The last event of the Orlando@50 AARP gathering was a powerhouse concert featuring stars from the sixties. Richie Havens opened the show, and yes, he sang “Freedom” during his set. Next up was Judy Collins and she covered favorites from “Diamonds and Rust”, through “Both Sides Now” to “Send in the Clowns”. When a creative talent like Richie Havens and a skilled performer like Judy Collins are opening acts, the headliners had better be extraordinary. David Crosby, Steve Stills, and Graham Nash are extraordinary. I was fortunate enough to attend what may have been my first Crosby, Stills and Nash concert with my pal Tex, a screamer in the best Rock ‘n Roll concert going tradition. She kept the place charged up from the first song right through the last encore. None of that emotion was forced. It came straight from the heart. And the damaged larynx. Thanks again for the energy Pattie! (There’s a footnote here. I may have heard them live back in the day, at Winterland or the Fillmore Auditorium or whatever, but I’m comforted by Paul Krassner’s observation that if you can remember the sixties, you weren’t there.)

The trio, backed by some phenomenal sidemen on keyboards, bass, and percussion, opened with the Joni Mitchell song, Woodstock. A good place to start and they just kept going. They didn’t stint. Throughout the concert they didn’t cheat us out of a single extended solo, or mad improvisational jam. They just kept rocking. You shoulda been there.

Here’s the rest of the set list…

• Military Madness, Graham Nash’s song. Just a reminder that we don’t have the cultural awareness or opposition to the wars that we demonstrated in the Vietnam era. Could that be because our leaders finessed the need for a draft by committing the National Guard to combat and hiring mercenaries for the real dirty work?
• Long Time Gone, from the debut album released in 1969. They reached way back last night, and we oldies who remembered it were glad they did.
• Buffalo Springfield’s hit, Bluebird, drew the best out of Steve Stills, reminding me once again why I sometimes just thank god for the Fender guitar.
• Marrakech Express, by Graham Nash is another tune from the debut album. Nash wanted to record it earlier with the Hollies. I’m glad he saved it for the CS&N group.
• Southern Cross, co-authored by Stills, comes from a time more recent in the band’s history. It’s less than thirty years old. It’s a good song, but for me it’s not a grabber.
• A grabber would be the Stones’ Ruby Tuesday, an acoustic version of which the trio performed last night. Crosby claimed they may record it.
• Deja Vu (see below)
• Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, another one from the eponymous first album and from the live performance at Max Yasgur’s place.
• Almost Cut My Hair, no worries though. David’s still got his freak flag flying.
• Wooden ships, a Crosby, Stills, Paul Kantner composition that starts with a dark and gloomy apocalyptic vision and lightens up to that freeing moment when all of us hippies sailed away and the war culture drowned in its own misery. Wait. Did that really happen?

We weren’t a very demanding audience, nor as appreciative as others on the long Crosby, Stills, and Nash tour undoubtedly had been. In fact, the concert was more of an entertainment than a rite. So with a long, well wrought “Wooden Ships” as the final number, many of us were ready to head to the hotel shuttle buses, go home, and get horizontal. It was a real energizer when the applause coaxed them back on stage for an encore.

• For What It’s Worth, “Stop children, what’s that sound,” Steven Stills’ amazingly prescient 1967 hit, recorded by Buffalo Springfield, still brings a frisson of paranoia back to those of us for whom it was anthem of powerlessness in the face of the global chaos emerging in the sixties.
  … and a second encore:
• Teach Your Children. This song carries as much compelling warmth and hope and compassion as “For What It’s Worth” projects fear and foreboding. I’m not sure I believe Graham Nash when he claims the Diane Arbus shot of a kid with a toy grenade inspired the song.

The concert was powerful, exciting, and moving. It choked me up. The concert again proved that Steve Stills remains the best living lead guitar player, David Crosby made the right move when he left the Byrds, Sir Graham Nash is some kind of Brit, even today, and that Crosby, Stills and Nash are much more than Just Another Band From LA.

Like Bill, I’m an older guy, comfortable in the company of women and generally uneasy with the superficial bullshit that seems to color men’s relationships. My social life these days has narrowed to occasional gatherings with my wife and her friends (“the ladies who lunch”), a little jibber-jabber at the Saturday farmers market, and infrequent chats with the few neighbors we have on this thinly settled stretch of country road, conversations that center on the weather, or the merits of concrete versus asphalt, or perhaps the irony of herbicide use in prairie restoration. Like Bill, the man who inspired Ronni’s post, “I am a man with an active and inquisitive mind, and don’t give a rip about sports, hunting, drinking or being an Elk, Moose, etc. I can talk business and politics but ultimately….” Ultimately, what? God save me from one more fantasy football general manager’s lame observation about Brent Favray or the Green Bay Pigskins. Ultimately there must be something meaningful nearby, but I guess I won’t find it if I don’t start looking.

My problem is complicated by my alienation. My patriotism isn’t of the common type. I see America’s class structure as an impediment to resolving some of the most horrible problems mankind has ever faced. A handful of mellow guys drinking a few beers wouldn’t necessarily welcome a strident SOB like me into their company, nor would I likely be comfortable among them. I’m not a fisherman or a bowler. I find most religion appalling at best, often a refuge of emotional cripples and existential cowards, and always a tool for creating division and invidious distinctions. (How about New York’s bishop Dolan’s unctuously prayerful posturing around helping the muslim community find a way to compromise their plans for construction in lower Manhattan? What a tea bagger. Maybe they could move the community center out to White Plains? Arrogant jerk. A real crusader. Well, as they say, opinions are like anal sphincters. Even the bishop has one.)

You see my problem.

The other day I was waiting for Beth to retrieve some books on hold at the library. I parked at an angle across three parking spaces in front of the local senior center, trying to find notice of the hours it’s open (and indeed the info wasn’t posted anywhere). Am I a senior center kind of guy? A buddhist nun with a shaved head and a great tan on her bare arms smiled at me from behind the steering wheel of her Toyota. I thought maybe a diet of brown rice and vegetables would take a few pounds off and restore me to a more youthful look. Maybe I could augment that organic diet with a quiet afternoon of bridge every week or two. Do they do that at the senior center? Maybe there are some guys who would be into that. Or euchre. We’re big on alternative card games here in Wisconsin. Sheepshead. I haven’t played sheepshead for a long time. Maybe poker?

Maybe I could find one guy who plays chess as poorly as Don Harvey, someone I could beat about half the the time. We have a nice little coffee shop downtown, perfect for sucking down a latte and talking smart.

Or maybe it’s time for me to crank up the engagement level and hang out with my peeps again, the socialists and greens and pacifists. More pragmatically maybe I should put some energy into assuring Senator Feingold’s re-election and lending a hand to the Tom Barrett campaign while I’m at it. None of these things is happening in my life right now, but I’m sure there are some men around here who share my interests and concerns. How about a woodworking class at some adult education venue? You’re never too old to amputate a thumb with a power tool.

The online world is wonderfully seductive. I can spend a lot of time virtually adjacent to guys I enjoy, guys who make me laugh and guys who catalyze the flames of righteous anger in opposition to the egregious nonsense that passes for politics these days. But there’s something missing in the virtual connection, something that cyber-singularity enthusiast and champion of immortality Ray Kurzweil denies. The nuances of facial expression, the spontaneity of laughter… these and so many other gestures are missing from cyberspace and the single-minded dedication to life extension, hell they’re missing from Facebook and twitter and the single-minded dedication to wasting time. I hope Ronni’s friend Bill finds his way toward developing some rewarding mature male friendships. For me, I think it all might start with the command from some internal cop: “Sir. Step away from the keyboard.”

Early in the summer the Trautman’s had an open house. I stopped by to see their operation and to visit my brush mower which Scott is holding hostage. The Trautman farm is like a storybook: big old farm house with a wrap around porch, red barns, a machine shed, happy kids chasing chickens, chickens squawking and retreating to their roosts in the hay loft where the kids gather eggs every day, pigs and piglets pastured well out of the way and down wind, jersey cows and calves on the near pasture, hay fields, tractors, wagons, trucks, a big wood lot. The Trautman family has the whole family farm thing going for them, even a little store open Wednesday evenings and Saturday mornings where you can pick up eggs or grass fed beef and pork. The store is a cozy gathering place with books and chairs and a table in a building set away from the house adjoining a barn. They have popcorn and honey and what not, local food all of it, though the honey is on consignment from neighbors down the road. The Trautmans don’t keep bees. I’m trying to remember if there’s a pot bellied stove. If there’s not there should be. It’s that kind of space.

There’s a glass fronted cooler in the store, the kind of cooler where you’d expect to see milk and cream, butter and cheese displayed for sale. Cluelessly I asked about getting some fresh milk and cream. As it happened, the farm was even then engaged in a struggle to save their dairying operation and they’d been enjoined against selling raw milk to the public.

Raw milk is risky. It’s not pasteurized. Pasteurization protects the public against tuberculosis, brucellosis, listeriosis, and several other diseases. We learned this in grade school. In fact, we learned the lesson so well that today few of us have ever tasted raw milk or cream skimmed from raw milk, or butter churned from the cream that was skimmed from the cows that Scott milks–thirty cows, milked every day, and their milk dumped on the ground because the wholesaler won’t pick up the milk and the State’s Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) has rescinded Scott’s dairying license because Foremost won’t pick up the milk, and Foremost won’t pick up the milk because DATCP is “cracking down” on raw milk producers… there’s a horrible circularity here, a sort of Kafka-esque encounter with a heartless, mindless bureaucracy.

Scott’s cows are healthy, his operation is clean, there ought to be a way he could bring his raw milk to market. Raw milk dairies are conscious of the potential public health risks, and with few exceptions they provide food that is superior to anything you can find in the supermarket. But earlier this year thirty people came down with campylobactereriosis here in Wisconsin and the cause of their gastrointestinal upset was raw milk. State bureaucrats, concerned for their jobs and under pressure from the big dairy interests have cracked down on family farms. If you want dairy products in Wisconsin, you can have the pasteurized, homogenized processed products, but you can’t get whole raw milk. You might get sick. (Issues related to ground beef and other food borne illnesses notwithstanding, the State DATCP seems intent on driving small dairy operations out of business, while supporting the huge 1000 cow and more milking parlors, factory farms that treat cows about like chickens in an egg factory). As an aside, if you get food poisoning at the local Taco John’s will DATCP drive the restaurant out of business? Short answer: NOT!

There is a story unfolding here, and you can follow it and support the Trautman family by becoming a Trautman farm “fan” on facebook. The facebook page is here.

As for me, I’m doing my part for the locavore movement. I get my grass fed beef from the Trautman Family Farm a few miles east of here.

(And I still think it will be better for the planet if all of us omnivores moderate our intake of meat.)

I checked out the bio and resume and then peeked at the portfolio. Holy moley, what a writer!!

(Blame my excessive use of bangs as the typesetters used to call them—although they resemble neither a combed forward hairstyle nor a British sausage so what’s that about anyway?—blame the exclamation points on my real excitement that Jeneane is again getting her freak on, blog-wise. Allied has had about a post a month recently, and I lost track of Jeneane.net entirely. Perhaps I need more RSS and less twitfeed.)

Wishing I was at F2C, David Isenberg’s annual inside-the-beltway thing. It’s being tweeted here and chatted there, but text doesn’t let you hear the music. Video is streamed from here, rtsp://odo.warpspeed.com/f2c09.sdp, alas I can’t get the audio to come up.

Vacation is over and today I have to pump out a few posts for Super Eco, go to the dump to recycle cardboard, the library to pick up books on hold, and the post office to pick up last week’s mail. Also owe dogs some loving attention, and I must (heavy sigh) make the vet appointment to get Tessa spayed.

In other news, I read that Esther paid three million (US) for her back-up slot on the Simonyi joyride. The ticket cost him like $35 million. Her dad, Freeman, held forth in the Sunday NYT yesterday as the most prominent and distinguished global climate change denier (“The Civil heretic”). Hmm, maybe I can write about that at Super Eco after my recycling run.

Her notes from Vint Cerf’s presentation here.

For No Reason

He wants to write words down
On pieces of paper
Recording them now
And recalling them later.
It remains a mystery
The pages of history
Outlasted the passing
Of things that were dear to me.

Those wonderful children
With bright shining faces
They waltzed in the halls
And they marched in their places
The darlings of dancing,
And spinning, and reeling.
Look into their eyes
To see what they're feeling.

It's almost too much for him
Bearing the cross he's carrying.
It's almost too much for him
Wearing the face he's wearing.
Why don't you change your style ?
Why don't you change your style ?
Why don't you change your style ?

He wants to find men
Who can love for no reason,
Who open their hearts
To life of all seasons
But they've all gone, it seems
Off in their limousines—
I want to live where men
Can believe their dreams.

It's almost too much for him
Bearing this cross i'm carrying.
It's almost too much for him
Wearing this face i'm wearing.
Why don't you change your style ?
Think i'll change my style.
Why don't you change your style ?
Think i'll change my style.
Why don't you change your style ?
Change
Why don't you change your style ?
Change...

Copyright Joe McDonald, 1969

Our nation is in trouble:

Economic inequality is at its highest level since the Great Depression. The U.S. economy has shed 600,000 jobs this year. Food banks and homeless shelters are turning people away. While our nation spends $720 million a day on the Iraq war, millions of households face a winter without heat because social programs have been starved of funds for eight years. In our global household, 26,000 children under 5 die from preventable causes every day.

Principles which may provide a helpful lens through which to evaluate proposals to strengthen the economy include:

1. Human rights. Solutions should nourish the dignity and human rights of all people as called for in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This includes an inherent human right to food, shelter, health care, and an adequate standard of living. People should be free to exercise political and civil rights in order to obtain these economic rights.
2. A seat at the table. How can we solve this problem in a way that moves toward greater transparency and justice? Taxpayers who will be expected to foot the bill for solutions should have a say in the process. Congress should heed public input and take a strong oversight role. People can call Congress and join groups working on this issue. Over the long run, we can all help “democratize the economy” as members of credit unions, cooperatives, labor unions, community groups, and as shareholders and voters. Civic engagement increases democracy. Undue political influence by corporate and financial interests limits it.
3. The common good. Solutions should benefit the many, not the few. As feminist activist Barbara Deming once wrote, “We are all part of one another.” The way the crisis on Wall Street is resonating on Main Street and around the world is a poignant example of this truth. A society cannot move ahead when it leaves anyone behind.
4. Social responsibility. Solutions should include a role for a strong public sector and a responsible private sector that sees itself as part of a community of people accountable to each other. A business ethic that supports worker rights, protects the environment, and pays livable wages nurtures human dignity and rights. Those rights are harmed by unethical practices which transfer resources away from workers, shareholders, and communities.

McNish suggests that a plan to strengthen the economy viewed through this lens would include limits on executive pay, fair and progressive taxation, strengthened regulation and public control, and measures to reduce foreclosures, create jobs, and re-fund human needs.

She concludes,

We are all part of one another. Our society cannot abandon people and communities and expect to remain healthy and whole. We cannot afford to keep accumulating debt while giving tax breaks to the most affluent and paying for a $720 million-a-day war. We have to make choices. Congress should not rush into hasty solutions as it rushed into the Iraq war. Rather, solutions must come from a place of our deepest values and with the utmost care.