Preparations for cat mutilation.

It's funny how the greater the amount of money involved the less emotional involvement that goes with getting it. When I was at Starbucks or working at Frontier or hell even at Foxes I was basically a three dollar whore. Meaning you pay your three bucks for your cup of coffee and get with it "hi, how are you, it's so good to see you, yes, I have been well, how is your daughter" blah blah blah, all concern and amazement. All phony charm delivered with that "eat shit and die" smile that only foodservice veterans ever really perfect. You do that all day and every now and then you get a dollar. Yay.

Today, on the other hand, to get a bunch of Blue Cross claims straightened out I simply had to "process" them. I didn't even deal with patient names, and therefore neither knew nor cared that one was a teacher who had a drinking problem excacerbated by her recent divorce while another was a nuclear scientist with bipolar disorder. I dealt only in billing numbers, which are utterly devoid of meaning, except in their insensate, plodding sequentiality. I changed one provider's initials to another provider's initials, changed "IOP" to "1" and saved the billing, then changed "1" back to "IOP" and saved again, updated billings, printed walkout statements with no comments (neither Standard nor Dunning), charges only, and attached the statements to the claims after I'd printed "Corrected Claim, Itemized Statement Attached" in the upper right hand corner of the claim, stapling in the center at the top (never on the left!) and voila -- if it works (hard to tell, 'cause Blue Cross is a bitch) that's somewhere in the neighbourhood of 115 dollars, just for that one line item. (Not all into my pocket, of course, but what goes into my pocket does come right out of that.) Multiply now by several hundred. The "hardest" thing about it is remembering what order everything has to be done in and breaking it up into manageable chunks so you're not stuck with HCFA-1500s flying everywhere about the room.

Emotional turmoil for pennies or plain tediousness for hundreds, even thousands of dollars -- take your pick. It's not that hard a decision to make. I only wonder how it took me this long to make it!

Per doctor's instructions I pulled the cat's food and water at eight PM. It's 10:46 now. They're starting to get demanding. Even panicked. I'm sitting here trying to eat ice cream and they're all over me. I got a cat carrier today (a second one) so I can take 'em all in one trip. Yeesh. I have to be up at six AM to get 'em there by seven. This is nuts. And for this pleasure outing in the early morning hours I get to pay for all their surgeries. It's either that or have several more litters in short order, so I'm willing to do this.

I hate "fixing" animals. They're not broken. I hate surgeries in general and still believe it's wrong for humans to make this sort of decision for a cat. But it's not wronger than eating meat (or ice cream, for that matter) so for my own damn convenience I am getting them all "fixed". If I were still vegan I'd be in big trouble. On a philosophical level it's a question of consent, and who are we to say we have the right over the animals to make that drastic a decision for them? It is only on a pragmatic level that I have to do this for myself and the consent of the kittens be damned.

To everyone who says "it's kinder to them" and "they have less behavioural problems" and all of that rot I politely say BULLSHIT. You're trying to play the "it's for their own good" game to placate your rotten consciences and know damn well the surgery's not medically necessary, is completely and totally counter to nature, and goes dead against whatever your pets themselves would want if they had any say in the matter at all. They'd probably love to be able to get YOU fixed. Filthy breeders. Spaying and neutering is purely, totally a matter of human convenience prioritized above animals' well-being.

Now, having said all that, I'm opting for my own convenience. Just do the math: if you should clean the catbox once a week with one cat, imagine how many times you ought to clean it when you've got seven. If you spend thirty dollars a month feeding two cats (not counting their litter) imagine how much more you spend feeding seven. Then there are the intangibles -- the parents know where they can and can not get up on top of or into because they have learned. Now add five playful and curious kittens to the mix and see what happens. Oh yeah, it's really "cute" that the calico wants to chew on the guitar cords. You see it once, it's picturesque, you see it twice or three times and you start to realize damn it I'm gonna have to replace that sooner than I should have to. The cat that knocks the record off the shelf neither knows nor cares that it's an original pressing and subject to breakage when it lands on its edge, it just thinks it's "exciting".

I can not keep these kittens, and I can't get rid of them the right way without putting them through surgery. I could do craigslist but I really do not want to. Just the experience with the next door neighbours taught me that giving them away to random people is a really bad idea. I like my neighbours but after what I've been through with these kittens I'm not delivering the pick of the litter to someone who doesn't even have a litter box and never would get one. I love my cats enough to get them into homes that want cats and can care for them and the best shot I've got at that is PACA -- the adoption people who go to Clark's Pet Emporium on Saturdays. People who go there are pet people.

Good heavens it's almost midnight. I had better start winding down. Tomorrow is going to be a very long day.

It's over.

The floodwaters are receeding.

Waded out with my corduroys up to me knees in the water up over my ankles and opened the antique flood drain. It's tricky to do in the dark under water 'cause there are two identical pipes side by side and if you open the wrong one raw sewage comes spewing out. It's happened before and it isn't pretty.

The city infrastructure here's a joke. This place is in the ancient floodplain of the Rio Grande, before it got all dammed up and stuff. Ain't often you get to live in a houseboat on it. But I don't know a single building anywhere in town with what I would call "normal plumbing".

I need to take a bath now but I dont know how the drain is going to respond. It could get really, really ugly.

The floodwater got up to a quarter inch of the door. I wish I'd taken pictures. Maybe ten minutes after hitting "publish post" and starting to move things off the floor the water stopped rising.

The water is receding but it's got a long way to go down yet before I can go out to breach the little earthen dam my next door neighbour, Faye, made at about the midway line of my bedroom which works OK when it floods less that this. I've never seen this much water here. Never. If I don't breach that dam the water will continue to seep in under the floorboards in my kitchen and bedroom, and I'm not willing to let that happen. The water's pretty pestilential -- we get runoff from all the streets and stuff. It may be hours before it's low enough for me to do that, but I've got to make it happen.

Just did it. It's only 11:30 PM. Built up a little dam around my own apartment on the north and east walls since that's where the water comes in whenever this happens and since the ground's finally soft enough for me to move enough of it to build up a couple of inches since it's usually nowhere near *this* extreme and when it is we're screwed anyway. Faye's gonna be mad to see three breaches in her dam (she doesn't even like the Mexican neighbours' kids riding their bicycles over it) but I was flooding because of it and have no doubt the other neighbours to the north were too -- yeah there's a puddle out in front of her place now, but better out in front than all around and underneath the house and everywhere so that no one can even get out. No doubt she'll be out there at six AM building it up again, which is fine -- I don't mind it at all except when the water gets high enough it makes my place flood and somehow between us all protecting our own asses we get on just fine.

Called the building manager and left a message at work, basically sorry to be the bearer of bad news and don't panic but we're flooding eight inches of rain in an hour and it's ok 'cause it's happened before and we all know what to do and please pardon the message instead of a cellphone call but the water's already receding it's late at night and short of making the sun come out there's nothing you can do right now but you'll probably want to come and look tomorrow.

Just talked with Faye and yeah she's not happy but heh heh you wade out in it, I did, and would rather wade in it outside than inside I tell her, and that drain's lower than this one. She's out sweeping our little stoop right now. We get on eachother's nerves with one thing and another but we get along just fine. She's yelled at me precisely once, I yelled at her precisely once, and always we've gotten over whatever it was that made the other blow up by talking it out in about two minutes' time.

I need to take a bath. I can't. I don't know what to do.

My money is on "go to bed and wake up with the sun", right now.

The flood.

8h15 PM now and they've started playing Serbian balalaika music or something similarly bizarre that's not really well suited to playing along with on guitar -- now there's someone doing some amazing thing with a jaw harp -- but I played along with every single song for the first hour so I can use a break.

F sharp? What of it? Finally remembered that's what the capo's for -- cheating! Heheh. The barre chords are getting a little bit easier, one at a time, each time I try 'em, but it's still really slow going and I have yet to have the whole fingerboard open up to me like I know it will when I get 'em mastered. That's fine -- I can be patient -- there's enough for me to do just in the first position to keep me amused for a long time.

How dare those people in the Ozarks and stuff recording back in the 'thirties have used anything but concert pitch! They're called "tuning forks", folks, and damn it when you don't use 'em, it gets tough trying to play along eighty years later. What am I supposed to do -- tune down a quarter tone for one three minute song? Eh -- sorry -- it ain't gonna happen. Tuning is a big old production for me. It has to be *perfect*. I started right, tonight -- had everything set up half an hour before and tuned and just did scales and basic chords and chord transitions and barleycorn before the show even started so I'd be kind of warmed up.

There was one really neat sort of feminist song they played immediately following a horrible song by Elvis about Eve being evil and I played along *quite* nicely there. Again -- using the capo, yes -- but I'm only just barely beginning to learn the guitar. Chord transitions are still tricky for me, I am *that* new to this.

Apologies to the people I'm avoiding -- you know who you are (except those of you who don't read this, of course) -- but I *have to* keep playing as much as I possibly can. The minimum time I'm at now -- where I feel like I'm not just noodling around but actually *learning* and *improving* -- is about three hours. Less than that means I'm just making my fingertips ugly. That much or more means I get better. At this stage in my learning it's *very* important. It takes me a bare minimum of half an hour just to get warmed up to where what I am playing sounds kind of like music.

HUGE rainstorm. HUGE. All those dry months' pent up precipitation's falling on us NOW. It'll be over soon, I'm sure, but right now it is flooding outside. I couldn't get out of my house if I wanted to. Unplugged the guitar when I realised the lightning is on ALL sides as I write this, likewise the laptop. I'm wireless, baby -- wireless. Acoustic, too. Don't need no electricity to make music nor write. The severe thunderstorm warning came on the radio saying nickel sized hail in Rio Rancho. But then Rio Rancho deserves that kind of hail. It's just rain, here. But there's at least four inches of it in, what, ten minutes? The radio warning from the national weather service came right as it hit, here, and the storm moved in with a fury unpredicted -- they said it'd be over albuquerque around 9:25 but it was here at 9:10. My god. My apartment is sitting on an island in the middle of aq lake.

Enough's enough. It's up to the landing at the front door! That's at least four inches of standing water. Maybe six. In under fifteen minutes. The warning's only in effect 'til 9:45 and it seems to be easing up -- a little! Let's hope it passes over without flooding my apartment completely. I really do not want a miniature Katrina experience right now.

The back door's an inch higher. I've got my old bathrobe by the front door just in case. It's coming over the little landing now. Another inch and I'll be flooding. It's now 21 minutes since the rain started.

The landing is now under water.

One more half inch and I've got major troubles.

My doormat is floating away.

Time to start moving things off the ground.

Wildlife West.

The sky is vermillion in the direction opposite sunset.

The Wildlife West Music Festival was perfectly delightful. The printed information I had was rather lacking, though -- the only thing I *knew* was that the park opened at ten AM, and the first concert was at 1 PM. So naturally I figure I'll be "a little laid back" and show up around ten-thirty. Of course I'm still the first person there. Fine with me, I get to go around and look at the rescued wild animals that can't, for whatever reason, be released back out into the wild. It's a little sad seeing animals in captivity under any circumstances but they're obviously very well cared for and as happy as they can be here. So I poke around the park for the two hours or so before any music type people show up.

Finally they do. I know next time to show up no earlier than noon -- I wore out just being there three hours before things really got started. The only thing I'd change if I were endowed with the magical gift of foresight and the power to make a whole music festival happen? Having all the different workshops at the same time: I'd dearly loved to have been able to go to at least Guitar, Banjo, and Songwriting instead of just Guitar.

All the performers were great. Elliot's Ramblers started the show -- they're local, and I'll make a point to go to their shows if I know when and where they are. Great interaction between everyone in the band. The guitarist reminds me of Volzotan Smyke. Jerusalem Ridge -- a new band featured in the "New Talent Showcase" was quite good -- and amazing in that none of its members were over 20 years old. Their performance was fine, but I was damn lucky to hear 'em rehearsing beforehand, when they were just plain old incredible.

Cadillac Sky was intense. The dynamic between players is much the same as that which I admired in the best rock bands I saw on my amazing trip to Austin a couple of years ago. The guy most "out in front" in Cadillac Sky was a mandolin player who I believe is named Brian Simpson. Imagine Kurt Cobain, but not strung out on heroin and not behaving in a demented way and playing a teensy-weensy little mandolin instead of a big old guitar and that's the sort of stage presence this guy has. He'd "play to" the fiddler and the fiddler would go absolutely wild. The banjo player and the bass player coordinated beautifully, and there were times everyone just moved as the spirit overtook 'em, players and listeners alike. The guitarist sort of filled it all in without *ever* hogging attention -- in his own words he was more of a vocalist who plays the guitar (though I hope someday to play half as well as he did onstage -- maybe in ten or twenty years!). The bass player was downright physical with his instrument in a way that to describe would make my words unsuitable for younger readers. The high point of the concert for me came during their second set when a HUGE gullywasher came in and they played to the thunder with lightning proving the light effects.

Shawn Perry was -- how to describe him -- kinda Elvis-like in the way that he moved and performed but absolutely baby faced. He had the most amazing songs, all of which he has written. He's written some very famous songs -- I'm talking top-40 country-western hits you'd hear ten times a night at Foxes. (E.g., "Give me two pina coladas, one for each hand.") In his own hands, rather than those of Garth Brooks or whoever, they were DIFFERENT SONGS. And the best stuff he's ever written ain't the stuff you hear on the jukebox! The stuff of his that you hear way too much of -- and he doesn't listen to "country" music, either -- mostly seems to have been written as a joke or a deliberate attempt at "commercial" music, while songs like the one about Tulsa sounding like trouble put the hairs on the back of my neck on edge. He just performs those well known ones because, well, they're his! I couldn't help but think about that bartender at Foxes who'd drive everyone nuts with his top forty country western music video station on TV, and wonder if he'd even be able to appreciate what I was seeing if he had been there. I doubt it. I also wondered whether Mr. Perry knew how very much some of his songs -- not even his best ones -- have meant to a lot of people. I hope so. He seemed so genuinely delighted just to have us wanting him to perform his own songs he played way later than the concert was set to end.

It's been a genre-deconstructing weekend!

I think that's about it. I took my guitar to work today 'cause I needed to get strings and thought it better to have with me. I'm a guitar hypochondriac. "I restrung it with these, the high E string is a hundredth of an inch thicker, are you sure the trussrod is OK? I know it's built like a battleship, but it won't implode, right? You're sure it's fine to just play these strings out even though I didn't wrap 'em around the capstans three times each?" The guy (whose name I'll be damned if I can remember) was very patient with me, and finally referred me to the "Restringing Clinic" at frets.com, which I can tell is a site I'll be spending lots of time at.

Albuquerque City services are a joke.

So after I went offline last night the idiot started up again with the fireworks. The 911 line (which I finally called) backed up to the point I actually got put on hold before my call was taken. Glad it wasn't life or death! Everyone was calling and they were clearly having an especially busy night, but it was utterly ridiculous, regardless.

Meanwhile the City of Albuquerque talks as if its disaster preparedness plan is all in order, what with the two or three thousand nuclear warheads and a pulse reactor at Kirtland Airforce Base. "We've got it all under control", the city says, and keeps its plans' details classified at the same time it proves itself incapable of handing a single lunatic throwing lit fireworks out of his car late at night. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if those redacted sixty pages (or however many it was) from the public report are just blank sheets of paper.

Use a helicopter to find the guy who's got all of downtown and old town scared enough to call 911? Nope, that's for watching political demonstrations. How about just blocking Central at Rio Grande and Twelfth? Nope, they only do that for drunk drivers. Useless. Utterly useless.

We're in the middle of the biggest drought we've had since white men started keeping records. Half the state's already breaking out in flames. The monsoon's here but it's effectively a dry one -- high winds with no humidity to speak of. The mayor makes a show of prosecuting the parents of some kids who set a fire in the bosque but a person doing the same thing in the city proper evades their grasp.

I'm going nowhere with this. Just frustrated and annoyed in the land of entrapment.

Got some brand new shoes at the Palms just a couple of blocks from here. Minnetonka moccasins -- 100% moose hide. Don't ask me how or why but I got my heart set on 'em and figure I'm allowed one article of new clothing from time to time. They're really quite exquisite. Went to two Mexican grocery stores today. Ate two bags of tunas and cooking carne adobada now.

Practiced guitar maybe two or three hours but not very productively, at least not in any "wow I can't believe I did that" sort of way. My mind's somewhere else and I mostly kind of worked on a bunch of different root 6 chords. Diminished chords are really interesting. I got better but somehow it's not all exciting, even though the barre chords are starting to work out better, too -- gradually. Some of them are insanely difficult and render something plain vanilla musically like an F or D major, others use just one or two fingers and give you lovely complex ninths and stuff. (Go figure that one out -- rock star x, y, or z who looks like he's choking his guitar in a paroxysm of rage is in fact playing a simple, happy chord well suited to such heavy metal standards as "the itsy bitsy spider".) The ones involving fretting strings with the thumb amaze me. It looks and feels so bad but sounds so good and makes chords possible that otherwise would not me. I definitely did screw up on the restringing and didn't wind the strings around the capstans so surprise surprise they're slipping flat. I want to change 'em out but they're just starting to get broken in and I'll do it again soon enough I see no reason to waste the money I spent on 'em -- I'll just tune it periodically. It's not like anyone's listening.

Wildlife West Music Festival in Edgewood tomorrow.

Restringing.

This is fast turning into a guitar blog, if there be such a thing.

Got a bunch of unpaid claims straightened out at work which thrilled me. Thousands of dollars we haven't gotten yet 'cause the insurance companies don't advertise how they want you to bill IOPs. Leo came by and got us all organized which we desperately needed.

Went to goodwill and got a fabulous early '60s coffee table which now sits in the corner that seems to have become my Shrine to the Vacuum Tube. It cost ten bucks. Carried it home poking through the sunroof.

Went to Encore Music and got strings and a stringwinder. The guy was very helpful even though I just popped in after work sans guitar. The total came to 6.66 and I paid in two dollar bills. I get the impression there's a little Gibson/Fender type of rivalry between Encore and Marc's. He gave me a pack of Ernie Ball Power Slinky strings. Yes, that's the name of the strings. I'd have almost bought 'em just for the packaging but they're apparently pretty good strings. It's funny to me that there's a whole mystique even around different brands of guitar strings.

Gunshots. Two of them. Just now. Out back. Like where Laguna turns into Roma, sounds like. I hate that sound. I hate the feeling that inevitably follows. Waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for the running footsteps, screeching tyres. Leaves in wind cast moving shadows as I shut off all the lights to see out better, make myself less of a target. Changing weather brings it on. Monsoons are on their way. Amazing lightning show tonight. Sitting with all my windows open and the blinds pulled up. Defiant. I will not be cowed. I will not make myself a place behind the rolltop desk to hide in. This is my neighbourhood and these are my people. The Navaho lady next door took a plate of beautiful fresh fry bread over to the Mexican neighbours today. She's never done anything like that before. They are talking. That's good. Think the danger is past but not likely to sleep for a very long while now regardless. Put the guitar in its place out of sight. Heh. 'Tis nuts. One minute gunshots, first thought, protect self, second thought, hide guitar. Turn on light. Reflection of cat on bed in window sends chills through my whole body. Migraine headache. Stay grounded.

So anyway the guy from Encore who looked at the guitar and gave me a very realistic assessment of its condition the other day said he'd try something heavier than what I had on there. Maybe he planted the idea in my head or something but the strings were kinda floppy. Great to learn on but eh well just kinda floppy.

Hear tyres on gravel and reach up to shut off light. No headlights and no car so back to writing.

I fear changing the strings 'cause it's a production but take the opportunity to simply CLEAN the guitar for the first time ever. Some idiot tried to glue down the floating bridge. Now the drips of glue are completely gone. It positively gleams.

More screeching tyres in the distance. From here I can hear every crazy thing that happens in this town.

Someone whose opinions on the matter I respect said change strings at least once a month. I didn't think it possible but they're not half as much as I expected. Huge improvement in tone. Doesn't have to be major surgery, should be more like keeping nails trimmed I suppose. Will wind them better next time, though.

My head seriously hurts.

Sirens now on Central. Police sirens. Heading West. Great. Just a few more minutes 'til they're here. It's been at least 20 minutes since the gunshots. It's 12:52 AM now.

They've stopped in the far distance. They're on something else entirely. I hate guns. Hate them. Always have and always will. You can at least cut salami with a sword. Can't do shit with guns but kill things. The deliberate sound of two consecutive gunshots. Someone is saying "DIE. DIE." with absolute finality. I hate them. Hope whoever pulled the trigger goes to jail. (My god, was I ever in there with them? Really?) If not for whatever just happened then for something, anything. Get them off my street. They have no right to be here. None.

Someone just shouted and whistled.

Screeching tyres on a sharp right turn. Glad I'm not on the road tonight. Glad I'm not at Foxes. Little milestone, that -- the first Friday night I'm not just not thinking of it but honestly glad not to be out with all the crazies.

If you can't tell having windows open is great in terms of air but can be bad in terms of other things. Dust is one. Bugs are another. Spiders are my pest control. If I had them closed the sounds outside would be muffled enough I'd pay little if any attention. But since they're not, and can't be without my going outside, I get to sit here and make up horror stories in my head surrounding every little sound. That's fine.

Two more from a fast-moving car on Central. I'm calling the police.

Twenty more minutes later. Didn't call 911 but the APD nonemergency number. I don't want 911 calls being traced to my cellphone unless I absolutely positively *know* what's going on. The phone kept ringing for about five minutes. Called City Information and they gave me a Fireworks Hotline number since there's also been someone driving around setting off fireworks and I don't absolutely know for sure whether what I heard earlier was gunshots or fireworks. Sitting here with no lights. Just my flame from the Pride vigil and my glowing LCD screen. And the base of my fabulous lamp so I don't stumble over something. Fireworks hotline rings for five minutes then hangs up. Both numbers I take it take 911 calls first based on what Yolanda at City information told me. (I love that City Information number.) I call the APD nonemergency number again, this time someone picks up. By the time this happens I haven't heard anything for a while. I mention fireworks and get transferred to the Fire Department which tells me they've got a unit in the area already. It makes more sense that it would be fireworks, not guns, out where I heard them, besides which I know for sure I have heard fireworks several times.

I hope they're in handcuffs right now. I hope they're sliding around in the back of that windowless van before 2 AM hits. I hope they get taken to MDC and thrown up on in intake and processed excruciatingly slowly into F-5 and Seg 8 and have to sleep in their orange jumpsuits on the boats on the floor for three days to a week before they get an upper bunk in a cell. I hope they get charged with nothing less than arson and have bails set high enough they can't post bond. I hope the phones don't work when they're not on lockdown so even then they can't call someone to let 'em know they're where they are. I want them locked up and miserable enough while there that they never, ever do something like that again. The sad part is it's probably some of those guys who already are or soon will be to the point that they know how to work the system from inside better than from the outside.

Reading about strings now. Nickel, Nickel plated steel, Steel, Phosphor Bronze. I'm going to have fun just experimenting. Best five bucks I've spent in a while.

Going to try and sleep now.

Acupuncture resumes.

There was a gap in my treatment but I got another treatment today, this time at the hands of yet another new student intern. Dr. Tuten actually put some needles into me himself, this time around, and everyone was talking pretty openly in front of me about opening the Chong and Nei Jing and while we're at it put one in Gallbladder 41.

Went back to work and stayed a little late. Got home and opened all the windows, which is a big operation with old casement windows that just haven't been maintained. I'd love to have 'em restored by next summer so it's not just "possible" to open and close them but even easy. The street sounds come in more now but the air inside is so much better this way. Of course it's gonna be a big production the first time it rains or the wind blows.

I'm going to bed now. I'm tired. Acupuncture drained me today. Either I'm bounding with energy after it or I can't wait to sleep.

Randomness returns.

Weird to have cash in my pocket. I've got to remember I've got a credit card bill now too. Nothing too terribly bad, but I need to pay it off quickly.

Went to a model railroad shop today to get some tiny railroad spikes. You can hammer 'em into the fingerboard to tune up the drone string on the banjo so you can play in different keys above the fifth fret. I thought I could buy three or four, but no, they come in packages of a thosand and they're not cheap. A penny each! Oh well -- I've used four on my two banjos, so now I'll just carry the bag around with me next time I go to a folk music festival. Which is this coming Sunday. Out in Edgewood.

Then to National Lighting to get flicker bulbs for my lamp. Again, not cheap. But just what the lamp needed.

Don Schraeder came by! Long story there I won't bore you with but it was a thrill once I realized it wasn't a crazy person but someone I'd actually welcome. I did it all wrong, didn't even think to invite him in, which I definitely should have, but oh well. I've yet to learn the social niceties.

Played to the radio much of the night tonight. I'm starting to know what notes are where on the fingerboard, at least the top few frets of it, and found that I could play along with most of what they played, until they came to something in F sharp or something like that, which was rare. The subject of the evening was therefore "changing chord positions at playing speed". Stayed up 'til two AM last night learning more and more Root 6 chords from that lady's handout, along with different licks. Some of them are AMAZING. I'll post her website here as soon as I get to it. I don't want to go there now 'cause I've just barely looked at the xeroxed sheets and know once I see her website I'll be stuck there for hours.

Finally!

Whoops! Missed the jam session. I think I was early, of all things -- showed up at one, but the website says they start at 1:30. I didn't know that for sure so I went off to do other things and figured I'll make it next week without fail.

No terrible loss. I can play next week and practice like mad in the privacy of my own home in the meantime, building the confidence to sit in the back row and play softly.

Funny thing about taking up a musical instrument: I'm kinda losing freinds! Oh well. Never like to get too close to anyone anyway. I'm making new ones too -- specifically, the kind who understand the comment "I *have to* practice at least an hour today, without fail". Even the blog takes a back seat. If the evening's wearing on to where it would be rude to make a noise and it comes down to play guitar or go online, going online just always loses out.

So there's the group that plays Sunday and the "Megaband" that plays for Contradances. Seems they mostly play in three keys. That makes things easy on me.

In the meantime I cleaned my car to the floorboards. Still looks like it's been sitting exposed to an autumn storm 'cause there are bits of leaves and stuff but all the garbage is gone and I swear the damn thing does accellerate better. Finally!

Returned the books to Don Schraeder. Finally!

Cleaned the catboxes. Finally!

Took some donations of clothes to Goodwill. Finally!

Went to my Mexican grocery store and made everyone's day by paying 'em twenty bucks in two dollar bills. Everyone working there stopped what they were doing to buy "lucky" two dollar bills from the cashier who took my payment, who was sad to see me get rid of what she clearly took to be my last cash on earth. I smiled and told her I got 'em from the bank.

Came home and didn't just practice -- I PLAYED. "This Land is Your Land", perfect beginner's song for the guitar. You practically *have to* sing along just to know when to do what! I did so -- very, very softly. And I strummed WHOLE CHORDS. Oy vey, it's hard now that I've gotten into different habits! I need to start getting the patterns. Barleycorn is fine, ain't gonna get much better at it playing it like a damn Hanon excercise -- but it's not particularly useful to me now: it's just a song in my repertoire, which now includes two songs. Tomorrow I'll have three. The day after that, four. Then I'll spend the rest of the week practicing them all so I'm in decent shape to play *something* when the Sunday group meets -- regardless what we play I'll have four songs' worth of chord changes in my left hand's fingers. Of course the Sunday group is all about Bluegrass so I'm bound to pick up a whole different set of tunes there.

Now I need to get the fingerpicking patterns and the chord changes and the best way to do that is to learn and play a bunch of different songs and PLAY WITH OTHER PEOPLE EVERY TIME I GET THE CHANCE. Half the game is coordinating your right hand with your left, the other half is making sure one doesn't stop just because the other changes what it's doing. Then holding it all together while playing with other people is a big deal -- it's almost too easy when there are zero distractions and nobody listening when the tree falls in the woods.

It's also a damn good way to quit smoking.

I was playing scales today and suddenly it came to me -- duh -- big revelation from heaven -- all I have to do is move the interval patterns up and up and up and switch strings after the fourth fret and I'll be playing a scale of scales and learning where all the main notes really truly are and I don't *have to* look at it mapped out in a book for me to get it.

This must sound painfully obvious to good guitarists but remember I'm used to the piano keyboard where a G "looks like" a G, which does not "look like" the F or the A below or above it. The notes are "mapped out" on a keyboard in a way they're not on the fretboard. "String over wood between two little metal ridges" is all I see when I look at the notes on the fretboard so maybe the trick is to just stop lookin'. Sometimes if I'm lucky I'll see a fret marker, but usually not. Since my guitar's not a Chet Atkins model they're just basically thumbrints, not steers' heads and cactuses and such. I still don't know what the fret markers signify. I know there is *some* order to them but I have no idea what.

New Lust: I want a Pimentel Guitar. Two people had 'em yesterday and they were some of the most stunning instruments I've ever seen. One had turqoise inlays and mother of pearl prayer feathers "hanging" from the soundhole. His other had a Zia around it. Those, it winds up, are the Pimentel signature designs. The other guy's was custom and was amazing -- instead of fret markers it had a pack of mother of pearl coyotes running up towards the headstock underneath the frets and everything. Not the least bit flashy or tacky -- just utterly exquisite.

I ought to get to bed here soon 'cause I've got to get up tomorrow morning and stuff. Back to the world of processing insurance claims. And then I *have to* practice.

Albuquerque Folk Festival.

Beautiful day. Bought a t-shirt, a seven dollar italian sausage, and two three dollar lemondades despite there being dangerous musical instruments all 'round 'cause that's not what I went for. I went not to buy but to learn and absorb and only bought overproced food and drinks so I wouldn't collapse.

Attended three guitar workshops and one for the banjo. Guitar was great -- first one was really basic, but get this -- I've been teaching myself without one vitally important tool: the strum. Yep. The most obvious thing in the world when it comes to learning the guitar I have not even touched. I've been picking out melodies across the strings and working with harmonics and hammer-ons and stuff without once running my fingers down or up the strings to make the whole chord ring. I'm serious. I think part of me is afraid to make a noise, especially if I hit the "wrong" note. But having all those guitarists there just working on the same thing you are makes it a lot less painful! The guy who did the beginner's workshop very helpfully gave us handouts with three or four very well known songs and the chords that go with 'em so it starts to come together in a way it doesn't when you approach learning chords like Hanon excercises.

The lady who did the second workshop was way the hell more advanced in her approach but was such a good teacher it made sense. I literally went from one tent learning how to strum to another learning different licks for Root 6, Root 5, and Root 4 chords. Suddenly it was all on a whole diffferent level. Problem is I sorta understand the higher level stuff theoretically without being able to put the very basic stuff into practice and make a noise. I understand that you can substitute an A ninth diminished seventh or an A thirteenth for an A seventh without even knowing where the fingers go to make the chords themselves, much less still how to do it at speed without looking at your hands. At a workshop much later in the day she was teaching us jazz chord progressions, and she gave us such ample handouts that I have no doubt it's gonna stick in my head, but for now I've got to make the noise, theory be damned!

The problem remains -- I don't strum! When the group plays I'll bend my head down and over and listen as I pluck the individual strings. Sally proved very helpful with that. We kind of "clicked" -- I think it's safe to say I may be taking lessons from her in the near future. Got into talking with her and she and I are very much on the same page, only she is way further down it, so it's interesting -- I didn't go out "looking for a teacher" but I found one who I think can help me overcome some of the basic stumbling blocks I'm facing at the moment where my playing is concerned, and which I'd never know I faced if I hadn't gone to this event and tried playing with others!

The banjo class was hilarious. The guy talked for most of the hour, and we wondered if and when there was gonna be any actual playing; then he drops the bomb: for bluegreass it's basically three chords and four rolls. Huh!? You mean I've spent five years of on-again, off-again frustration trying to figure out what to do with that pesky fifth string for nothing!? Yes sir. The banjo's all about shortcuts.

What do banjo players use for birth control?

Their personalities.

After all was said and done I went to the Contra Dance and watched people dance for hours. It was so real. Looked like somethign from a movie, but it was real people really dancing with eachother, making eye contact and everything. No, not just flailing around aimlessly in the dark underneath flashing lights, but actually dancing in complex patterns reminiscent of DNA recombination. The woman calling the dance is the same one who *made* Pride for me in MMIV by calling square dances from the back of a truck going down Central -- I saw all these people before the parade started in red, white, and blue and saw they had a bullhorn and was terrified it was the Log Cabin Republicans. When they wound up being square dancers I was so delighted I couldn't do anything but chuckle and say "I *love* that" every time I saw them. I never expected to see her at the Folk Festival but winds up she's very involved with it, too. She remembered me from last week, standing between the crowds and what I called the "morality patrol", trying not to offend whatever her peculiar sensibilities might have, unbeknownst to me, been. I characteristically commented it must be the hat that made me memorable, she said "or maybe it was your face". Heh! Facial recognition? Eye contact? With STRANGERS? Good heavens, what times we're living in.

You know the difference between an introverted engineer and an extroverted engineer?

The extroverted engineer will look at *your* shoes.

Needless to say this is a bunch of people I want to spend time with. The whole gay/straight thing literally DIDN'T MATTER. AT ALL. Some people were, most weren't, it very simply DIDN'T MATTER. When there were too many women for the dances and someeone had to take the lead, they put a sticker on their clothes that said "BOY" and it wasn't about gender, it was about whether they promenaded on the outside or the inside and how they moved in relation to their partners and neighbours. It's, how to put this, the sort of world I want to live in! I wasn't even put off by the disgusting breederness of straight people because for once it *wasn't* on prominent display.

The focus was on the music and the dancing and through those on the community at large. People met and talked with people. Even me. Looks like I'm gonna be volunteering there next year. The best part is it doesn't shrivel up and die, it just goes underground and into hiding, into planning for the next year.

There's a group that has a jam session around 1 PM today and every Sunday, tending towards bluegrass. I think I'm going to go. But first I need to clean the catboxes and my car -- carrying around a guitar *and* a banjo in that messy car just doesn't make a lot of sense. Later!

Chair day.

Work is going well. I don't know how but it's all starting to make sense. We're getting so well organized it isn't even funny. It's still a mess but not in any vitally important way that I can tell -- I mean, new patients and charges and payments don't back up, and claims keep going out, and deposits keep getting posted. What's scary is that I'm really starting to "get it" as to how this business works. It's not all a big evil scam, it's just way the hell too complex for what it really needs to be to operate, and short of the entire US going to something relatively sensible like Single Payor healthcare, it's just gonna be a mess to navigate and since it *is* a mess I've got a good job that I like.

The reason it's chair day is that I got paid and went shopping at my two "every week, without fail" thrift stores: Savers and Goodwill, both on San Mateo. Got off for under twenty bucks. Got a couple of glasses since I don't have anything to drink from except coffeecups and mason jars at Savers for $1.47, then at Goodwill I got two great office chairs for *nothing*.

One's a standard issue office chair -- metal with green vinyl, dated 1965 -- which sort of matches the El Paso Natural Gas Company chair I'm sitting in now, except that this one's got orange cloth. Yeh -- office furniture -- not worth much but a damn good chair and dignified in its own low-key way. Comfortable, perfectly functional, and nearly indestructible. That cost me thirteen bucks and it now sits in front of the organ of similar vintage. (I have yet to find a chair the proper height for playing the organ.)

The *best* deal, though, came in the bargain corner right next door. Who or what determines what goes to the main store and what gets carted out in giant bins for the sharks and bottom feeders to go through in the bargain corner, I don't know. I've never bought anything at the bargain part of it 'cause most of it really is total crap, and I usually don't want to buy the fifty-cent-trinket-I-don't-really-either-want-or-need if doing so involves standing in line behind the annoying breeder couple (he: tobacco stained t-shirt with holes, two sizes too small with Spuds McKenzie on it and a baseball cap from wherever he worked last time he had a job; she: two hundred pounds overweight with either Tweety Bird or Winnie the Pooh represented somewhere on her person along with the gold-plated crucifix hanging 'round her flabby neck) with seventeen screaming kids they don't care to control whose only reason to be there at all is to save money while communicating clearly to their children that they weren't wanted in the first place which is why they get to wear other people's garbage for clothes besides which they have got no sense of taste or fashion or flair for life whatever and how dare they breed the likes of them be damned -- just pass the good stuff my way and stand clear, thank you ever so much.

Today, I saw a chair I really needed. How to explain it -- on a practical level I've been looking for a chair without arms so I can play guitar in it without having to move my one armless chair from room to room to room. Oh, there's one. Sit it in -- wow -- very comfortable, much more than it appears. That simple.

On another level, which I only see when I *look* at it -- not from clear across the room cluttered to overflowing with worthless excercise equipment, grills, computer monitors -- it is quality. Rock solid, though the finish is a mess -- it's been mistreated -- but nothing a good refinishing couldn't handle. Some random guy tells me it's ash. All I know is the chair has gesture. It's literally "awaiting eagerly", as though about to burst into harried flight if the very important man the person in it is waiting for does not show up right now. It could almost be a Chinese ideograph. I'm absolutely certain it was designed to be a waiting room chair from the sheer sense of urgency it conveys, as well as from its height and surprising --really, shocking -- comfort. It's got a little maker's button set into the wood discretely, so I know the maker was proud of his work. It is clearly handmade.

I get home and search for the last name of the maker on google, along with the word "chair". Winds up a big selling point for the W.H. Gunlocke Chair Co. is that nine presidential derrieres have occupied its chairs behind the desk (which they *didn't* make) in the Oval Office.

Oh my.

Of course it's not even remotely the same model. I'm guessing mine is late 'fifties, early 'sixties. But there's no question in my mind now why that maker's chairs are so special. It's not because a handful of their pieces have literally been "the seat of power", it's because they're perfectly functional works of art. The company's website is overdesigned (surprise, surprise) -- it uses Flash -- the message clearly being "if you're on a connection too slow for this to load, you can't afford our chairs".

That's what *you* think.

It cost me three dollars.

Folk Festival tomorrow. I'm off to bed now. Plan to get there early and leave late.

Finally I get to practice.

Last week "Happy Feet" was off the air 'cause being the Tuesday evening program, every time there's an uncontested closed primary or school bonds election, they get bumped off. It was the first time in my life I wasn't eagerly awaiting the returns, but mad 'cause they preempted MY SHOW for the sake of that so-called democracy thing. Oh well.

Two weeks ago -- or was it three -- I forget -- I was picking out melodies to it on single strings. It was three. Two weeks ago I got interrupted by a visitor. One week ago -- I could have cried -- it wasn't there, and I'd looked forward to it all day long.

This week it's back. YES! So I get to spend three glorious hours with my guitar playing along. And I'm getting waaaaay better at it. I'm not great yet but it's amazing what you really can do with three or four chords in different progressions. And I'm picking out melodies across the different strings. And playing chords. And even playing REAL MUSIC by playing the individual notes of different chords in different orders. I've been so intent on getting "Barleycorn" *perfect* that I start to feel bad if I'm not playing up to speed for what's on the record or wind up hitting one note wrong in twenty. I get obsessed with how and when I replace the first finger behind the second fret (first fret for you non-zero-fret types) on that A minor chord 'cause it just makes it sound *so* much better when you do it just a certain way before you go through that series of plucks again. Yeah, I'm a perfectionist -- to the point that this song is the only song in the whole world and damn it I *am* gonna master it!

I *need* this weekly radio show, 'cause I get *so* intense about these certain things that's how -- exactly how -- I wind up giving up on one instrument after another. In short, it ceases to be fun. So just listening to some amazing music and playing along with it and realizing "oh -- so that's *really* all there is to it" just gives me a tremendous boost. Having this show once a week makes playing fun. If I get "lost", I just sit back and listen and the music doesn't stop. More often than not it starts to make sense a minute later and I jump right back in.

Of course the Barre chords are still beyond the strength of the base of my thumb to withstand for more than about fifteen seconds. Maybe if I can come up with some way to get paid to practice the guitar I can figure it out. (Heh heh -- I wonder if I could go back to school now and change my major from "Linguistics" to "Guitar".) I figure eight hours a day is probably enough time to spend practicing. :)

In all seriousness, I will get there! I hope to get some help this coming Saturday. If I am VERY lucky I may even -- well, I won't predict the future.

Which brings me to the really good news -- the Albuquerque Folk Festival's comin' to town next Saturday and I fully intend to spend ALL DAY there.

Of course they're all about acoustic. I can imagine this is the crowd that booed when Bob Dylan plugged in his guitar. Silly me, I've only got an archbody electric acoustic, or an acoustic electric, depending how you look at it. Then again, lucky me -- my hollowbody's not electric if it's not plugged in, now is it? OF COURSE NOT. Just ignore the knobs and switches, they're for decoration only. At the same time, unlike a solidbody, it does sound good without the amp -- just a tiny bit quieter than an actual acoustic acoustic. It's the only guitar I have and damn it I *AM* gonna learn to play it!

I'll take the banjo too, just in case I get too many sneers, 'cause the point is to LEARN and if the only way to do that without conflict is to keep the Gretsch in its case, then so be it -- I know damn well I couldn't do what little I can now if I hadn't tried to play banjo first. But I've got no intent to leave the guitar at home. It's got enough similarities to the banjo that some of it carries over from one instrument to the other, but enough dissimilarities that I want to learn to play the guitar way more than the banjo.

Oh man I'm gonna have a blast. It's at the State Fairgrounds, same place they have Pride (and the rodeo, for that matter). Part of me's dying for a simple, straightforward, uncomplicated weekend where I don't have anything to do, but I would no more miss this than I would miss Pride. (That's not exactly true -- I wouldn't miss Pride if I had to be wheeled to it on a stretcher!)

It's taken me two years to get a job with a schedule where I can actually make these events. The same sort of events that brought me up to Albuquerque in the first place, that made me think "this is the sort of city I could definitely stand to live in". Working graveyard was a big old mistake, 'cause once I did it everybody knew I "could" work nights. I'm glad I did (doing so got me out of working the phony natural foods co-op), but I never imagined it'd take me over a year to transition completely out of it. It has. And nothing makes a big event less inviting than being in the middle of a week for which you've slept an average of three hours a day for three days in a row and know you'll be lucky to maintain that average the coming three days. For Pride MMIV I think I stayed awake something like 48 hours just to be a part of it.

I should start winding down now. It's eleven as I write this, if I sign off now I'll be lying in the dark without fail by 12:30, which'll give me time to sleep and wake up and all that. Part of me *never* wants to sleep. Never. But I'm in the process of retraining my body, which is a big old deal after working nights long enough that I built my whole life around that fact. My cricadian rhythms still aren't "normal" and may never be, but it's a miracle that I am still awake and alert at 2 or 3 PM these days. The week after I left Foxes I thought I'd never get that far!

Worn out!

Got complimented by about two dozen people about how I was dressed. Must have been the tailored shirt from Stromberg's, the upscale men's store that went out of business in the seventies I guess.

The crowds came late but when they came they just kept coming. Turned away a good sized handful of people 'cause they were drunk already. Had to pull one guy's drink and ask him to leave 'cause he was throwing cigarette butts at the dancers on the dancefloor. But there was a line out the door a good part of the evening, and everyone danced. Everyone sunburned and tired. When it was all over it was just Alex and Chip and Midnight and me in the empty bar too tired to talk, too tired to sit up straight, completely and totally worn out from the exciting day that ended an exciting series of days. Slept 'til one PM.

Went to my Mexican grocery store to get some basics so I can feed myself. I'm too tired to do anything else. It bein' 93 degrees indoors don't help. I didn't want to go there but I had no food left in the house but for a tub of yoghurt. I got a watermelon and pears. Ate a whole bag of tunas (prickly pears) and have cheese and really good tortillas. Hope to get to bed at a decent hour tonight. I'm basically recovering from Pride. Literally. I've got horrible blisters from the penny loafers (not running shoes, those) and my legs are so sore from the knees down that even walking to the kitchen wears me out. I've got at least a dozen people I should call but I have had so many people around me these past few days there's nothing, nothing I want more than just a little privacy and peace and quiet.

Played at the guitar a bit today and did a scale. Yep, just one. But guess what -- after doing that a few times I can do the barleycorn song at speed, without mistakes. I don't know how that works but glad it does. I guess I'll find some other scales and songs now. Nothing more substantial to say. The actual anniversary of Judy Garland's death is the 27th. I may fly the flag that morning/evening, but I don't know if I'll even remember. I've got to transfer the flame from the opening ceremony tonight if I want to keep it going. I hope I can find the energy for that. :)

The march.

I've got the 3x5 rainbow flag flying from the eaves outside my front door and am listening to Judy Garland on original glorious monaural old stock vinyl.

I woke up this morning to NPR's "Weekend Edition", as usual, but today they had a story about Rufus Wainright's (one of Charles' favourites) reperformance of Judy Garland's famous 1961 Carnegie Hall concert, number for number. I don't know *who* made that programming decision, but right on, NPR! Perfect way to start the biggest day of the year which commemorates the events of the night of her death.

Pride crowns a trying year this time around. I have survived. Last year I missed the march 'cause I had to work, which sucked. The year before last -- my first Pride -- was one of the most profoundly moving experiences of my life, easily in the top five, probably in the top three. In short, it moved me to tears. I remember I was avoiding my bipolar stalker at the time and had picked up a good portion of his paranoia through osmotic transmission, so that when I showed up wearing a brown shirt I just *knew* -- too late, too late! -- that people would think I was some sort of neo-nazi. That was the year the Pride Archive did interviews of guys from way back when. I sat and listened all day long to stories of what Albuquerque had been like, went home, and fell apart on realizing it "ended" after one glorious day each year out in the sun.

Last year's highlight was Delmas Howe's interpretations of the stations of the cross -- 12 or 14 monumental paintings in a rennaisance style of gay scenes on the Christopher Street Docks. The only thing that made missing the march bearable was the fact that for the first time in my life I was working as an openly gay man in my job. I told myself, knowing it was true, that the point was to *live* it, not just come out for one day a year.

As for that intervening year, well, you can read back. It has not been easy. Many times in Foxes' parking lot I've thought to myself "man I am *earning* it, now". At one point I truly did not think I would live. But I made it, and this year was totally different.

I played my four chords about five times today knowing I'd be busy and didn't want to miss playing at least a bit.

Ran into Don Schraeder at the same spot I first met him two years back, the corner of Girard and Central, where the parade starts. Apologised profusely for keeping his books for so long and without going into details just explained that my life fell apart. He's a gentleman and an amazing human being and it is a blessing and an honour to be introduced to others by him as a freind, despite my having kept his books so long. I had the books in my car, and gave him my address just in case I don't get them back to him in good time.

So how was it different? Well, the jesus freaks were louder this time around. They had a bullhorn. Guess who stood between 'em and the crowds. One of 'em said the word "faggot" and a female state police officer told him to watch his language. Whoever you are, thank you. It's nice not just to "have you on our side" but to have an officer of the law preventing a conflict rather than instigating one or stepping in to break it up. Governor Richardson was there and man is he butt-ugly. Lucky for us he rode in the parade in an SUV with tinted windows so we didn't have to see a lot of him. I passed up the opportunity to tell him I remembered Wen Ho Li because, well, what would it have accomplished? Nothing.

As usual, I waited for the end of the parade to turn onto Central and then walked fast all the way up to the front of it. There was a HUGE gap, which was NUTS! For several long city blocks I *was* the pride parade, to the increasing amusement of onlookers as I passed and sort of became comfortable in that role, joking about it with countless utter strangers as I passed them by. *That's* when I got a feeling of Harry Hay and the first-time marchers, this year. I'm out here on my own, dressed like some sort of out-of-place Southern Gentleman, walking in the middle lane of Central Avenue. ALONE. It's MY parade, baby. I was the *only* person to cross San Mateo when I did, with traffic stopped and backed up going both North and South. I can only imagine what people stuck in cars thought. "We've been waiting here for twenty minutes so THAT MAN can walk down the middle of Central!?" Well, in a word, YES. It was hilarious. Eventually the laggers caught up and the parade was one again. I ran damn fast and barely made it to the Entrance to the fairgrounds on San Pedro where (again) I stood between the jesusfreaks and the crowd and raised my Venetian boater in greeting as everyone arrived.

On the jesusfreaks -- it was the usual stuff. Until the drag queens came! Then they deviated from their standard scripts they just kept repeating and literally got confugled with rage. The drag queens, no less, weren't afraid to shout back! Mercedes was hilarious standing atop a giant, 20-foot tall black papier maché boot for NM Gay Rodeo Association, telling them to kiss her ass and doing her "zip it" routine right at them.

Several people asked me to ride or march with them, but I do this thing on my own. It's the only way to get the big picture. Huge cheering crowds. Every conceivable group in the city was out.

The biggest way in which it was different was how many people I knew! It wasn't a tortured decision to go even though I knew I'll probably regret it, it was just something I had to do. At least five people took pictures of me today, which was a thrill -- almost all of them complete strangers. I guess they can tell something in my eyes or face or something. Or maybe it was just that I was the only person wearing a tie -- red, of course. At any rate I was more than completely peripheral today. I know who people are. People know who I am. It's a strange, new experience but I rather like it.

Of course in a couple of hours I'm going to Foxes. I agreed to work tonight. It's not a regular thing, just a one night appearance 'cause they're gonna be SLAMMED. Like it or not, I *found* myself, working the door in that bar. I learned to stand up for myself and say "no" -- even to offers of drinks. I learned to "read" people remarkably well, if not perfectly. I did the impossible night after night and found myself acting as a sort of conduit through which good things did happen. Tonight? Oy. Ninety-pound barrels of broken glass. Bathrooms. Drunks. Out-of-towners. And who knows what else? Only time will tell.

But one more night means I can keep the subtitle.

Be well!

Pride underway.

It is official.

Pride's underway.

Wonderful candlelight vigil with a ceremony in thirty stages held in Morningside Park, which is where all the marches ended 'till the crowds outgrew the park. They're even putting two commemorative statues up with plaques, and they were dedicating those tonight as well. Somebody brought a great, HUGE rainbow flag -- that was tremendous fun -- just what we've needed. Of course we've got the eight-colour Gilbert Baker segment but uhhh that's just a bit too special to ever go down in the dirt.

Suffice to say I found the ceremony sufficiently moving to drive across town with my candle still burning so I can try and preserve the flame all year. I'd love to see this become a way of opening festivities, as it were. A time, as a group, to reflect on and connect with our past before plunging headlong into the neverending present moment that Pride is.

So far so good.

The things I get into.

So I've got a couple of amazing old prayer rugs and in the designerly interests of authenticity I want to make sure that they face the right way, if only because there *are* exceedingly Islamophobic people who feel confronted to even see such a textile properly displayed, as though to do so were to show too much respect for some tradition just not worthy of consideration at all. Part of me does just like annoying people; part of me finds intolerance a bit distasteful. Besides, Feng Shui and Islam are not the least bit incompatible to the best of my knowledge.

Along the winding way to find this information in a usable format -- I'm not good with math and really would just as soon keep 'em in the closet if it comes down to my learning to use a sextant or having to take readings from the position of the sun on one of two specific days per year which I don't think even works in this hemisphere -- I run into something just a bit disturbing.

You may have heard about Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's fatwa against queers. I believe it goes something like this:

السؤال : ما هو حكم اللواط والسحاق؟
الجواب : حرام. ويعاقب فاعلهما بل يقتل فاعل اللواط اشد قتلة

Which I am led to believe (for I do not read Arabic) involves being "killed in the worst, most severe way possible". I could be wrong, and I hope that I am. Certainly, mistranslations are rife. Certainly also there are those in the West who point to statements such as this as spurious "proof" that their supposed enemies are inhuman, though I've known many educated westerners to have essentially compatible views towards my kind.

It came from a website I consider very interesting: Imaan: a social support group for LGBT Muslims and their supporters, based in England. (Interesting variation on the Rainbow Flag, there, by the way. I like it. I think there's an AIDS flag with the same extra colour, too.) The article about Sistani removing the fatwa from his website (under pressure from Imaan) -- without revoking it -- is here, complete with references and links.

Of course I'd heard about the targeting of gay men in Iraq weeks ago on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now, but Imaan goes into considerably greater depth, even naming names of those killed execution style and giving a heads up to the online cruisers -- some of the guys who've been murdered in Iraq were basically entrapped online.

This man's got power in Iraq precisely because the US is in Iraq illegally. In that environment homsexuality's equated with the monolithic West, so that an attack on homosexuals can be read as an attack against the military enemy. Same game as in high school -- attack them to prove you're one of us. So because we've got an unelected president, Iraqi queers get caught in the crosshairs. No I didn't vote for him and yes I have the right to complain. Makes you wonder what you can do. Go march in Pride, I guess, and watch the door that night like there's a fatwa out against your people ('cause there is).

I need to talk to Don Schraeder. I'll carry those books with me Saturday. I'm sure he'll be out.

Oh, I finally did find the correct direction for my rugs on Ibn Mas'ud's Qibla Locator, which is an amazing use of Google Maps.

Get this.

From my apartment -- facing Mecca -- I'm also facing Mecca! As in both the city of the Kaaba and the fabulous record and book store right across the street. Such coordinates! Do I live at the center of the continent or what?

Success.

They said that it couldn't be done.

Never mind that it had been done in California, and led eventually to bars going smoke free throughout the state.

Now it has also been done here.

After more than a week of gut-wrenching suspense, I can call the smoke free night at Foxes a success. Thanks to *everyone* from STOMP, EQNM, and such for coming out. You saved my life. I was literally planning to leave town before you guys showed up. Thanks to Chip for seeing the good idea lurking somewhere underneath the obviously idiotic one of telling drunks they can't smoke in front of you without waiting for the law to do it for you. That took guts.

Everyone -- myself included -- wound up putting things off 'til the last minue, 'cause that's kind of how nonprofits run, from the United Court of the Sandias to the Rockefeller Foundation. If someone seems interested in an idea everyone else around the table more or less assumes that it's his or her pet project and that he or she will make all the necessary arrangements. So I assumed that everyone had everything together on their ends while they assumed I had it all together on mine while schedules conflicted and we never quite met often enough to discuss what we needed to discuss. Still, somehow, we called eachother just enough (and I went back to Foxes just enough) to make the basic arrangements.

I get off work a little before five today because I think I'm going to have to take away ashtrays and be rude to belligerent drunks. When I get there there's a sign scrawled on a piece of cardboard tied to the grate on the front door that says no smoking and then repeats verbatim what I wrote for the sign. There are no ashtrays in sight and I am hit by clean cool air. (It's been insanely hot -- my kitchen hit a record 102 degrees indoors on Sunday.) Fernando's polished the place up really nice and we joke a bit uncomfortably about the eighteen people who walked out. Then Chip comes on, and one of his regulars walks out in front of him. Never mind that he saw the ad STOMP placed in the Alibi, he gets nervous. We all do. We're all coming down off nicotene and we start in on eachother. (One of my occasional readers once commented about the amount and quality of emotional manipulation I put up with working at Foxes, and only *now* is it clear just how much that is a part of working in a bar: it's part of humanity everywhere, sure, but in a bar it's very raw, the nerve's exposed, and the bread-and-butter everydayness of it's what's insane.) I'd told Chip they planned to show up around six. Six-twenty rolls around and everyone's in full-fledged nicotene withdrawal panic. He doesn't know who "they" are because I can't quite find the words to describe "them" ("doorman" = "intermediary" between "us" and "them") without using buzzwords like "the broader community". He takes the cardboard sign off the door and starts to put out ashtrays and apologises but tells me that it's just going to kill the business.

Then Sandy shows up. At that exact moment. How much of this was all a show, I'll never know. It all worked out too perfectly. I meet her outside and tell her what's going on -- Chip's hopping mad, we lost twenty customers. She goes in and does the showroom model of the "active listening" thing that activists are trained to do, and that somehow only women are ever *really* good at (outside trainings and encounter groups, of course, where men can pretend pretty decently, if they be fags). I can grin and wince like Lincoln Perry, but it takes a woman to communicate. "So this is your concern, but given that what happened this afternoon is a fact in the past, and given that we have people coming specifically to be here without smoking..." Chip sees people start to come in. He says "I'll give it half an hour", then "an hour", then all talk of any set cut-off point ceases as the place fills up and people do buy drinks. Not "fills up" like for a big show, but with twenty cars in the parking lot and thirty or so people inside who don't ever set foot inside Foxes, well, that's as "filled up" as it *ever* gets for a Monday! The people who come don't (as I'd feared) just buy cokes and water, nor do they buy beer, they buy expensive mixed drinks, one or two apiece, and it's a nice, warm, freindly crowd. I turn the dancelights on and settle back into my old routine. I watch the door.

By the second hour, although Chip does occasionally slip back for two puffs in the office, he says "if they could guarantee 25 more people than this I'd do this once a month". Then he says he should suggest it to Midnight, the manager at AMC, since their off-nights are so dismal, lately. When Midnight comes, he does exactly that. In a couple of hours' time of having the nonsmokers in the bar, he's turned around 150 degrees. First (my favourite comment *ever* from a gay bartender directed at me) "how do you get mixed up with all these weird people?", but in the end, suggesting it as a regular event for a sister bar down the road whose business is suffering.

STOMP is now effectively established as a credible queer community organization that gets out there and does things for and with the queers. The cessation classes are the other side of this, and I had nothing to do with those, although that was my initial reason to go to their board meeting.

Foxes had a *good* Monday.

I don't know which is more unheard-of.

Scoop: Governor Richardson, Lt. Governor Diane Denish, and State Attorney General Patricia Madrid (you know, the one who halted the gay marriages in Santa Fe in 2004) are all going to be riding in the Pride parade on Saturday, since Shrub and Wife and Cheney (who loves his daughter enough to deny her equal rights) are all slated to visit Albuquerque in the coming two months and they need to get some good cameratime too, what with elections and all. The small-time birthday party clown known as Mayor of Albuquerque will also be there.

While I'm on politics, regarding Shrub's recent comments regarding his proposed redefinition of marriage, I will only remind the reader that people are still dying daily by the dozens in Iraq.

My attitude about the Governor and his entourage and their appearance? If they want to show up to our event, that's fine; they're welcome just as much as any breeder is as long as they don't start trouble. It'll get the cameras on Pride, and that's a good thing for the kids downriver to see on TV for ten seconds without so much as a mention of unhealthy Sodomites committing unnatural abominations in the eyes of God. (I say this despite being a confirmed Abominable Sodomite -- ooh, just came up with a band name.) But this is not "the governor's parade". This is Pride.

Pride is *our* celebration, our annual commemoration of the uprising at New York's Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street, which was sparked by a bar raid on the night of Judy Garland's death. In Albuquerque, this observance started at Foxes, which is the closest thing we have to Stonewall, on East Central, which is the closest thing we have to the Christopher Street Docks, outside old Albuquerque City Limits. We *earned* our right to march right into town and be seen in the light of day. New Yorkers took the streets, we took the Mother Road herself. Hell, we *invented* Pride, and when we did, government types called us criminals. They couldn't understand why we'd fight back. But then they never spent much time in our bars, either.

Today they want to ride in our parades. Fine. Come on in, but remember: Pride is *ours*. *We* make the rules and keep it going. If we let you take part in it, it is because we think your presence here might help *us* out, and we are not so dumb with pretty words as you may think. It really is that simple.

Yes, I said, Pride started at Foxes. At least where Albuquerque is concerned, and probably all of New Mexico, in 1976. Midnight was there, of course. P.J. O'Rourke and Midnight are now working on bar history as part of the Pride Archives, and they've done tremendous legwork -- apparently there are only three people who were there that first year still alive. But the bar they walked out of was Foxes.

Piches (pronounced "Peaches") had just bought the bar the year before from David Mauer, who opened it. About five or six guys went to Foxes on a Saturday morning and filled up on bacon and eggs before marching West on Central from the same doors I guarded three decades later for nine months. "Out of the bars, into the streets" walked right out of Foxes' heavy steel, glass, and iron doors I learned to use defensively as weapons against the hostile world outside my little rabbit hole beyond which, well, everything is just *different*. The Eastward march apparently began the second year, the year that Harry Hay showed up, which was the first year to be documented at the time through anything beyond unwritten oral histories of the people of the bars, though only very, very scantly.

Before Foxes there was the Newsroom, behind the El Rey Theatre, downtown, which was only gay at certain hours. There were certain parks, and certain paths in certain parks. This was back in the days of the Second Mattachine, though whether Albuquerque had a chapter or not, I truly do not know.

Foxes is the oldest living institutional link in Albuquerque's gay history and its appearance on the scene precedes the appearance of Pride by more than a year.

After Foxes there were perhaps a dozen or more bars. They came, they went. A season or two would pass, and with it, liquor licenses changed hands. The owners bent the laws or broke them, burned their buildings to the ground, or were burned down by arsonists' flames. They played favourites with their lovers, customers, and employees. They grew to hate eachother bitterly, sometimes, only to come together annually for Pride. As fashions changed and generations either grew to undesirable maturity or died too young, the drag queens never left (though they were never really welcomed), then for a season everything was "all young guys", and then "real men", though leather really never did come out from underground here, and by the 'eighties there were serious drugs (not counting alcohol) on the streets right outside, and the whole neighbourhood was going downhill fast. Gay bashings were a regular occurence for a time, and they live in our memory. We can sense hate as through invisible cat's whiskers. Blood did indeed stain all the parking lots of all the gay bars in this town at some time or another, and some blood stains stained deeper than others. Where it stained deep to the earth one can still feel the spirits. As usual, the new generation came up, but they were hot young twinks and knew it and didn't give a damn about the reasons for that big party in June they were too cool to go to or else went to because it was fun.

Those who live to see thirty may start to grasp it.

And then it's "I snuck in here when I was 17", and "the back bar was open, then", and "the bar came out to here, that's where the door was" and "who played pool?" and all the stories borne out by the infinite layers in the place itself. Each nail, brick, tile, timber, cinderblock has a story.

Winds up there is a story about the sign, our infamous beacon of social irresponsibility with three or four meanings, none of them quite innocuous. Specifically, how the bar came to be called "Foxes Booze 'n' Cruise". This comes from Midnight, who got the story from David Mauer himself, who's still around, and probably in the phonebook if anybody ever looked up aging homosexuals. The building was originally (well -- before it was Foxes) an Italian restaurant. When David Mauer took over, opening his own restaurant there, he called it "Foxes Booze 'n' Braise". When he decided to make it into Albuquerque's first gay bar about a year later, rather than pay for a new sign, he just changed two letters.

Foxes Booze 'n' Cruise was born.

It was sold to Piches the elder in 1975, the year that I was born, and has stayed in the Piches family since then.

Needless to say it was a remarkable evening.

In imitation of Martinique, I'm coming out of retirement. I'm working the door at Foxes on Saturday night. That's the day of the Pride march. I have changed the subtitle of this blog back to its rightful self for the time being.

The complicated nexus of patronage allegiances on which gay society is based continue to pull me in multiple directions at once. They're much the same regardless whether drinking is involved. This is a world of which I am a part, and it has taken me this long to learn to live in it, and not to just come out one day a year and then go back into the woodwork. This is why I started working for Charles in the first place and left the "sure thing" good-paying job at Frontier. I "came out" shortly before Pride MMIV at 29, and only then because I feared for my life and wanted *someone* to know who was involved with whatever was going to happen to me. Pride changed me profoundly. It had to be my every day life.

It hasn't been easy. Coming this far has entailed my working part-time minimum wage night jobs and getting thrown in jail and landing in AA. If anyone can do what I did while avoiding those three things or their equivalent to you, more power to you. And if you can't, oh man, it's *so* worth it. I'm now almost back where I was financially when I left Frontier.

I'd never go back. Never. I wouldn't know how. I wouldn't want to.

I now have a good job. Sure, it's about as exciting as watching paint dry, making for lousy material, mostly. That's OK. It gets me into an air conditioned house for forty of the hottest hours each week and feeds me well (remind me to tell you all about Bill's cooking sometime) and pays me well enough that I can spend my two consecutive days off doing "day off" things, rather than try to squeeze (a) recovering from the workweek, (b) doing housework, and (c) just enjoying life all into one tiny day.

I have an apartment that's not just liveable but verging ever closer to downright fabulous, right down to its asbestos tiles (which I really need to shine). I got a lamp at Goodwill yesterday, for forty dollars. It's a Colonial Premiere Co. Lamp, Model No. 1357, and it *has to* be from the '20s or earlier. Someday I may post a picture of it. It really is more a museum piece than a goodwill lamp, but thanks to Samon's I was able to find the rare, enormous 3-way bulb (100, 200, 300 watts output) it takes in the central torchiere and use it to illumine my space more than sufficiently. I bought the guitar amp I needed on credit -- not the one I fell in love with, the half-sized version of the same thing (less than half as expensive) that's still way too powerful for this apartment -- and I spent most of the weekend playing the guitar, getting sounds out of it that I have no right to whatsoever.

When my life is going well music comes back into it.

It hasn't done so since I tested false positive.

But that's a story that you know already. And it's time for me to sleep.

Be well.

JMW

Thank you, Flem.

3-D Mike's website is at Deeper Blue Music.

He's alive!!!

I am a one-man flock of lemmings.

Guh.

Came home after work and found *the* guitar amp I apparently need more than I need to put gas in my car or food in my body. Actually I saw it last week at Marc's Guitar Shop. And read about it in the book before I saw it there. And then found it online. And, and, and. I'm lusting very badly, if it isn't absolutely obvious. The thinking is part "only the best", part "I don't want to do this more than once". Part "I don't want anything not worth stealing", part "I don't want anthing light enough for a thief to carry away".

And yes, I've worked out how much it would cost per month from two different places paying zero interest before it's totally paid off. One would cost more but give me lower monthly payments, the other would cost me more each month but cost less in the long run assuming I can make the payments without fail. I will *not* pay interest -- chalk it up to my Calvinist upbringing -- I guess I'm just not predestined to do so. That's how I bought my desk, and yeah, there sure were months when it was tough, but I am generally 90% happy to have that stoopid desk. The evil websites make it very easy to get credit on the spot and buy it from them, then and there. I would much rather buy from Marc's -- unless of course I'll save a small fortune by doing it online. I may save at Marc's in the long run even if it does cost a bit more than the cheapest place online 'cause online stores don't do trade ins. Plus if there's any trouble down the line I'll just go there to get it fixed regardless. Plus it's sure to be in working order when I get it 'cause they don't sell shit without checking it thoroughly. We will see.

Which brings me to the one person on earth who can help me decide whether I should or should not go into debt for this particular item. He's vanished from the earth.

3d Mike has disappeared. I emailed his aol address which I found deep within an archive in an archive in an archive and it bounced back not a minute later. I searched for "3d mike hodsdon" in google and got dead links and some rebuttal to something he said in a messageboard flame war years ago. 3d Mike was the incredibly talented maker of anaglyphs -- that's red/blue glasses 3d stuff. He'd do it pixel-by-pixel, giving you an unparalleled illusion of real depth and parallax. He'd do this with everything from simple cartoon backgrounds to unbearably complex Escher images. He did the anaglyphic conversions for a special 3d weekend event for Spücø at Cartoons Forum Palace years ago. There was one Escher piece he converted with leaves floating on water and it was breathtakingly *real*. He taught guitar and we'd talk hours on end in the palace about stereographic conversions and 7/5 time signatures and stuff like that. Amazing human being. And for my needs at this moment, the only person who can definitely tell me "go for it" or "don't unless you play some other place than your apartment" without having a vested interest in my buying it or not. Wherefore art thou?

I could go into how much I hate salesmen here, but I am doing this to myself. Not some salesman. I haven't gotten pitched to. Not at all. I have just fallen in love, yet again, with something that I really can't afford but absolutely positively have to have before -- what? I dunno. Before the universe collapses on itself. Which if you ask me in this state when it is gonna happen is tomorrow afternoon around 5:30. I've got notes scrawled on the backs of the papers for banjo strings. Can I eat for six months on six dollars a day? Oy vey. I'm a stark raving idiot sometimes.

If anybody wants to drop a ton of cash to get me a guitar amp -- but only the exact one that I want from the vendor I specify (I can be bitchier than an insurance company) I might agree to have your name tattooed across my ass. Or to chop wood for you for a year. Or -- hell -- nah --- I'll just live on six dollars a day.