Guitarblogging

More guitar work... hope I'm not boring you all. :-)

This is called Slowdown Blues. 

The threat to women bloggers

The Washington Post has an article about the threat to women bloggers - as the blogosphere grows, it grows nastier. I've always been a little circumspect about what I say, because I remember how nasty Usenet was. But for the women profiled in this article, it is a whole lot worse. A lot worse.

Why are there so many sociopathic trolls on the Internet, anyway? Underneath the veneer of civilized day to day life, are there really that many people who are totally unhinged?

Where have the bees gone?

I have never been afraid of bees. I am careful in the woods, of course; stepping on a hive would bring them out to sting, and who could blame them? But a bee in the grass or in the garden is a symbol of the joy God took in creation. For there are his very workers, busily buzzing about, helping flowers, carrots, and cucumbers to bring forth. Every brilliantly coloured flower you see is not bringing forth its beauty for you - this beauty is meant for them, and they work away in this beauty to bring forth all the colour on the ground, and much of the food on our plates.

But, according to scientists, something is going wrong. The bees are beginning to vanish. And we'd better find out why, or the world will be a lot less pretty, and we, along with many other creatures, will have a lot less to eat.

"Touched by Sheryl Crow"

From this article, I got a good laugh:

Laurie David and Sheryl Crow: Karl Rove Gets Thrown Under the Stop Global Warming Bus | The Huffington Post 

Laurie David and Sheryl Crow recount their confrontation with deputy White House chief of staff Karl Rove (they wanted to talk with him about climate change policy.) After she describes Rove asking Crow to let go of him, Laurie David asks how far from reality a person would need to be not to want to be "touched by Sheryl Crow."

I have been a fan for years, love her bass playing and lyrics. But I think I can answer this question - there is a very good reason why a person might not want to be touched by Sheryl Crow. In her own words...

http://www.sherylcrow.com/news.aspx?nid=7786

I hope she washes her hands with soap and warm water after that one square gets used.

House full of babies

We're babysitting my granddaughter tonight. And my grandniece is visiting with my niece at the same time. The two tots are only two weeks apart, birthday-wise. It has been a comedy festival, let me tell you. There's nothing that can make you laugh more than a pair of comical babies. :-)

An M Class Planet

For the first time, a planet capable of supporting life has been identified outside of our solar system. One of the things that the news accounts are noting is that the planet is in the habitable zone of a red dwarf star.

What they are not noting however, is the life span of a red dwarf. Our sun will be extinguished in five billion years, when it runs out of fuel. This system's red dwarf, on the other hand, will still be radiating evenly a hundred billion years from now.

This place is a potential future home for us. A long term home.

More musical experimentation

You can find all kinds of music software plugins that mimic real amplifiers and foot pedals. This morning, I managed to find two plug ins for equipment I actually own - a Fender twin and a tube screamer. So using this software, I tried to reproduce the sound I get on this equipment, and I got pretty close!

This is a blues swing number I've called "Mellow Swing," although it is using one of the backing tracks from the Guitar Center's King of the Blues contest called "Jazzy swing" or something like that.

Leaving in an era when everyone is online

The Globe and Mail has a heart-breaking article describing the facebook and Myspace profiles for Virginia Tech students that have gone silent. This is a phenomenon that occurs outside the scope of this tragedy: bloggers that leave a mute ghost of themselves when they leave this Earth.

Sometimes, the blogs do vanish over time. Some that I've read have disappeared (Cancer Baby springs to mind.) And sometimes, they linger, frozen in time. There is one I know and read at the time that chronicled a teenager's fight with cancer, and it is still there; and as a sad reminder, it is still designed the way early blogs looked back then, a vintage website of the era.

But perhaps there is some comfort in knowing that YOU, Time's person of the year, can now be remembered in words and thought, just like famous people. What you have to say may still be there, may still matter to people, even when you cannot say it anymore.

Damage

In Iraq today, sixty six people died in four car bombs. That's exactly twice the toll of the Virginia Tech shooting. And that happens there every day. In Darfur, 200,000 people have likely been killed in the trouble stirred up by the Janjaweed.

There is so much ongoing violence in the world, I think the only way we have to cope with it is to be desensitized to it, to ignore or forget that it even happens. Only something much closer to home shocks us out of our reverie.

Remember

Emily Hilscher loved horses, and used to ride them. She wanted to be a vet.

This is a far more important thing to remember than anything about the deranged and disgruntled man who did this evil. She lived. Like you and me, she had hobbies, friends, quirks and quarks. Remember her, and his evil act is diminished - not much, of course. But the less attention he gets, and the more she and the other victims get, then perhaps a little something of them lives on in our world, and a little more of his hate dies with him.

Here are some of the others we must remember:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/17/vtech.shooting.victims/index.html

Canada's charter - 25 today

I was there, twenty five years ago, on that day when Canada got its own constitution - not the British version from 1867, the BNA act, but one of our own making... the one whose centrepiece was the new Charter of Rights.

It was a rainy, rainy day, and there were a few tens of thousands of people on Parliament hill. CBC had at least one tower erected with cameras pointed at the main stand. I could kind of sort of make out the central figures of this drama, the Queen, Trudeau and a handful of other luminaries.

It was a grey and grim day. Speakers chimed out with the words of the luminaries, whose voices echoed like Parliament hill was a canyon (it always sounds like this, which anyone who has attended the sound and lights show can tell you.) The Queen spoke in both English and French, with a palpable sense of the history she was involving herself in.

They signed it. And then a squadron of F-18s did a roaring flyby. I pointed my camera up, up and got a picture of the metal birds soaring by. I tried to take a picture of the signing itself, but all I got were pictures of the crowd.

I still have these photos. I will cherish them and pass them down.... I stood at the presence of history, a silent witness to it. I think it will be good for my ancestors to know that when history happens, and you get the chance, go and see it unfold.

Saint Nicholas - a 9/11 missing person

I only just learned this. Among the remains they are still hoping to find, six years after Sept. 11? Those of St. Nicholas according to Feiler Faster. An Orthodox church destroyed in the attack had two of his bones, and they have not, to date, been recovered.

Back into the world

I was the musician at a retreat this weekend, one that lasted from Thursday night until yesterday afternoon. I was on this retreat myself about four years ago, and was a team member this time (I've done that once before too.) This is a very joy filled retreat that likes to say that it takes you up the mountain to the very moment of transfiguration. And it really does - as much as St. Peter can tell you this, I believe I can tell you what a shining Christ looks like.

But they are very careful to tell you that nobody lives up on this mountain. Life is lived in the world, and whenever you experience transfiguration, you have to come down into a world that did not share that experience. Anything that changes your life does not also change the world.

I learned that well enough today when I heard that a rampaging gunman killed 32 people, not more than a day after I was basking in the divine light I spoke of. But I did change. And even if the world did not, I did.

Change starts with me. And it starts with you. Not only can evil be defeated, it already has been. Every time any heart feels and acts in genuine love, evil suffers a mortal blow.

Yesterday is gone, and tomorrow is not yet come. We have only today. Let us  begin. (Mother Theresa)

Guess who's coming to dinner?

They've extracted a small amount of DNA from the collagen of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, found in 2003. And guess what living animal is the closest match for what they managed to get?

A chicken.

So the next time you see a chicken be nice to it. It could eat you.

Doh!

For three months, I've been preparing with a group of men to conduct a retreat this weekend. We had our send-off at a parish last night where there was a lot of singing and introductions. It all went really well until I got home.

"Where's my songbook?" I asked myself, wondering where I'd left all the music for the entire weekend retreat. I went downstairs where my music gear was. Nope. Went out to the car. Double nope. My wife soon joined in my panic, phoning friends to see if they picked it up by mistake. Strike three.

I phoned the parish office this morning. They have it... I left it in a pew. Doh!!

A friend of mine is on her way to fetch it for me. And I feel like a kid who needs strings on his mittens.

A twilight vigil

In the dark, I await you my Lord
You are never far from me,
but I have been far from you.
Bring me near, Lord
As I wait with a candle;
kindle in me a flame
That I might go out into the world
With a heart of flesh
And a love renewed.

I wait for the ancient rhythms, Lord
The candles are lit, the sanctuary is quiet
I wait for the light to blind me,
Not only the light of this dark church
But the light of your presence,
The light of your very word,
For it is written that the darkness
Has never put it out...

So leave the light on for me,
My Lord, My God.

Go Rest High on That Mountain

I know your life
On earth was troubled
And only you could know the pain
You weren't afraid to face the devil
You were no stranger to the rain

Go rest high on that mountain
Son, your work on earth is done
Go to heaven a shoutin'
Love for the Father and the Son

(Vince Gill)

I've virtually become a non-blogger

Truth to tell, I hardly have time anymore.

Last night was only one of many things I've been working on. Once a year, our parish puts on a big production for Holy Thursday, a reenactment of the Last Supper. I'm the electric guitar player in the choir's backing group, and this gave me the opportunity to try my new guitar a little bit on some of the songs. I say a little bit because it turns out my new Telecaster is quite noisy in certain circumstances. My Stratocaster is wired such that my out of phase positions are hum canceling. Not so the new guitar. I might have to get noiseless pickups for it, or somehow figure out a way to better shield the instrument.

Anyway, the choir sounds in top form, even though we're missing one of our main singers. He's a soulful guy who made certain songs sound amazing, and this year, we can't do them. However, a delightful treat is that we're getting to do a country gospel hymn Vince Gill wrote called "Go Rest High on That Mountain." Its such a soulful song, and I have great guitar and harmony parts on it.

Last night when I got home I put on the Gospel of John film, and watched the scene with Jesus washing the feet of his disciples, which is the hallmark of Holy Thursday. We are called to live a life of service. As I prepare for a men's retreat the week after Easter for which I am a team member - something we've spent months preparing - I have to remember I need to be above all  a washer of feet.

The pursuit of dirtiness

Apparently, dirt can make you happy. Well it did for some lab mice, anyway.

Maybe that's why I'm always happy when we're camping. :-)