.  This reminds me of another thing.  The first camera I got was old and broken as well.  I had to prove my interest in anything by receiving a broken item. If I could fix it, I was allowed to keep it. I fixed the camera, but I will never know how.  

I took that banjo apart. I cleaned it up and refinished it. Then I put it together again. This way, I could play whatever music it might still have in it. It really was not an instrument of any high quality.  It was not something that anyone who knows instruments would have taken the time or money to repair.  That is what I had at that point.  The funny thing is that I discovered a way to play it.

Initially, I tuned it as a regular tenor banjo. I attempted to play it using real tenor banjo chords. I found these chords in a tenor banjo songbook. I could do that, but it was boring.  Then, I discovered what is known as open tuning. This was a bit easier and seemed to be more versatile.  What I really needed, though, was a 5-string banjo that was more suited to this open-style tuning.  Pete Seeger had a show (Rainbow Quest) on the local educational channel, which is now PBS. I would watch him. I observed how he played. I purchased an affordable 5-string banjo. I found it in a music store in San Francisco. I was off to a good start.  Soon, I developed my version of how Pete Seeger played, closest to a style known as “Claw-Hammer.”  I created my own version of how others played. I wasn’t sure if it was a genuine style. I could play similarly anyway.  

I liked regular bluegrass 3-finger picking at the time, too, but I could never get the hang of that.  So, when I played, people thought it was interesting. But it was not what they typically heard from a banjo. It was different from the theme song of  “The Beverly Hillbillies.” They were not very interested for long.  I was okay with that, though.  I was finally playing a real instrument, even though I had to wait until I could afford one.

Eventually, I purchased a guitar from the same music store where I had bought the banjo. I learned to play it, too. I was not really proficient. However, I was passable. I had no real encouragement and no music training. This probably limited me, but it also let me experiment with different ways to finger-pick or tune it.

My brother had always been a pretty good guitarist. As a kid, I had listened for hours at a time. He played the same song repeatedly.  With my own guitar, I learned to play much later. I reached a point where I could play a version of this same song my way. I played it ( Suze (The Cough Song) – Bob Dylan) for him once.  He was surprised and asked me where I had learned it. I told him it had just come to me and that I finally remembered that he had played it. I could never tell how he used all four fingers and his thumb.  He looked at what I was doing. He could not figure out how I was getting a very similar sound to his. I managed this with only two fingers and a thumb.

This was a fun time for me, and I got to play guitar with him.  I played one other thing that he did not know I could play.  I started playing my version of it (Hard Hearted Hannah (The Vamp of Savannah), and he came in playing his. (I am not suggesting that I was as good as this linked version. If I could play like that, I would have quit my day job.) It was the same song, just done slightly differently.  We played it that first time, and it blended really well.  He asked where I learned to play it that way. I said it was from memory of listening to how he had done it long ago. Of course, living as far away as I did was not conducive to this sort of get-together very often.  In fact, it never happened again.

I occasionally played with other people. Nothing really serious. I was just jamming with an old high school friend. When I was a messenger driver in San Francisco, I would play with one of the other drivers after work. We jammed when we were not drinking. I was into it even when I was not playing. I watched other guitarists closely. I looked for anything new I could add to my own technique.

During this period, I decided I could afford a better banjo. I upgraded and sold my first one for almost what I had paid originally.  I continued playing, just for my own enjoyment.  I seemed to stagnate in what I was doing, though.  I reached a point where it seemed I was just doing the same things all the time.  When I arrived at my current home, I purchased a mandolin at a pawn shop.  I thought it might add a new wrinkle to things to try something different.  It helped for a while. I never got to the point where I could do much on the mandolin. Maybe a better one would change that, so I traded up, selling the original.  I think the original actually was a better instrument.  I should have kept it.

A few years ago, I bought another guitar.  It was an upgrade from my original, but as it turns out, I have not played much since then.  Partially, this is due to a neuropathy. It makes my fingers not go where I want them to. They don’t go when I want, or hold the chords as tightly as I need to. It is hard to pick with a thumb that does not move correctly.  My current lack of coordination between my left and right hands is irritating. I seem to have lost interest in continuing, at least as often as I used to. My parents were probably right.  I never would have kept up with an instrument.

Another example of Judy’s writing

My wife hid much of her life from me for reasons unknown. It has now been six years since she passed, and I continue to find hints and pieces of that unknown life she chose to keep secret.


She was the valedictorian of her high school class. She earned “Honors at Entry” for college and graduated with high honors in three years. She never told me any of this. It was all discovered in a long-forgotten box behind another box, on a shelf, totally in plain sight.


In another box, I found a sample of her writing. She was in her first two quarters of college when she wrote this. She would not like me sharing it, but I will take it down if she complains. I would take that now.


Three Slants on Spring
by Judy- sometime in late 1970


1
“Do you believe me when I say I love you?”

“Of course, hon.”


Ah, spring and young lovers, thought Liddie, watching the young couple amble past her. “Have you ever noticed how they go together?” she said aloud to no one, since she walked alone down her favorite path.


“Oh, it feels so good just to be alive,” she whispered eagerly to a bunch of flowers, nodding agreement in the breeze. She tested the stream water with her hand. Finding it not excessively cold, she slipped off her shoes and dangled her feet into the water. Many happy hours were spent this way until she sensed rather than saw someone. She asked, “Who’s there?”


“Just me. I saw you and wondered if you knew it was getting late. You seemed so lost in your thoughts.”

“Thanks, Tom, you came along just in time to walk me home. How about a snack when we get there?”

“That sounds great to me.”


2
“Hey, you, get the hell out of here. Get away from my trash cans. “

The old bum moved slowly away from what looked like a prospective lunch. Spring, he thought, who needs it? What with all the mud? His mind stopped. Then, aloud, he spat, “Flowers. Yes, flowers, you can’t eat them. They are just a bothersome bunch of weeds.”


He trailed on, a dejected walking rag. He stopped before a rain barrel, reached for an old dirty sock in his pocket, and unceremoniously began scrubbing it. When he was satisfied, he stuffed it back into his pocket. By now, he was hungry. He ambled back to the old shack at the edge of the track, entered, and found his friend Joe.


“Well, Joe, how was your day?”


“Rotten and listen, if you say one damn word about spring. . .”


3
“Why don’t you Russians get out of Czechoslovakia? Why can’t you leave us alone?”

The elderly woman watched as the young rebels pitted their words against the iron tanks of the Russian soldiers. It’s no use, she thought. She called out in despair, “For God’s sake, don’t agitate them!”


The rebels, unheeded, renewed their bombardment of the soldiers.


“It’s not fair,” murmured the old lady. “It’s spring; the young should be occupied with love, with, yes, with the spirit of forgiveness.” She looked again at the scene that stirred her blood. Yet they were giving their country pride—pride that they would not give up their freedoms without a struggle—freedom to feed their own and determine their destiny.


She mused aloud, “Why do they have to grow up so fast, missing the beauty of spring? America with its boundless wealth, its love, and its flowers. The young people there walk among the flowers during spring. Why not here?”


The elderly woman turned in time to see one of the enraged soldiers cut down a young man. She crumpled to the sidewalk in unconcealed sobs. Silence descended over the group. A thin wail came from the sidewalk where the old women sobbed, “My son will now only see the spring flowers from a grave. Why?”

Weird technology in my world—

Currently (pun intended), I own a 2024 Prius Prime plug-in Hybrid.

Soon after buying this, I found it flashing warning messages I wasn’t aware existed. My car has criticized my posture, telling me to “Sit Up!” and reminded me to pay attention by flashing “Driver Inattention Detected” on the main screen. That’s fine. It only told me to sit up once. And it has slowed down on reminding me to pay attention, so I guess I must be paying better attention, or at least getting better at looking around while keeping my head forward.

This was different.

I was driving home through town in the center lane of three lanes. A huge four-wheel pickup was in front of me at a red light. When the light turned green, in the space of one block, he went to the left lane, crossed to the right lane, and back to the left again, eventually turning left.

I said aloud, “What the heck are you doing?” or words to that effect.

My car’s feminine voice said, “I can’t understand what you are saying. Speak more clearly . . .”

That may not be the exact wording. Of course, I said, “Was I talking to you? I don’t think so.”

It didn’t respond. Of course.

In theory, the system can respond to specific commands if I start with the words, “Hey Toyota…” If the pickup truck had been a Toyota, I may have said, “Hey, Toyota driver, what are you doing?” But it wasn’t a Toyota.

There are also two buttons, one on the steering wheel and the other on the center console display. The one on the display requires me to lean and touch a small microphone icon, which may prompt the car to remind me to pay attention. The button on the steering wheel requires a definite push. Not to say it can’t be done by mistake, but my left hand wasn’t near the button, and trying to reach that button isn’t the easiest thing to do unintentionally.

Whatever I said, the car heard something that sounded like “Hey, Toyota. ” Since related tech like Siri and Lexus listens and responds to commands, it makes me wonder if everything I say is going to the Toyota Mother Ship so it can respond quickly to anything preceded by the command I never said.

So, my short relationship with my car’s female alter ego is over. The feature allowing the “Hey Toyota” keyword prompt is turned off now. If I need a voice command, the two buttons still work. Hearing “her” respond to my cussing at the truck’s driver was a bit creepy.

The Scene

This is another example of my wife’s writing from her college days. I used this one as a “prompt” for a novel I am working on.

The Scene

The girl looked out the window as she had done many times before. The scene that met her eyes was a well-known one. Having only one window in her room allowed that one scene to be firmly imprinted on her brain. She knew every change in the scene through every season. Right now, it was winter. The cold, hard snow and the expressionless buildings matched the weary face that searched their never-changing shapes.

She jumped as a book crashed into a wall. Now, she became conscious of what she had tried to block out. Her parents’ angry voices drifted into her awareness. The sounds grew louder and filled her tiny room until she thought she would scream.

Fear raced through her body, leaving her nervous and trembling. Would this be the time? Would this end as one of her terrible nightmares, with her walking into the room to find her mother cut to bloody pieces? Her head started to swim. Her room danced in front of her eyes. Fear overcame her again. She sat at the edge of her bed, trying to control the thoughts racing through her head. On and on went the screams of hatred in the other room. Thousands of pictures raced, stumbling through the young girl’s brain—picture after picture, flashes of hate, of fear, of the ever-haunting scene out her window.

* * * * *

People tried to talk me out of this apartment when I tried to rent it. They said you can still see the blood splattered on the walls where an insane man killed his wife. He’s locked up now, of course. A crazy man can’t be allowed to roam the streets. They also said the tiny room with one window was haunted, but I didn’t believe them. It is spring, and the scene is striking.

Thanksgiving

I woke up at 6 am this morning, by my current standards, sleeping in. My first thought was, “I’m gonna be late.” Late to what?

It is, after all, Thanksgiving morning. Every place I might think to go and write for a few hours is closed today. I am a creature of habit. Even to this relatively new habit that drives me now.

I can write here at home, and I will try to later. But it isn’t the same as getting out.

Even now my personal work ethic won’t let me rest. Hmm. I have noticed that this same work ethic doesn’t ensure I clean the house as often as I should. I am “good” in my aloneness. But I still want to be included in something. Even if it is just being a part-time writer and greeter for the morning regulars at a cafe downtown

My Christmas mood- now and then

December 20, 2020

The soundtrack of my Christmas memories as a child was provided to a major extent, by one Christmas record. This record was by a group you might have heard of; 101 Strings, and was called “Christmas Moods.”  At the time, it had come to be included in my family Christmas memories as a promotional “gift” given with a fill-up at a gas station. (Now I am happy to get gas a few cents a gallon cheaper once in a while.)

The other trappings of my childhood Christmas memories are long gone. They either wore out when still in use or were lost when my parents parted ways just after I graduated from college. Even this original recording was lost with the rest of the family records. But the memories are still there; how hearing it played, heralded the start of each Christmas season. My sister made sure of it. The second the last of the Thanksgiving feast was put away, out came Christmas, starting when she played this record for the first time of the season.

Over the years, my siblings managed to replace it. My sister found a copy of the record in a garage sale. My brother found a re-release compact disc version in which the producers had added in a few other songs to fill out the length of the CD. I took that CD version and made us copies that included only the memories of the original recording. It sounds just like the original release, minus the skip that later developed from our LP being played too many times on a record player that was a bit sketchy as far as quality goes.

I never had kids myself, or I am sure this same recording would have been a part of their memories as well. And even though I had no children, hearing this recording still triggers the memories of being a kid at Christmas for me. Whatever the memories of my childhood are related to other subjects I may explore at times in these writings, my memories of Christmas are pretty good. And they can be summoned by playing this record that provided the backdrop of our holiday family gatherings.

When I first had an idea to write a piece for this blog about my Christmas memories, it came at a time in the night that I was awake and unable to sleep. The piece I wrote in my head then was perfect, as things usually are in memories. When I later tried to write it down, I just could not get it right. It was all too much to keep straight. Listening to this music now, I realize that the most important part of my memories of Christmas came from it. The music is still there. The memories are still there.

To the friends I know are out there, and those readers I do not know;

Have a Merry Christmas!

And may you all find the link to those memories you cherish the most, at any time of the year.

Camp Fire- Paradise Ca, The Second Anniversary

November 01, 2020

November 8, will be the second anniversary of the Camp Fire, which burned the majority of the town of Paradise off of the map.

Judy and I were there that morning. We shouldn’t have been. We didn’t know what was happening. I relied on warnings from my phone to alert me that we were driving into danger. Residents in Paradise had been told that the fire was far away and moving away from them. The warnings I waited for were never sent. The fire was moving way too fast, and even if we had checked before leaving home, it is likely we would have been told it was fine up there.

The reason we were even attempting to go to Paradise that morning was that Judy had an appointment at the Feather River Cancer Center.

When we went out to my car, I could tell something about the sun did not look right. Before I realized the strange light was being caused by smoke, I mentioned to Judy that I hoped we could even get up to her appointment. We had tried weeks earlier to get a quicker appointment based on the speed her lymph nodes were growing. We had been turned down. That made it more important to get up there, or at least to try.

Once we were on the freeway starting the trip, of course, we had a better view of the smoke, but I could not tell where it was related to where we were going. I know, we should have pulled over and called ahead. From what we found out later, they were either already gone, or they would not have had any information about the fire’s location. The residents had been told early on that Paradise was in no danger. Nothing looked out of the ordinary except for the smoke. As we got closer to Paradise, everyone we could see appeared to be doing the usual things we see them do when we are on the way up there.  The smoke was ominous appearing; I could hear ash falling onto my car. But people were out in their yards seemingly unaware of anything out of the ordinary. 

On Pearson near Pentz Road, it even got sunny for a stretch on the way up. I remember telling Judy that maybe the fire wasn’t going to be a problem, after all. We turned left from Pearson to Pentz, and it was like entering a nightmare. We had not seen any first responders the entire trip up. That is because they were already up along Pentz.

We turned in at the Cancer Center; a guy was there with his Smartphone. He motioned for us to stop. “Whatever you are here for, it is canceled. They are evacuating the hospital. Follow the road down and to the left, and back up to Pentz.” I looked in the direction he pointed. The fire was just then coming up over the edge of the canyon. It seemed to me it would have been easier and quicker to turn around right where we were. And safer.  I decided he must have a good reason to keep that entry clear, and I drove down to the edge of the canyon. I had never stopped there to take in the view before this, and I did not stop now. I knew exactly what I would see if I got out to look. The fire was that close.

Our trip back down Pentz was more harrowing than it had just been a couple of minutes earlier. There were the beginnings of burning embers blowing across the road as we made our way to Pearson. I had a choice of turning right on Pearson or trying to get back down along Pentz. Since Pentz followed along the edge of the canyon for a while, and I didn’t know the fires exact location, I decided to turn right back down Pearson. I knew that traffic probably would be gridlock going this way, but I knew also that as slow as we might be going, it would take us away from the fire. A quarter-mile or so down Pearson, where it had been sunny just a few minutes earlier, it was as dark as midnight. And the traffic was stopped. A sign that had not been noticeable there a bit earlier mocked us; “Evacuation Route.” The arrow pointed downhill. That much was a plus.

This section of Pearson has a couple of ridges it crosses. The traffic had stopped at the bottom of a switchback on the downhill portion of the first ridge. The hilly terrain here may have saved us. But from what I heard later, the fire was much closer now than I realized. It was just being blocked from view by the ridge. It was a two-lane road here, and the uphill lane was periodically taken over by a first responder headed in the direction of the fire. Checking the rearview mirrors, there was a reddish glow to the smoke.

Then suddenly, there would be a caravan of emergency vehicles headed downhill. I later realized that amongst these vehicles, was the remaining group of workers evacuating from the hospital, having been rescued after a Cal Fire Bulldozer operator had taken matters into his own hands and pushed broken down cars off of Pearson Road.  As I said, it was happening much closer to us than I had known at the time.

Overall, I remained calm. It would not help at that point to lose control. And since Judy had pretty bad anxiety around that time, I knew I had to make things seem OK, even if on the inside everything was telling me it was otherwise.

At one point when traffic had barely budged on a flatter section of Pearson for what seemed like an eternity, suddenly I saw this young guy was skateboarding along the side of the road just like all of this was an everyday experience for him. I turned to Judy to point him out to her saying, “Now, there is something you don’t see every day.” If we hadn’t been in this situation, I might have started laughing. Nothing we had seen so far fit the category of being in any way an everyday sight. Judy was beyond even noticing him. Wherever she had escaped to, I let her stay there. I had to stay alert through all of it. Everything seemed out of sync with reality.

There wasn’t a lot of anything we were seeing that would fit into a normal “everyday” experience. Just down from the skateboarding guy, we saw a group of four men standing out along the road drinking coffee. Just another leisurely morning drinking coffee with the guys. They didn’t seem to have a care in the world. It could be they did not know yet why we were all out there. Or they were waiting for the traffic to clear so they could join it. Someone ahead of us must have asked them if they knew a shortcut to get back to Skyway ahead of the traffic. The men pointed out the directions and talked to the people in the car. The car turned off at the next intersection. Judy and I knew though that there would be no shortcuts out of Paradise now. We stuck to the designated evacuation route. Well, I knew anyway. Judy wasn’t talking at this point.


It was nerve-wracking barely inching along in traffic when I knew the fire was advancing on us and it would not care if the traffic wasn’t moving. We were lucky. We managed to stay ahead of the main fire. I kept watching the rearview mirrors, both for fire and for people passing in the uphill lane. There were just enough first responders still coming uphill that made me worry- what if that guy forces his way back into this lane and causes an accident in front of us. Or, what if the fire “spots” to a place ahead of us and cuts off our escape route?


By the time we got back to the Skyway, I could see that the fire had “spotted” into the Butte Creek Canyon side of Paradise. We knew people who lived there, just as we knew many people in Paradise. The guys directing traffic at the intersection were noticeably frantic. I could see on their faces that they were completely aware of the location of the fire and that we needed to get moving. Very glad to oblige if you can get these guys in front of us to cooperate.


Just as we were getting to the intersection, they must have received the OK to open all four lanes for downhill use. Judy voiced a request to stay on the usual downhill side. That was fine with me. I know that if she had to face one more out of the ordinary thing on this trip, she could go over to a full-blown panic attack. As it was, I wondered how she was managing.

We had a brief faster period of traffic before the Chico congestion backed-up on us, but I was pretty sure by then that the fire was not going to catch up with us. Judy told me later that we had stopped 12 times on the Skyway due to heavy traffic. Thinking back, I know I was more concerned about the stops back in Paradise. I think she must have blocked the memory of that part of the trip.

I could tell by looking at the smoke in the rearview mirror that the fire was bad behind us, but I never saw the flames then. . . Overall we did OK on the trip down. We never should have been up there, but I am happy that we got out without any long-term impacts.

The next day when we woke at seven, it was still dark. The sun should have risen around 6:45. Judy didn’t want to go out, but I knew we had to. I needed to get her out of the house or she might go into a depression it would be difficult to overcome. As we drove downtown to our usual spot for coffee at around 10 am, it still looked like midnight. I drove with my headlights on. All of the streetlights were still on. We didn’t see the sun at all that day and most of the next. It was the first of many days to follow when nothing would be normal.

As sick as Judy was by then, she still opened up our home to take in a couple we knew who had lost everything in the fire. They moved on again as soon as they could. They could tell Judy wasn’t well enough to have house guests for any reason, even though they needed the place to stay.

Judy and I returned to our daily trip to our favorite café. The fire was still burning but firefighters were making progress especially on the main fire break between us and Paradise. The conversations we heard or took part in were about the fire.

On one such day, Judy and I sat at a table near the front entrance. My view allowed me to be the first to see a group of five Cal Fire personnel walking towards the entrance. I stood up and opened the door for them.  As they filed past me, I started clapping. People already at tables turned and saw them. Soon, everyone in the room had stood and started clapping and cheering. I was close to tears.  There are still issues I have to work through.

The ranking firefighter came towards us after getting his coffee and told me and Judy that it was their honor to serve our community and thanked us for being there.  “There is nothing that special about us,” he told us.  “We are human and it gets to us too. Last night when I was taking a shower, I broke down.”

“We were up there the morning it started, I said. “And even though we didn’t lose property, I have lots of issues about just being caught in the evacuation. I was close to breaking down myself ever since I saw you come in.” 

Healing is a long-term thing for first responders and victims of trauma. 

Around that time, it had become apparent that Judy’s doctor would not be seeing patients here in town for a long time. I had suggested she should switch to a doctor in Chico. She said no. And her Paradise doctor eventually relocated to Chico. But, things like this don’t happen overnight. There was quite a delay in her treatment. And, maybe this delay had no overall impact on her. But it couldn’t have helped matters.

I still haven’t been back to Paradise. I have no real need to be up there at this point.

It is a funny thing about being in that evacuation. I had seen a lot of videos on the television news of people trying to outrun a wildfire. And I usually yelled at the TV, “What the hell were you even doing up there!?!” Now, I knew. It was just bad luck. You don’t have to seek opportunities to be in the way of things that can kill you. Life is good enough at providing them; it doesn’t need your help. 

Good writing can make you cry- now

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

It can make me cry, anyway.

Of the relatively small list of people I have as good friends, five that I know of, write. One of those has published five novels. Another one is close to publishing her first book. Another could and should write a book about her life but she doesn’t think anyone other than friends would buy it. No doubt, she is wrong about that. Another friend wrote a blog for a while, a very good blog too. Then there are a couple who just write in journals. It all counts. Any of those writing outlets qualify. All of these people I know who write, however they do it, or for how many or few people are aware of them, they are all writers.

I always had an interest in writing, but I was afraid to even try. Like my one friend who thinks no one would be interested in reading about her life outside her group of friends, I feared that even if I was successful in writing anything, what would be the point if no one read it? I have recently decided that writing is the most important part of this process. So what if no one reads it?

In 2013 I met an amazing friend, the one mentioned above who is making the finishing touches of her first book. When she told me that she was a writer, I assumed she must have already written something that I could find and purchase to read for myself. No, it was not ready yet. Her work was for the most part still in handwritten journals. She had made a few entries on a blog at that time, so we traded blog addresses.

For those of you who wonder what made me think I could be a writer, instead of just another blogger, it is her fault that you are reading this now. Ah, it is still on a blog, that is true. But, as I said, it doesn’t matter how or what or why you write. It is all about the process. That is what counts.

This friend told me, after reading a few of my blog posts, that I not only was a writer but that I was a good writer. I still have my doubts about how good a writer I am. But, I know I am a better writer now than I was when we met. What changed was that before I met her, I had doubts about my abilities. When a good writer believes in your writing, it can do wonders for your confidence.

I started this by saying that good writing can make you cry. And if you guessed that it was something this friend had written that caused this reaction in me, you would be correct. I had known she was good. I could tell after reading the first short blog entries.

I should have been ready for the blog entry that made me cry. It snuck up on me. I guess I thought I had gotten used to her style to the point that this reaction wasn’t possible. Why was this post so good? She simply described a series of short scenes that make up a typical day for her now. I found myself seeing every detail in what she had written. She had succeeded in pulling me close to three thousand miles cross country to view the scenes as she had experienced them. Of course, it could help in this case that I haven’t seen her since 2014. Maybe just a little.

Early on in our friendship, I spoke of myself as being a writer in a new blog post I shared with her. When she read that post, this was the most important part for her. She liked that post, but she was happiest that I had referred to myself as being a writer.

Before she moved across the country, I had shared with her an idea I had for a story. We talked about the idea a few times. She helped me focus on the early stages of the plot, telling me that my first plot ideas seemed a bit too unbelievable and that it was important to have your readers trust you and where the story was taking them. We talked about the overall motivation of each of the main characters.

By the time she knew she was to move out of state, I had developed a full story that I shared with her. She was surprised that I had thought it through to the end as quickly as I had. She liked the ending. She told me I should write it. Easy for her to say. When we said goodbye, she told me to keep writing. All I had to do was figure out the start, and how to get to the end. That process would take me another six years, always focusing on how to get to the last scene.

Quite a bit happened in those six years that proved to be a major distraction to my writing. But, those things which distracted me also were possible fodder for the story, I knew I eventually would have to write about. And if I could work my life trauma into the plot, I would only have to write about the trauma one time. Why not use them for the book?

And now, six years later, the book is more or less finished. I say more or less because I know somewhere along the line, I will make a few changes I have already been thinking about. I have given the book to three “first readers”, friends who had said they would be interested in reading it when I had finished. That was two months ago at this point. I guess they have lives that are in the way.

And I am fine with that.

It isn’t like I am thinking about publishing it at this point. The writer I know who has published five books asked me, “What are you working on now?” I told her, “Nothing”. And, I am fine with pausing at this point. Will I write more? It depends on ideas. What about this one that is all but finished. Will I publish it? I am not sure of that. The important thing for me is that I had the idea. I started it, and even though some extreme life trauma interrupted my progress, I stuck to it, even if progress for a time was made simply by thinking about what might happen next. Is it anything anyone else would be interested in reading? Hmm. If I take into account how long it has taken for my three volunteer readers to read it, it is probably only of interest to me and maybe my friend the writer, the one who made me cry.

The writer who made me cry so unexpectedly. By making me see and feel what she had seen and felt, by my reading a blog post from three thousand miles away.

My Gridcoin experiment is done

Tuesday, August 4, 2020

Frankly, the intermediary website GRCPool.com and Gridcoin.us left a lot to be desired. The site is not monitored as well as it could be. Projects that are listed as acceptable for research may not be. Updated information is not consistent from one listing to the next. I found one project I had been interested in listed on both the accepted and discontinued projects at the same time.

The current version of the wallet on Gridcoin.us is not the same one they provide YouTube video for. I found it buggy and near impossible to run on my Windows 10 computer, and installed it on my Windows 8 computer with no issue, but it took forever to load and verify the database. The YouTube version shown had a way to download the database manually, and way quicker. That was different on the version out there to use, and the current version took forever. Once it loaded and synched, I tried to do the next step, and it crashed.

One other thing, I had taken some time to find another Gridcoin compatible wallet, Coinome. That had successfully been installed on my Windows 10 computer, and I planned to use that. When I finally tried to open it to do so, you guessed it. It would not open either.

Then I thought to myself this is sure a lot of trouble for 2.6 Gridcoins, valued at a bit more than one cent currently. So, I gave it one more attempt to load. It failed. And now I have deleted it all and gone back to just letting the research run as it wants.

BOINC and Gridcoin futures

Wednesday, July 29, 2020

Well, you get to see the update anyway.

First, the disease research has found a possible new treatment against covid-19, so that part of it at least is a success, so far.

The mining for cryptocurrency though could be doing better.  

First, in my first two weeks participating as a Gridcoin miner, I generated 1.5 Gridcoins. Yes, that and $2.50 will buy you a cup of coffee.

What is the value of Gridcoin, you might ask? That is a good question. As far as I can tell, it is worth a bit more than nothing, but still pretty close to nothing. And in fact, it is probably closer to nothing than something, if you get my drift.

I hear the Gridcoin futures are looking pretty good for three years out. And seven years out? Don’t even ask, it would be ridiculous to speculate that far in the future. But, I will tell you anyway.

The current value of just one Gridcoin is a bit more than one half of a US penny. So, that makes my 1.5 Gridcoin- well, just about worthless. In just three years though, the value of a single Gridcoin will be . . . (insert your favorite drumroll sound effect) One whole penny. Still pretty much worthless you say? Oh, that was me talking. Yep, it is still pretty worthless even three years out.

Here is where it might get interesting if I am still here to see it. In only seven years, that same Gridcoin could be worth $1.00. Now we are talking. Or, I am. In fact, for some reason, there is a jump from 3 cents to $1.00 from year six to year seven.

And if I generated 1.5 Gridcoins in my first two weeks. . .  I don’t want to stop to do the math. I might get too giddy. Kidding.

There is a small catch to my first 1.5 Gridcoins being generated.

This is a three-stage process. Stage one- I run a BOINC research project to generate “credit”.  Stage two- that credit is loaded to the mining client and it rewards BOINC credit with Gridcoin.  Stage three- That amount of Gridcoin has to be moved to a cryptocurrency wallet, a stand-alone program that holds your Gridcoin for later.

I am now in stage three of that process, and  I have a problem. Of course, I do.

Now that I have committed to that Gridcoin wallet, the program no longer runs. Hah- Hah!!! That is how they get you. No, it is probably only my issue. And right now, it is a minor thing. At current values, I am only out less than a cent. But I do need to figure this issue out or get a new wallet in the next few years.