A job Teddy just missed seeing accomplished

There have been so many topics I've wanted to delve into here since I last posted. I just never found the time to actually ... well, delve.

So, before we bid farewell to 2009, I thought I'd make an appearance to at least touch base on one of them.

I just finished reading "True Compass," the memoir of Ted Kennedy, who by the timeframe mentioned in the book, must have wrapped up his work not long before he died. He alludes to the brain tumor in the final chapter, along with his appearance at the 2008 Democratic National Convention and Barack Obama's inauguration early this year, and there is a picture of Kennedy with Obama (and a couple other congressmen) from April of this year at the White House.

The above is actually beside the point of my post today. The book did allow me to look at Teddy in a slightly different way. I found his candor on a lot of the book topics, whether it be related to the Congress and legislative issues or his personal life, refreshing. I'm sure staunch Republicans or Kennedy haters will find the extent of candor insufficient, or aver that Kennedy's version of Chappaquiddick was hardly thorough (or even complete). But that, too, is not the point of this post.

I actually found myself most interested, throughout the read, in the extent of Kennedy's involvement of some his pet legislative projects, the foremost of which -- one that goes back decades and, alas, one he will not see to fruition -- was health care.

The book laid the foundation for why all the Kennedys embraced issues and legislation directed at the downtrodden as so important to them. Yes, the Kennedy family was very well off, but Ted Kennedy and his siblings were raised by two very resolved parents to never brandish their wealth. In fact, the Kennedy siblings were strongly and repeatedly encouraged to seek out those who were far less fortunate, to strive to understand those people's plights and to invest whatever clout their societal or political stature allowed them toward helping the disadvantaged secure and enjoy every right that was enjoyed by the privileged.

Ted Kennedy embraced health care for the masses as an issue early in his Senate career. It was incredible -- and very sad -- to read how presidential administration after administration either shot it down or simply refused to consider it, thanks in large part to the extraordinarily powerful insurance and medical lobbies.

So it was with this fresh read in mind that I've been trying to follow Obama's attempts to make happen what Kennedy tried to bring to so many millions of Americans -- affordable health insurance. The strange perks we're seeing key legislators wresting in return for their votes for the legislation should tell you plenty about how difficult it had been through the years to extract elected representatives in both chambers from their comfortable and cozy beds with the insurance and medical lobby.

Equally telling is the degree of dilution of some key points of both measures in the two houses, the foremost of which being the one-payer option that would have totally removed control of funds to pay for health costs from the coffers of stingy, profit-hoarding private-sector insurers.

In the interim, I marvel how, as Obama gets farther than any president has ever gotten to reaching out and helping the giantly, under-insured lower class (and probably a good amount of middle-classers, too) people in our nation, he also is taking a political hit for doing so. Granted, the timing of funding the health care measure -- so soon after someone had to do something to bail out the tanking auto industry -- is not ideal. But if the uptick of Wall Street in the past six months is any indication, the president's move to revive the country's financial health should give us hope that there will be something of merit to come from the health care legislation.

My only regret, and probably a regret shared by those who knew how passionate Ted Kennedy regarded health-care coverage for the masses, is that he will not be here to see it finally arrive.

Call if you must ... but please, not while driving!

Thirty-two countries in the world -- including Germany, Ireland, Denmark, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Japan, China, Egypt and the United Kingdom -- either ban all use of a phone or just a hand-held phone (read: cellphone) by anyone operating a motor vehicle. Four Canadian provinces, including the largest, Quebec, do likewise.

In the United States, no state imposes a blanket use of telephones while driving, although six states -- California, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Oregon and Washington plus the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands -- do ban the use of a hand-held phone by a vehicle operator (which means the use of phone earpieces while driving in those states would be OK). Only six states. Six other states have laws prohibiting local jurisdictions from enacting any restrictions on phone usage while driving.

Are legislators and the people in this country really that naive to trust the majority of people to drive undistracted while talking on the phone at the same time? I realize that I'm only one voice, but I find such trust incredulous. Blind, even. I don't even think it's a close call. I don't think half of the vehicle operators in this nation can drive and talk on the phone simultaneously without significantly diminishing their focus and attention to where it belongs -- the road.

To me, that's scary because it also means the likelihood of serious consequences on the road are significantly greater. As if we need another good reason -- aside from drunk drivers, who we already have a challenge trying to police and eradicate -- to be fearful about being "caught" driving while sober and phoneless.

Why is it our nation cannot put the hammer down -- much harder than it does already on drunk drivers, and simply "at all" on people who have to operate cellphones while behind the wheel? This is a rhetorical question, of course, because I don't know the answer -- other than to say Americans so value their right to get liquored up and to jabber away with their fancy hand-held electronic devices, the latter because it makes them look important. Hey, that's all that I can come up with. Important -- and deadly.

Perhaps you think I exaggerate, or am beating the drum to a pointless issue. I don't think so. I can't tell you how many times I -- just me, myself and I -- have come across a cellphone-using driver making a bonehead maneuver with the vehicle that I'm pretty certain was made because his or her attention was totally fixed somewhere other than the road or traffic.

I consider myself an accomplished multi-tasker. And yet, while I'm driving, and especially while driving in heavy traffic (e.g., rush hour or locales I'm not familiar with), I have trouble holding a simple conversation with a passenger in my vehicle -- someone sitting right next to me -- because I feel that to do so significantly affects my ability to remain adequately attentive to driving. As a result, I'm sure many passengers have thought me to be an antisocial while driving ... and certainly one who has trouble composing intelligible responses or comments if I do try to communicate.

So if someone who otherwise is a darn-good multi-tasker cannot, in good conscience, feel comfortable simultaneously driving and talking WITHOUT jabbering into a hand-held device, how many people are out there to you suppose are fooling themselves into thinking they can? Or simply ignoring the fact ... and risking so much -- like, oh, human lives -- doing so?

The latter two questions are what scare me the most. I suppose I could dismiss this fear by chalking up myself as a human anomaly, but I really don't think so. My years of observing human nature tell me too many people who feel the need to use phones at all times and places also fool themselves into thinking they jabber and drive without sacrificing the needed attention required of the latter.

I have no quip-laden ending for this. Except, please, don't ever try to call me if you're driving a vehicle. I'm likely to launch into the rant above. Do you really want that?

A somewhat long hiatus

Yeah, I know. It's been over two months since I stopped to post an entry here. But I know "bloggers" who've been away from their writing or posting far longer, so I guess I don't quite feel so bad.

I'll try to summarize the busy-ness that's kept from being "regular" here in those weeks since I wrote about the Tour de France.

*** On Aug. 7, my second granddaughter, Addison Elyse, was born at St. Francis Hospital - South in Indianapolis. Two days later, Addison came home, and two days after that Addy's mother, Kelly Anne, noticed Addy had a fever and was twitching unnaturally. After a brief visit to the St. Francis emergency room, staff there had Addy transported to Riley Hospital for Children in downtown Indianapolis, where Addy remained -- invariably in the pediatric intensive care unit and the newborn floor -- until this past Monday, Sept. 28.

It'd be difficult to summarize the roller-coaster medical issues Addy weathered during her stay -- and she's still not totally over the hill yet. But it entailed seizures, infant apnea, three blood clots, a blood infection (MRSA) and a lower-extremities hematoma. She had ultra sounds, X rays, MRIs, blood tests, a spinal tap, antibiotics (intravenous and needle-administered), tubes coming from every place visible and temporary loss of vocal cords.

Family members made regular visits to Riley during the period, and I will cherish my several post-work, late-day few hours alone cuddling with her for a long, long time -- the almost perfect ones (where she slept in my arms start to finish) to even the ones where nothing could seem to comfort her. I was still with Addy, and I knew she was in far more discomfort than I.

*** Work has dealt me yet another formidable challenge. My staff merged with another in our features department, and I've been left to figure out how to make it work. People's work shifts and days off have changed, we're finding Tuesday nights and all day Wednesdays incredibly overwhelming because of the onerous workload. But this weekend, our two desks are now physically merging (from mid-July until now, we'd still been operating in separate locations in the newsroom), so I'm hoping the proximity and ability to have access to all staffers to throw on the sundry triages that surface on those Tuesdays and Wednesdays will give us a little better means to deal with it all.

*** I had my first public display of my photography in an art gallery show for a one-night, monthly First Friday art tour along the Massachusetts Avenue cultural district of downtown Indianapolis. Actually, I was among five members of a photo club who contributed images for the display. That occurred Sept. 4. At my photo blog, Photo Potpourri, I have a picture of one of three walls from our photo club's exhibit (which was at the Art Bank gallery).

*** A staffer at the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library called me last month to seek permission to use six images from my Irvington neighborhood gallery (at my Fototime.com online site) in a display the downtown main library plans to put up in January to represent the Eastside of Indianapolis. The display will be available on the sixth floor of the library's new wing throughout the month of January.

*** I spent last Saturday at Faught Stadium on the grounds of Franklin (Ind.) College, shooting photos of an exciting football game between the host Grizzlies and Trine University (Angola, Ind.). The Grizzlies came from 13 points down late in the third quarter to win it 30-29 on a 13-yard pass from Nick Purichia (a graduate of Cardinal Ritter High School in Indianapolis) to Adam Mellencamp with only 2 minutes and 25 seconds left in the game.

Pictures from my shoot there can be found also at my online gallery at SmugMug; a few of the images and a text summary also can be found at Photo Potpourri. I include this shoot in this summary because I took more than 1,000 images at the game, and the process of editing them all ... and selecting the 150 I decided to post on the online gallery was time-consuming. But it was worth it; it was a beautiful day for a college football game, I enjoyed the small-college atmosphere there (reminiscent of my years at UW-Eau Claire in northwestern Wisconson), and, perhaps most importantly, I was extraordinarly pleased with with quality of images.

Armstrong and Contador keep their positions

Teammates and race favorites Alberto Contador and Lance Armstrong kept their positions -- first and third -- after the climb up fabled Mont Ventoux (pictured above) at the end of today's Stage 20 of the Tour de France, despite expected and repeated attacks from Schleck brothers Andy and Frank.

The four were among a select few of the race's leaders who managed to separate themselves from the peloton (the rest of the pack) and conquer Ventoux without losing much ground. Andy Schleck (in white, left, crossing finish line) attacked repeatedly, hoping to both distance himself from Contador (in yellow jersey, left) to possibly pick up huge chunks of time and pass the race leader -- but also to wear down Astana teammates Contador and Armstrong (behind Contador, left) in hopes Andy's brother could push ahead and possibly vault over Armstrong for third place.

But Contador and Armstrong answered every attack. They did manage to add some time between fourth-place rider Bradley Wiggins of Great Britain, but not enough to enable Frank Schleck to leap over Wiggins and grab fourth place in the overall standings.

None of the major race leaders won the stage -- that distinction went to Juan Manuel Garate
of Spain (right), who finished three seconds ahead of Tony Martin of Germany. Garate and Martin, neither of whom's overall time was anywhere close to threatening the leaders, were the lone survivors of a much larger breakaway group that had led the stage most of the way. Except for the two survivors, the breakaway riders, one by one, withered and fell back on the 6,273-foot Ventoux.

After the race, Contador still led Andy Schleck by 4 minutes, 11 seconds in the overall competition. Armstrong remained in third place, 5:41 behind his teammate. Barring any unforeseen disasters, those three should stand together on the victor's podium in Paris tomorrow. Wiggins is in fourth place, Frank Schleck in fifth -- but only four seconds behind Wiggins -- and Andreas Kloden of Germany, another Astana team member, was sixth. Astana has a commanding lead in the team competition.

The 2009 Tour de France concludes Sunday with a largely ceremonial stage that will end with the fabled multi-loop ride in Paris that will include the Champs Elysees. The only drama will be a sprint to the finish line for some rider to wrest a coveted stage win.

A rousing climax to Le Tour

(Above) The 2009 Tour de France's top competitors (from left) Andy Schleck of Luxembourg, Bradley Wiggins of Great Britain, Lance Armstrong of the United States and, wearing the leader's yellow jersey, Alberto Contador of Spain.

For the past eight years or so, this time of the year has been my favorite when it comes to spectator sports. For three weeks each July, the top professional cyclists in the world combat the most difficult courses, terrains, mountains and each other in pursuit of the most prestigious honor in the sport -- the championship of the Tour de France.

Tomorrow's penultimate stage of the 2009 Tour promises to be an exciting show, indeed. Oh, the Tour winner -- 2007 champion Alberto Contador of Spain -- has this year's victory pretty much locked up. But there is a tight race for second through sixth positions. Whoever finishes second and third will earn a place with Contador on the winner's podium when the race ends Sunday on the Champs Elysees in Paris.

Le Tour is one of three grand tours (the Giro d'Italia and Vuelta a Espana are the others) in pro cycling, and each of those is tantamount to a major tournament in professional golf or tennis. But like the Masters in golf and Wimbledon in tennis, the Tour de France is the most coveted in cycling.

This year's Tour has been particularly exciting with the return of Lance Armstrong, who retired from the sport in 2005 after winning the last of his unprecedented seven consecutive tours. Armstrong (right) has been in fine form this Tour, and going into tomorrow's stage that ends with a formidable climb of the legendary Mont Ventoux, he's in third place -- a little over a minute behind second-place Andy Schleck of Luxembourg and less than a minute ahead of Britain's Bradley Wiggins, Armstrong's teammate Andreas Kloden of Germany and Schleck's older brother Frank.

But Armstrong has been in an awkward situation on his return to the sport: He's riding on a team, Astana, that also features race leader Contador, who now is widely regarded as the best in the sport, and two other onetime prime contenders for a grand tour championship: Kloden and American Levi Leipheimer. Contador already has won the sport's "triple crown" -- each of the three grand tours, an accomplishment so rare in cycling that only four other riders have done it -- Jacques Anquetil, Felice Gimondi, Bernard Hinault and Eddie Merckx. Although Armstrong won the Tour de France seven times, he has never won the Giro or Vuelta.

Mont Ventoux could have been the chief motivation for Armstrong to return to the sport, and specifically, to ride in the Tour again. As he said in an interview on the Versus channel during the broadcast of today's stage, Armstrong has unfinished business on this mountain.

The moonscape-looking Ventoux is regarded as one the most brutal and unforgiving in French races, not only because of its steep climb, but also because the top portion's bare, deforested, unprotected slopes (no trees anywhere in sight) leave riders extremely vulnerable to any of the weather and climate conditions that torment cyclists -- stiff winds; stifling heat; and freezing cold in the high altitudes.

Armstong twice has narrowly missed winning Tour stages on the mount. The most bitter of those came in 2000, when Armstrong and the late Marco Pantani of Italy waged a thrilling battle ascending the hill. Pantani, the 1998 Tour winner whose nickname was "the Pirate," had the lead at first, but Armstrong found a burst in reserve and bolted upward, eventually catching Il Pirata. Several times the two jockeyed to separate from each other, but it appeared Armstrong had the upper hand in snagging the stage victory. Even though the veteran Pantani stayed close, Armstrong seemed to poised to claim victory until, just near the finish line, he inexplicably eased up and Pantani crossed first. It was believed Armstrong yielded purposely in a show of sportsmanship and respect, a gesture he would later regret. Pantani didn't regard the deliberate pullback kindly; the suggestion that Armstrong had to "give" him the win angered Pantani.

In the 2002 Tour, when Ventoux reappeared on the Tour map after only a year's absence, Armstrong allowed Frenchman Richard Virenque a seven-minute lead in the Ventoux stage and could never catch up.

Riders in the Tour don't get many chances to conquer Ventoux; it's been included in a Tour stage only 15 times since 1951. Armstrong also has tried, and failed, to win stages on the mount several times in the annual Dauphine-Libere race, which is held each June and is widely used by cyclists as a tune-up for Le Tour. Unlike the Tour, Dauphine-Libere almost always includes Mont Ventoux in a stage.

All of which is good reason for anyone who enjoys pro cycling and its drama -- and the Tour de France in particular -- to look in on tomorrow's stage. It could be Lance's last change to grab the one unconquered cycling challenge he craves most. I have to believe that tonight his team, with Contador's overall victory comfortably in hand, is trying to devise a strategy that can help deliver that victory for him.

The broadcast of Saturday's stage on Versus begins at 7 a.m. Eastern time.

Which 15 books make your lasting 'impression' list?

I just was "tagged" at my Facebook page by someone polling friends to see which 15 books they would list -- in 15 minutes or less -- among those that made a lasting impression.

I haven't had inclination to read much in recent years, what with my job requiring me to stare into a computer 10 hours a day, four days a week, rendering my eyes to half-mast by the time I drag myself home each day. But ... I decided to try take up the challenge and see if I could come up with a list in the required 15 minutes or less.

At first, I came up with multiple titles of fiction works by the same authors, simply because I enjoy their body of work -- W.P. Kinsella (left), Dan Brown, Patricia Cornwell, Clive Cussler, John Grisham and Lawrence Sanders, to name a few.

But then, after only a few minutes of reassessing that overload, other titles started popping to mind, so ... I weeded out the multiples and came up with a more rounded representation of books I've read that, I think, made some kind of impression on me over the years.

Here's the list, in no particular order:

1. Shoeless Joe / W.P. Kinsella
2. Tuesdays With Morrie / Mitch Albom
3. In Cold Blood / Truman Capote
4. Sirens of Titan / Kurt Vonnegut
5. Woodstock: The Oral History
6. Catcher in the Rye / J.D. Salinger
7. The Firm / John Grisham
8. The Making of a President 1960 / Theodore White
8. The Harrad Experiment / Robert Rimmer
9. Robert Kennedy and His Times / Arthur Schlesinger
10. The DaVinci Code / Dan Brown
11. Tales of an American Hobo / "Reefer" Charlie Fox
12. Postmortem / Patricia Cornwell
13. A River Runs Through It / Norman Maclean
14. This Wheel's on Fire: The Story of the Band / Levon Helm
15. Deep Six / Clive Cussler

The book by Capote (right), in particular, made a deep impression as I was reading it. Such riveting writing, and a vicious homicide to work with. I made seeing the Capote film, starring Phillip Seymour Hoffman, a "must" when it came out four years ago. And would it seem odd if said I can remember vividly that throughout the whole time I was reading the very lengthy Schlesinger bio on RFK, I listed to Supertramp's Breakfast in America vinyl album on my record player, over and over and over?

The Kinsella story, upon which the motion picture Field of Dreams was based, captured my imagination -- and floated me back to childhood baseball fantasies -- like no other tome before it or since. The film, starring Kevin Costner, Ray Liota, Burt Lancaster and James Earl Jones, was one of the few films I really, absolutely had to see when I first heard it was coming out. I saw it, in fact, with my youngest daughter, Elizabeth, one afternoon after her morning kindergarten class let out for the day. Field of Dreams also was the first VCR movie I ever bought.

Even as I type this, another title came to mind that I would have liked to have included: The Executioner's Song: The Gary Gilmore Story by Norman Mailer, the story of the convicted murderer who was the first person executed after the U.S. Supreme Court lifted restrictions on capital punishment in 1976.

If you aren't a "friend" at my Facebook page, what 15 titles would you put on a list that you had to compile in 15 minutes?

1st Indy shooter is featured at Photo Potpourri blog

Another short blurb to note that the July version of "Photographer in the Spotlight," my monthly Q&A feature at Photo Potpourri, was posted last weekend.

I make special mention here because the photographer profiled in this month's spotlight, Phil Jern, also is the first Indianapolis photographer to make the spotlight feature.

I met Phil through CaptureIndy, an ongoing project, driven by The Indianapolis Star, to collect photographs from people in the community for use in a book profiling the Greater Indianapolis area in pictures.

I've submitted quite a few images to be considered for the project, which is scheduled to end sometime next month. The Star is trying to create interest (and, no doubt, potential sales) in the book by encouraging anyone -- anywhere -- to create a simple profile at CaptureIndy and then vote for images they feel belong in such a book. To just vote, you don't have to be a photographer and you don't have to live in Indianapolis or Indiana, or to buy the book!).

There is still time to vote for images at CaptureIndy. You can vote for as many pictures as you'd like, but only once each. Not sure exactly when the book will be published.

Meanwhile ... back to the point of this post ... do check out Phil Jern's Q&A feature. As I do with all my Q&A posts, there are quite a few images of the profiled photographer included with the text of the interview. I've included a link to his personal Web site with this post; just click on the link wherever you see Phil's name. Phil also has a ton of other pictures available at a separate online site, Flickr. Click on the Flickr word to go view that. Finally, you can check out Phil's CaptureIndy page, too, on the link included with this sentence.

Bidding farewell to another British wave musician

Speaking of music ... here's a short blurb to mark the passing of Gordon Waller, one-half of the 1960s British wave pop duo Peter and Gordon.

Waller (on the right, with Peter Asher in the photo above) went into cardiac arrest on the evening of July 16, and died, at the age of 64, early the following morning at a hospital near his home in Ledyard, Conn.

Peter and Gordon got their start courtesy of Paul McCartney, who gave them a song, "World Without Love," that McCartney had penned -- but the Beatles hadn't used. "World Without Love" became a hit in 1964, and the duo thereafter strung together several more hits -- "Nobody I Know," "Go to Pieces," "True Love Ways," "Knight in Rusty Armour," "Lady Godiva" and, my personal favorite, "Woman."

"Woman" begins with a remarkable four-note string staccato punch and opening lyric -- Woman, do you love me? Woman, if you need me then believe me I need you, to be my woman -- that always grabbed my attention. The song's climax finds a full orchestra hitting a crescendo right as Waller polishes off and holds the last syllable of "woman" in the final lyric, Woman, don't forsake me. Woman if you take me then believe me I take you ... to be my woman. To me, it's a powerful love song.

I also take the time to add this post to my blog because Waller and I shared the same birthday; he was mentioned in the list of celebs with whom I shared a birthday in my first post to this blog last month -- on my birthday.

Music's been on my mind ...

Music has been a big "go to" for me lately. I've been listening a lot to a series of mostly New Age compositions I amassed in the 1990s and early this decade, tunes that over the years I've turned to for comfort, or simply when I've needed or wanted to relax. For years, on weekend nights as I lay down to sleep, I would play these on one of my computer media players.

Rarely did I need to do that when I drove, however; when I drive, I usually look for a CD that will help pump the blood and get my groove going. But in this "funk" (as I call it) of mine that I'm in, I've also been listening to my New Age mix whenever I drive. And I'm liking it.

Eight years back, I went into what probably was my longest such music "funk." I went looking for, exploring, listening to and appreciating everything I could get my hands on that was composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. I did that for nine months -- listened to nothing but Mozart. And I mean nothing else. And I liked it.

I still like my Mozart fix from time to time. His piano concertos are my favorite and almost always remind me of my childhood days of taking piano lessons. They can affect me in very powerful ways, too. Take Piano Concerto No. 5 in D Major, for example. At the 3-minute, 20-second point of the andante un poco adagio movement (second) as performed by Derek Han and the Philharmonia Orchestra, my eyes well up, or at the very least, I swallow hard, but I always close my eyes because I know what's coming. I'm sure the orchestral build-up has a lot to do with it, a series of Han frolics and trills, and some fortissimo string segments that climax for a nano-second pause at 3:20. That's when soft, dramatic strings and Han's delicate, tuneful and plaintive notes take over for the next few bars. I feel something so overwhelming. I can't tell you what exactly it is; just that I do. I'm feeling it right now as I try to put it into words here. And I'm liking it.

A little more than a week ago, all of us at work went through an excruciatingly painful day watching 17 of our colleagues being shown the door. This was the fourth layoff our company has implemented in less than a year, and the second in which a large number of colleagues were let go. Early last December, we said goodbye to 20 staffers, four of whom worked directly for me. That one hurt a lot. And even though my staff escaped unscathed in the latest round of layoffs -- the one last week -- this one hurt even more, I think.

One of the departing staffers, John Hawn, started at The Star at about the same time as me. He is a very fine man and a very good editor. Until the layoffs, he and I supervised separate copy desks. He got the ax; I didn't. And then afterward, I learned that The Star planned to merge our two copy desks and put me in charge of it. I couldn't help but feel immediate survivor guilt. And that's when I turned to my New Age friends.

If you troll the Internet searching for JL Kato, John's literary pseudonym, you'll learn a bit more about him. Or click on the link in the previous sentence. He is a poet and poetry enthusiast. I didn't really learn about the extent of his interest in poetry until after he was laid off and he dropped me an email letting me know he'd come across my photo blog because it was mentioned at a third-party blog.

If you're at all curious about what's on my New Age listening list, here a running start:

My Mother's Voice / Triona di Dhomhnaill
Thumbellina / Mark Isham
Einini / William Coulter
Carolan's Ramble to Cashel / Northern Lights
The Swans at Coole / Maire Breatnach
Amy's Song / Peggy Stein
Children's Song / Oystein Sevag
In Moonlight Blue / Eric Tingstad
Night in That Land / Nightnose
Along the Salmon / Bob Leon
Pittsburgh 1901: Theme from "Mrs. Soffel" / Mark Isham
Satie -- Gymnopedie #3 / Branford Marsalis
Cast Your Fate to the Wind / George Winston
The Sad Balconies of Heaven / Mark Darnell
Sentimental Walk / Philip Aaberg
Wind and Willow / Wayne Gratz
Sunday Morning Coffee / Chip Davis
On the Night Ride / Chris Botti
Chopin's Prelude No. 15 in D flat (Raindrop)
Through the Wind / Danny Wright
For the Asking / John R. Burr
October - Stars / George Winston
A Sense of Place / Eric Tingstad
The Man From Caesaria / Friedemann
Shadow Dancer / Spencer Brewer, Nancy Rumbel, Eric Tingstad
A Different Shore / Nightnoise
Night, Part III - Minstrels / George Winston
Cast Your Fate to the Wind / Vince Guaraldi Trio
Rio Amazons / Oystein Sevag and Lakki Patey
Sun, Moon & Stars / Jim Brickman
Montana Half Life / Philip Aaberg
Meadows / Wayne Gratz
As For Us / Fernando Oretga
Evening / Michael Jones
The 19-A / Nightnoise
Magnolia / Eric Tingstad
Endings / Michael Jones
Pas de Deux / Scott Cossu
The Calling / Stein & Walder
Of the Father's Love Begotten / Tim Story
Close Cover / Wim Mertens
A Friend's Farewell / Wind Machine
Lullaby / Dave Brubeck
Woman at the Well / Tim Story

A top 12 list of indicators that the economy is bad

The Top 12 indicators that the economy is bad (thanks to Ronnie for these!):

12. CEO's are now playing miniature golf.

11. I got a pre-declined credit card in the mail.

10. I went to buy a toaster oven, and they gave me a bank.

9. Hotwheels and Matchbox car companies are now trading higher than GM in the stock market.

8. Obama met with small businesses -- GE, Pfizer, Chrysler, Citigroup and GM, to discuss the federal stimulus package.

7. McDonald's is selling the quarter-ouncer.

6. People in Beverly Hills fired their nannies and are now learning their children's names.

5. One of the most highly-paid jobs now is jury duty.

4. People in Africa are donating money to Americans. Mothers in Ethiopia are telling their kids, "Finish your plate; do you know how many kids are starving in America ?"

3. Motel 6 won't leave the lights on for you

2. The Mafia is laying off judges.

And the most telltale indicator of them all:

1. If the bank returns your check marked as "insufficient funds," you have to call them and ask if they meant you or them.

About online communities

Recently, I've been in touch with some local amateur photographers whose work I discovered through the ongoing "Capture Indy" project, a photo collection campaign that The Indianapolis Star is driving to publish a book conveying not only what Indianapolis looks like, but also some of the best work of local photographers.

I initiated the contact with these photographers because I'm interested in making make them subject/profiles of my monthly "Photographer in the Spotlight" feature at my other blog, "Photo Potpourri." Since Photo Potpourri launched in December, all of my spotlight subjects have been from out of my home state of Indiana. There was one from the Bahamas (Trish van den Berg), one from Canada (Tony Hadley), one from Minnesota (Ron Germundson) and two from California (Joo-chiang "JC" Lee and the most recent, Chris Harris). All of these except JC I met through Photo.net, where I maintain one of two public online photo galleries of my own. JC is a "connection" I made through the online business networking site "Linked-In," where I've made many other photographer acquaintances. I can't say that all of these people are close "friends," but I mention it here to say that each has played some role -- large or small -- into advancing my knowledge or understanding of photography, which is why I devote the time I do to develop these spotlight features. Each of these photographers' interviews has been informative to me, and my hope is has been for others who've read them. Plus, each has invcluded some wonderful photographer from these craftsmen and women.

I joined Linked-In initially thinking it would help connect me to more people in the area of my livelihood -- journalism. But even though the largest portion of my Linked-In connections are writers or editors, Linked-In's primary benefit to me so far -- and by far -- has been the group of photographers I've come to "meet" (cyberspacially), and their discussions and comments I monitor closely in Linked-In group discussions. I've joined more than a half-dozen photograph-related groups alone at Linked-In, and three or four of them have discussion threads that are updated daily. Photo.net also has a bounty of informative articles and discussion topics and threads. I simply don't have the time to monitor all of them. But because it is a global community (as is Linked-In), Photo.net is a valuable resource, its articles (especially on equipment) and discussion threads are publically accessible even to non-members. If you're a photographer and haven't yet discovered Photo.net, you owe it to yourself to check it out -- not as a prospective member, but just to take advantage of the wealth of resources there.

The whole point of this post is to underscore the point of online networking sites. My success and satisfaction with Linked-In and Photo.net (the latter isn't so much a networking site as it is a global community) softened my resistance to create a personal account at Facebook, which several friends had prodded me to do in the past couple years. But I'm now a Facebooker, too, although ... I'm still so new at it that I'm not at the point where I can absolutely positively declare satisfaction with it to the degree I can with Linked-In and Photo.net.

A social faux pas that we all could do well to stop

I'm noticing an unusual trend in my conversations with people, and it's not just with one or two individuals. It's with a lot of folks.

They jump on my comments before I can finish them and either respond or, in the case of a question I might be answering, answer the question they think I'm going to ask before I have a chance to get the complete thought out of my mouth. I decided to tap out this post, in fact, because someone at work just cut me off in mid-sentence with a remark that, as it turns out, had nothing to do with where I was going with my own statement.

More than half the time when I'm cut off like that, the other person's comment -- as in the case just now -- has little or nothing to do with what I was going to say, or ... in situations where I might have been asking a question, the premature response doesn't answer or address the precise question I was going to ask. It responds to what they thought I was going to say or ask. Worse, it often totally disrupts my thought process, and I can't even remember what I was going to say or where I left off to later finish the thought or question if it turns out the other person just didn't get it.

Why do people do this? It bothers the hell out of me, and I find it to be quite rude. The irony in all this is that in a world where we often find ourselves complaining when people ignore us totally, this little faux pas seems to show we are going in the opposite direction with our social etiquette.

In fairness and candor, I know I do it myself. I haven't been able to track my own transgressions long or thoroughly enough yet to determine if I'm doing it A) in a retaliatory way -- i.e., subconsciously targeting only people who have been doing it to me (in which case, I might be able to deflect blame on them for starting it in the first place!); B) doing it subconsciously and randomly because I've been victimized myself and I find myself inadvertently racing to get my thought process in before someone else cuts me off; or C) I could be responsible for starting it in the first place!

I hope it's not "C," and I have been trying lately to do better on my end, making a conscious effort NOT to jump on other people's comments prematurely, especially those whose lines I know I've jumped on previously. I know I slip and still do so anyway, but I don't think I'm doing it as often as I used to.

Is anyone else experiencing this? I have a few theories on why it might be happening. In some cases, I sense people -- myself included -- are trying to show we are listening ... and by jumping in with a premature thought, we're trying to show we're correctly anticipating the thought process, thereby assuring the other person that we are paying attention to what they're saying. Unfortunately, it's not working. Surely, my jumping in on other people's lines has to be as annoying to them as it is when they or others do it to me.

In other instances, we jump in prematurely because we feel rushed and don't want to wait around for the complete thought and want to advance the conversational thread right now. I think this explanation, however, is the ultimate in disrespect to someone else. I'm not sure if I'm guilty of this explanation when I do it; I could be, but I hope not.

If there are other explanations for why we do this, I'm not sure what they are, but I'm open to hearing them. I do know we all need to try harder to stop it.

As I said earlier, it's rude. We really need to "just stop it"!

To those I've offended when I've done this myself, I apologize ... and I assure you I've done this subconsciously ... not really intending to be mean or rude, even though I know in hindsight that it really is rude.

BET's awards show tribute to 'The King of Pop'

I'd never watched a full BET Awards show before last night, but during the day I saw a promo about it -- either on television or online -- that indicated BET had made furious revamps to the program in the 48 hours or so after Michael Jackson had died and would transform the show into a MJ tribute.

Supposedly, stars and entertainers who wouldn't normally show up, or hadn't planned on showing up, were now telling BET they would be there, "coming out of the woodwork," as one entertainment industry executive put it. It promised to be a star-studded tribute, so I decided to look in. I was surprised; it was very well done. It also was an education.

I hadn't known, for example, just how good of a singer actor and comedian Jamie Foxx was until watching the show. Foxx served as host of the awards show which, by the way, seemed less about awards than about music and Michael Jackson. But I'm not complaining; it was very entertaining, and it sure made me think this is the way "awards" shows should be handled. In the scope of things -- and comparing the BET show to, say, the Oscars -- I'm all in favor of far fewer awards (but also a much tighter-run show)!

I also got my first real look at some names in contemporary music that I hadn't seen or heard much of -- Lil' Wayne, Maxwell, Ne-Yo, Beyonce, Alicia Keys, Soulja Boy, Keyshia Cole and Keri Hilson to name a few. Monica, Bell Biv DeVoe and Keith Sweat also were on hand; I'd heard of them. Oh, and the NBA's 2008-09 MVP LeBron James was there -- BET named him the athlete of the year.

Foxx and the New Edition did an MJ tribute at the very start of the show, Foxx sampling MJ material from the Billie Jean era (including a short reprise of the "Beat It" video and a moonwalk that I admired largely because Foxx didn't care that he was a bit rusty on the finesse -- he claims he hadn't done it since 1983), and the New Edition (Ralph Tresvant, Michael Bivins, Ronnie DeVoe, Ricky Bell, Bobby Brown and Johnny Gill) reprising Jackson 5 tunes like "ABC" and "The Love You Save."

Beyonce sang a medley that included Sarah MacLachlan's "Angel" and periodic phrases from the Latin liturgical hymn "Ave Maria." It was beautiful; when she reached the end, and actually started singing the opening lyrics to the hymn, I started tearing up. It was that moving. Unfortunately, she stopped after "Ave Maria, gratia plena, dominus tecum."

BET honored the O'Jays at the ceremony, designating them to receive the "lifetime achievement" award. Tevin Campbell, Ne-Yo and Foxx ripped through a medly of O'Jays hits, including "Backstabber," before the O'Jays themselves came up, accepted the award, and proceeded to do their own medley of their hits, including "Used to Be My Girl" and "For the Love of Money." The latter, incidentally,is the theme song for the Donald Trump NBC television series "The Apprentice." I was very surprised that "Love Train," perhaps the O'Jays' biggest hit, was not included in either medley.

The show ended on two powerful notes. First, Janet Jackson came out to center stage and addressed the crowd. She said her family wanted to attend (which in a way was kind of weird, because her father, Joe Jackson, sat in the front row for the full show), but that it was too painful. So, she said, the family sent her to represent them. She said that while MJ was considered an icon to most everyone else, to the Jacksons, he was was family. She then thanked everyone for their kindness and support and walked off.

Then Ne-Yo, who earlier had sung Jackson's "The Lady in My Life," joined Foxx and Stevie Wonder (the latter playing piano) for a very moving rendition of the Jackson 5's "I'll Be There."

A visit with 'Old Friends'

On Facebook the other day, I mentioned that early this week I had watched a "Great Performances" installment on PBS in which former Blind Faith bandmates Steve Winwood and Eric Clapton teamed up for a concert at Madison Square Garden this year.

The music was wonderful, as I expected it would be if both men -- now in their 60s -- were "on," and they were. The show reminded me of a very musically rich period of my life, circa 1971. It's the year, as I recall, that album-oriented FM radio stations really took off, and when baby boomers like me quickly embraced it as a viable -- and much preferable -- option to the pop fare still being dished out on AM stations. Baby boomer's offspring might find it difficult to imagine that the AM dial still was a strong component in radio listening back then, but it was.

A quick diversion: I worked four semesters as a DJ on the UW-Eau Claire AM station at the time, WSUR. There was a tiny snag with WSUR back then, however: Its programming could be heard only by people in the buildings on the UWEC campus. That has long since changed, but back then, it was a way for aspiring broadcasters to cut their teeth "on the air" without having to apply for and pay for FCC-required broadcast licenses.

But back to album-oriented rock on FM stations ... We were hearing a lot of Blind Faith, Traffic, Hendrix, Blodwyn Pig, Derek and the Dominos, Wishbone Ash and other non-pop music there, and all of it was a revelation. Blind Faith and Traffic, in particular, produced some eye-opening sounds and hooks, not to mention that they incorporated un-rocklike instrumentation into their repertoire. Horns -- saxophones, in particular -- were big in Traffic, and on the band's classic "John Barleycorn Must Die" album, the FM station I listened to in Milwaukee often played the album's horn-and-rhythm-rich lead tracks "Glad" and "Empty Pages" back to back. People who didn't know better (including myself at first) thought the two tracks were actually one!

I brought a lot of that music with me to Eau Claire and WSUR when I started my first semester on the air. I know our listenership was limited, but it still was something I enjoyed doing immensely ... and reflect back on fondly even today. It was one of my top "dream" jobs at the time -- right up there with playing Major League Baseball or performing in a rock band.

In the Madison Square Garden show on PBS, Winwood and Clapton opened with "Had to Cry Today," the lead track on the one and only Blind Faith album (Clapton was never happy in the group, as it reminded him of his animosity-laden "supergroup" days with his prior band, Cream, so he drifted away after the album's release in July 1969 and one-and-only tour the following month. The two other members were Clapton's Cream bandmate Ginger Baker, the drummer, and guitarist and Winwood's Traffic bandmate and Ric Grech).

"Had to Cry Today," as performed in the Madison Square Garden show, was one of the few songs on the bill in which both men played guitar (multi-instrumentalist Winwood is a bit better known for his skills on keyboard). It opens with a delightfully driving guitar riff that repeats through the whole number. By the time Winwood and Clapton arrive at the point where they let loose on independent -- and simultaneous -- guitar solos that dazzle and amaze, the crowd -- and I -- were hooked. When they had finished the song, I did something I rarely do while watching TV: I yelped with glee and cheered. It was that good.

They eventually performed "Presence of the Lord" and an extended version of "Can't Find My Way Home," both also from the Blind Faith album; two instrumentally powerful renditions of Jimi Hendrix's "Voodoo Chile" and "Little Wing;" Clapton's "Forever Man;" and Traffic's "Glad" and "Mr. Fantasy."

I was so captivated, I found myself lining up Traffic and Blind Faith tracks to compile a homemade mix CD to burn. Perhaps it'll be ready in a week or two.

Oh ... if you weren't already aware ... the phrase between quotes in the headline -- Old Friends -- is a tip of the hat to Clapton; it's the title of a song he performed on one of MTV's first "Unplugged" concerts back in the early 1990s.

Back to work, so ... let's talk more gardening!

Ugh. Today, it was back to the grind. Work for a living, I mean. Having been off work since May 30, this extended time away has been blissful, and merely because I didn't have to experience the grind that I have come to detest.

I had wanted to take some one-day photo excursions while I was off, but that didn't happen. Instead, a lot of my free time on good-weather days was spent in my gardens, which I really did enjoy. It proved to be therapeutic ... and satisfying. And ... I found myself envisioning two spots on the lawn -- on either side of my brick patio -- that could be expanded into additional garden space. I don't think I'll do that, however, if after this summer it turns out I was mostly unsuccesful with my first foray into growing vegetables (other than tomatoes, I mean).

As you well know from previous posts, I have lettuce and broccoli growing right now, with the former ready to pick and the latter plants very huge (larger than I had envisioned) and probably a week or so away from sprouting florets to pick. I do hope the florets come soon, however.

Both lettuce and broccoli are supposed to be "cool" weather crops -- they don't like temperatures above 70 degrees, and we've already had a couple days where the high temperatures crept into the 80s, and you can be sure that the deeper we go into June and summer, we'll be seeing many more of those days. As cool weather crops, I can try to plant a second crop of each in August, timed so that by the time the plants get big enough to harvest, it will be well into October, and cooler temperatures.

Meanwhile, last week, I planted carrot and cucumber seeds. Most of the cucumber seeds are in the genus garden near where the broccoli now grows. The carrots I spread out -- a couple near the tomato plant, a few more in the spring bulb section of the genus garden, and two in the north garden next to the rose bush. The other day in that garden, not far from where I sowed the carrot seeds, I notice a seedling I did not knowingly plan or plant. I almost yanked the growth, thinking it was weed. Upon closer inspection, the foliage looked just like that on my tomato plant growing near the garage. If so, it undoubtedly sprouted from the seed of a cherry tomoto I discarded last year while harvesting fruit from one of two tomato plants from last year, the one I had placed at the east end of the row of asiatic lily bulbs. I left it alone and may transplant it later if my suspicions prove correct.

If it really is tomato, this would mark the first time I've ever been able to grow tomatoes in one season from seed dropped from a previous season. And it might motivate me to actually TRY to do that at the end of this fall season to see if I can do it again next spring.

* * *

Yesterday, on my last day off before returning to work, I watched a wonderfully entertaining HBO movie: "Kit Kittredge: An American Girl." It's the story of a wise, spunky and warm-hearted 10-year-old journalist and her family living in Cincinnati during the Depression era. What grabbed my interest to watch it in the first place was my recent reading of "Tales of an American Hobo" by "Reefer" Charlie Fox.

A very integral storyline of "Kit" includes hoboes. Early in the film, two very young hoboes stop at Kit's home in search of work to feed themselves, and they in turn lead Kit and her neighborhood friends to a nearby hobo "jungle," or village, where the kids get to meet quite a few adult-age hoboes. Later, the two younger hoboes are wrongly accused in a series of robberies in the area and adjoining states, and Kit -- who up to this point has been rebuffed in her attempts to get her feature stories published in the Cincinnati newspaper -- puts her cub reporter investigative nose to work to prove it. Very well worthwhile watch -- for all ages.

It has a strong cast, too -- Chris O'Donnell and Julia Ormand play Kit's parents, and Stanley Tucci and Joan Cusack play guests who move into the Kittredge home as boarders when the family seeks additional income to address mountnig financial difficulties.

Abigail Breslin plays the charasmatic Kit.

You can visit the film's Web site.

Television and banks: the banes of my existence

A little more than a month ago, when my satellite receiver wouldn't let me fast-forward, pause, reverse or access the programs I'd recorded on the DVR, I called DISH Network to see about rectifying this. After putting me through a battery of "tests" to find the problem, they concluded my receiver was fried, they'd send me a new one and I'd have to ship the old one to their tech repair center.

I wasn't thrilled by this, but I had no choice. Just like how, for years as a cable TV customer, I had felt I was always at the mercy of the monopoly cable franchise, I felt much the same about DISH, even though there are other options out there now. Starting over seemed like a more-than-I-wanted-to-do prospect.

The new receiver arrived in a relatively timely fashion, and I had to install it myself. I followed the directions closely, and even though it took a little while, I got it working with a bit of assistance from DISH, which I had to call near the end of the process to activate it. The DISH people reminded me to pack up the old receiver within 10 businesses days, or I could be assessed a penalty (though they didn't say what). They also said that if their techs found that the receiver's problem was my fault (and I don't know how they would be able to determine that, but I decided not to fret about it until or unless it happened) there "might" be a service charge. When I asked how much of charge, they said there was no way of telling.

Other than a few flakey problems with the remote in the back bedroom, everything thereafter went relatively fine. Until I noticed the billing on my May statement from DISH. They socked me -- with no warning -- for $400, apparently because they had decided somehow that the receiver malfunction was my fault. So I began to fret. I called DISH the next day, and as soon as I reached a live voice (I neglected to mention earlier the automated-response gantlet one must get past to reach a live person), my first words after the nice lady said, "What can I do for you today?" were, "You can remove the $400 billing this month for the malfunctioning receiver you didn't tell me was coming, or else I'm canceling my account."

To her credit, the woman stayed calm and asked what happened, and I explained the many days' worth of trouble that the malfunctioning receiver had caused me, the consternation involved in troubleshooting the problem, the trouble I went through to pack it up and return it, and the half-hour to 45 minutes it took me to install the new one. She connected me to a manager, who without much persuasion, promised me DISH would credit my account $400. I thought he meant they would cancel the billing and credit my bank account.

Unfortunately, the debit came at a time when my bank account had less than $400 in it, and because the day before I had moved a chunk of money out of my savings account to address another expense, I had no backup funds to plug the hole in my checking account until the next pay day, which wasn't until the following week. I was facing the possibility of being stuck with an overdraft fee of $64. I was furious. I called the bank to explain, and they ping-ponged me to DISH, saying the $400 was still pending, so if DISH could cancel the debit, I would be OK. I called DISH back, and they told me the debit already was shown as charged, so it was out of their hands. All they could do was to push through a separate authorization to credit the account. I knew I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. I had no court of appeals to turn to. But I still thought, at the least, that at some point I would see $400 drop back into my bank account.

I found out only today -- when I hadn't seen the money return to my bank account some two weeks later, and went to my DISH account online in hopes of finding out why not -- that DISH had meant they would credit my DISH account, not my bank account! I'm furious all over again ... but this time, I'm just going to "Let It Be."

And do more reading. Hey, I just finished a book about hobo "Reefer" Charlie Fox, and I really do enjoy going through my photography magazines ...

2009 gardens revisited: here are updated pictures

It was difficult composing the garden post the other day without having pictures to go along with it. So ... today, I rectified that little oversight. Took quite a few pictures with my Pentax Optio Z10 compact, and I present them here now. If you need additional background, just refer to my post from the other day -- the one headlined: 2009 garden(s).


ABOVE: A side view of the front garden, largely perennials accented in front by a day lily. My last front garden hosta (most have been transplanted) is in the back right. All the bare spots you see were seeded two days ago with two annuals -- orange/bronze marigold and yellow and burgundy wildflower. I don't expect to see blooms probably till mid- to late July.


ABOVE: The third year of an Endless Summer hydrangea. I'm not expecting to see buds or blooms yet. Maybe next year? This is in the front side garden.


ABOVE: I didn't mention this the other day because I hadn't seen it, but this is the sole survivor of three calla lilies I planted (near where the hydrangea now is) in the front side garden. The callas were planted three summers ago, and this one has come back every year.


ABOVE: The much-ballyhooed broccoli patch, which is on the east end of the genus garden. I seeded some cucumbers in this patch garden the other day, hoping that by the time the broccolo is harvest, the cukes might begin to emerge.


ABOVE: A closeup of one of the broccoli plants. Still no edible florets, though.


ABOVE: One of the loose-leaf lettuce plants; this one is just right of the tomato plant (below).


ABOVE: The tomato plant, going strong. In the foreground, just the other day, I seeded some carrots and cucumbers.


ABOVE: The circular garden in the back yard, where bachelor's buttons (blue) are on the outer rim and raspberry zinis are in the middle. If you see a different color foliage between them, it's the remnants of the spring tulip leaves, which soon will brown and dry. The buttons and zinia were seeded in mid-April. I hope to see blooms by the end of this month.


ABOVE: A closeup of a bachelor's button.



ABOVE: Closeups of the zinias.


ABOVE: Some of the buttons and zinias were transplated to the genus garden, at the end where spring bulbs crocus, daffodil and hyacinth have long ago withered.


ABOVE: The asiatic lilies, in their second season. Look at all the buds. Last year, each plant sprouted only ONE bud each!


ABOVE AND BELOW: Closer views one of the asiatic lilies.




ABOVE: The small plant to the left of the garage apron is an asiatic lily planted last year. A neighbor, who maintains the yard (and cuts grass) immediately left of this view, accidentally mowed over the sprouting lily foliage last year, thinking it was weed, so the lily didn't have a chance to root properly like the others in the back yard. See closeup below.


ABOVE: This is what the asiatic lily next to the garage looks like today; this also is what all the others asiatic lilies looked like last year, although perhaps slightly taller: just the single bud on the crown.


ABOVE: This is the one lament of the gardening season -- the transplating of hostas to the south garden. Bad move; they get far more sun than I had thought. You can see in the foreground how the foliage on that plant is drying up. In the bare spots between the hostas, I seeded more of the marigold and wildflower two days ago.