I Love the Washington Redskins!!!

Oh, only if superstition rang true, I would sleep well in my bed. The Green Bay Packers carried out God's will, at least since 1936, by defeating the Redskins 28-14, which, according to presidential election history, means that John Kerry will defeat the incompetent, er, I mean, incumbent president. First the curse of the Bambino laid to rest, secondly, this. Maybe my cell phone will start getting reception everywhere in town. I'm not holding my breath on that one.

Happy Halloween, everyone. May this night you find your loved ones as they wander across the land and be sent to the hereafter in order for us to celebrate All Saint's Day tomorrow. Then we party on Super Tuesday!!!

Props to my friend, Chris "Lefty" Brown for a copy of the Vote For Change concert video. If you missed this, pray for a commercial release, because Bruce and company's performance is worth the price of admission alone. Greatest single song, however, was a blistering John Fogerty singing "Fortunate Son" for a new generation with as much venom and anger as the original thirty-five year old studio release.

Happy trick-or-treating.

Red Sox and the Redskins

I'm not that big of a sports fan (too much corporatization, too much self-centered ego in many athletes) but watching an exciting seven-game ALCS and then a historic but boring World Series was, overall, great sports. The Boston Red Sox were able to break an 86-year old curse, which I was hoping they'd do. Great news for Boston, Massachusetts. This weekend, I'm also praying that the Washington Redskins will get pummeled in Sunday's game. Not that I have anything against the Redskins (except maybe for their antiquated racist name) but EVERY Redskins game the weekend before a presidential election has mirrored the outcome of who will be in the White House. For SEVEN decades. Since FDR!!! While the Redskins have been a good team this season let's hope that they absolutely forget how to play the sport when they take the field at 1:00 on Sunday.
This election, I must admit, though, has gotten out of hand. The presidency will not be determined on November 2nd but on a much, much later date. The thousands of lawyers waiting to file claims of unfair voting methods (something that only the Supreme Court itself has to blame for even hearing the 2000 joke) will keep the results tied up for months. People will be screaming, "we have to know who won and now!" "The economy will collapse!" "What will other countries of the world think about us?" I've heard them all. We have no problem, and in fact encourage other countries to take their time in counting ballots and investigate claims of fraud, yet if we can't find out by the time the next West Wing airs, the country's going to hell in a handbasket. That's America for you: a drive-through election. We don't have the patience to do things thoroughly and properly; we do them just to complete them. It's as if the mentality of the country as a whole is that of my juniors. I did it and tried, therefore should receive the full benefits of an A grade. This is part of what makes our "democratic" system a giant straw man. If we truly cared that the system was more important than either our candidate's victory or whether the damn thing was executed in a short amount of time, we would actually fix the loopholes and end voter fraud; we would keep absentee voter ballots from being stolen (which, by the way, was the case in Brower County, FLORIDA where 58,000 Democratic ballots are missing). Am I cynical? You bet. Do I have a right to feel that way? You bet. Will I still vote and uphold one of my responsibilities as a citizen of this country? You bet. Democracy, as Mark Twain said, is a terrible system, except when compared to all of the other systems. I hope Sam was right.
I'm giving further props to my friend, Chris Brown, who helped break a story in Fresno of a television network owner only giving free campaign air time to Republican candidates. Read his blog; you can still access it from the upper left of my page. Even made Eric Alterman's Altercation on the MSNBC page. Go Chris.

Bruce was out campaigning for Kerry today. Let's hope it helped. Probably won't, but EVERY vote does count.

Here's to Bush's planning that successfully helped the U.S. military lose track of a cache of 380 tons of fissile conventional weapons that will probably be used to detonate a nuclear weapon in the United States. This would be an absolute tragedy but another sign of the chickens coming home to roost. Let's just pray that the sign that there's no more room in the coop comes this Tuesday.

I've been waiting for October surprises, but Arafat? I never would have called that, even while watching last night's episode of the West Wing. Great t.v. Go watch it.

Non-sequitor: I'm on a major Dylan kick right now and am open for suggestions in trying out some Zimmerman that I've not heard; maybe something from the 80s or 90s. Can anyone help me out?

Tomorrow night is my place of employment and alma mater's homecoming. Maybe I'll see a bunch of girls I used to have crushes on who wouldn't give me the time of day that have since gone downhill and appreciate life even more due to all of the good karma. :)

Red Sox and the Redskins

BoSox and Martin Sheen

Just a quick note today, as I retire with the latest New Yorker to read to Will. The Astros didn't quite do it but have one more shot. Tonight was all about the Sox. What an incredible series between them and the Yanks. I'm not even sure I'll follow the Series as closely. Just loved watching the guy from Boston get up there and slug it to the overpaid, bloated imperial dynasty. Yes, there's an allusion to be made, and yes, I'm hoping this trend continues until November 2nd.
Tonight's episode of the West Wing was awesome! I'm glad to see that the t.v. show, one of the best on t.v. that raises contemporary issues as well as fictional "do-overs" from historical flops, makes for good t.v. Tonight, Jeb Bartlett, whom I'd elect president any day, slammed anyone who was willing to bomb a country in order to make his citizens feel better though he really knew that the target was truly a patsy. Excellent. I hope that the writers wrote enough into their scripts this last summer to mop the floor with George Bush's mistakes. Unfortunately, they'd need another season to do so, and by then Bush will be gainfully unemployed; removed from yet another in a series of grown-up jobs that he wrecked while never truly earning.

Out of the Closet

And into the fire. I personally think that the GOP smear of John Kerry's mentioning of Mary Cheney's sexual orientation is hypocritical and repugnant. John Kerry mentioned the vice president's daughter's sexual orientation in order to score political points, yes, but did so in a way that did not bring shame to the Cheney family nor anyone's integrity, including the Democratic Senator. However, Lynne and Dick(head) were out (no pun intended) screaming for John the Baptist's head on a platter, calling him a man unfit to serve as president and ruthless for his actions. The Cheneys have a point, until one chooses to do the academic thing and check the public record and find that the Cheneys have been name-dropping their daughter in order to skirt the issue of gay marriages. Vice President Cheney has gone on the record stating that the issue of marriages is a states-rights issue, something that flies in the face of the administration's position (which pushes for the first Constitutional amendment limiting civil rights and freedoms since the 18th amendment of 1918). Cheney is taking a strict-interpretationist view of the Constitution, as the federal government does not have the power to dictate personal moral values to its citizens. President Bush, in his disastrous second debate performance echoed the Vice President's position of being a strict interpretationist, yet is the one who is flip-flopping on his stance. How can the man claim to want to strictly intrepret the role of the federal government and yet attempt to ban two people from getting married? If I'm not mistaken, James Madison made sure that the clause giving the chief executive the right to deny happiness and legal status of two loving, consensual adults out of the Constitution in May, 17871. However, Bush only wishes to interpret the constitution as it fits his re-election chances. He's for a ban on stem-cell research; again, nowhere in the Constitution does it grant the president the power to dictate policy based on religious belief. The president has pushed for further involvement of faith based groups to administer aid to private citizens yet only allows the most of these agreements to occur with evangelical fundamentalist Christian organizations. Check your Article II and tell me where that one was written in. The president also believes it is wrong to limit government assistance for the wealthy. Again, he fails his national history as Alexander Hamilton's position, similar to Bush's nearly rent the nation in two in the 1790s as Thomas Jefferson reminded the Secretary of the Treasury that the government was not given the right to do just so. Who seems to be the strict interpretationist? I know that I'm just about the only one in the world who seems to care, but when it comes to educated, academic-minded, wannabe intellectual (which I claim to want to be) understanding of the workings of the U.S. government, the Constitution (which I teach on a daily basis) and the role of the president, I seem to understand the letter of the law better than George W. Bush. However, how can anyone challenge Bush's positions, beliefs, and actions, when he claims that God told him that he would be president. I just wish that God loved me as much as George. Then maybe I wouldn't be held accountable for my positions, beliefs, and actions, something all other two billion Christians on earth are held accountable for.

The Rumors of Their Demise...

Rumors had been circulating around the Inernet (or Internets, depending on whom you're voting for) that Derek Trucks had left the Allman Brothers Band. Another had Warren Haynes leaving as well. It appears that those rumors were strictly just that, and they appear wildly exaggerated. Thank goodness. I had a wonderful obituary for the band's lineup prepared, but it's no longer needed. I am including the tailend of it though, because it borrows from Lefty Brown and David Letterman. here goes, the honorary Allman Brothers Band Top 10 list, by yours truly:


1. Live at the Fillmore East (1971) I still can not forget the first time that I heard Duane Allman's searing slide guitar playing on "Statesboro Blues". Haven't looked back since. Epic numbers like "Stormy Monday", "Hot 'Lanta", and the best version of "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed" I've ever heard.
2. Eat A Peach (1972) Dual live- and studio-albums; sadly, Duane's last. Includes the phenomenal "Mountain Jam", the acoustic "Melissa" and "Little Martha" and possibly the band's best song, "Blue Sky".
3. Hittin' the Note (2003) Who would have thought that a band supposedly in its twilight would create one of its greatest treasures? "Who To Believe" and "High Cost of Low Living" capture the band's signature early sound while still sounding fresh and jazzy "Desdemona" is pure southern gothic "My Favorite Things". Falkner and Welty couldn't have done it better.
4. Brothers and Sisters (1973) This is truly the Dickey Betts album, but there are several sleeper classics. Most famous are "Ramblin' Man" and the classic "Jessica". This album brought commercial success and the eventual collapse of the band.
5. Eponymous first album (1969) This album started everything, with some excellent singing by a young Gregg Allman and classic tunes including "Whipping Post" and "It's Not My Cross To Bear". This is the album I think of when I see the 1969 photograph of the band sitting on the train tracks along the border of Rose Hill Cemetary, a location that brought about inspiration and a final resting place for Duane Allman.
6. Idlewild South (1970) "Midnight Rider and "Revival" are the two most noted songs, yet "Please Call Home" is classic blues and "Leave My Blues At Home" still holds up very well as a contemporary band trying to push the blues/r&b envelope in 1970.
7. An Evening With (including 2nd Set) 1992, 1995 A compilation of Dickey Betts' best live playing with Warren Haynes as his muse. The Allmans hit their second creative zenith during this time, but Betts quickly spiraled into mediocrity after Haynes' departure in 1997.
8. Shades of Two Worlds (1991) The best studio album of the resurrected '90s incarnation. Stellar playing on "Nobody Knows", "End of the Line", and while "Get On With Your Life" appears to be a retread of "I'm Gonna Move to the Outskirts of Town", top-notch playing keeps it still quite listenable. The band returns to its acoustic roots with a great cover of Robert Johnson's "Come On In My Kitchen."
9. Win, Lose, or Draw (1975) The last album of the band's second lineup. After Duane and Berry Oakley's demise, the band switched into more of a mellower country-swing influence (probably also influenced by a change in drugs the members were using) and its intensity was kept with the addition of Chuck Leavell on keyboards. Two great ballads including the title track and "Nevertheless" added some new sounds to the band's repertoire but as always, Betts could be counted on with another stellar instrumental, "High Falls". Highly underrated album.
10. [Tie] The band is best known for its prowess on stage and has left its fans satisfied by releasing many live albums and shows over the years. As Instant Live is changing the format of live albums today, the band's reputation continues to grow. However, there are a select few live releases that capture the band at its best throughout its career. Releases from the band's own "Allman Brothers Brand" series from 1970, 1971, and 1972 are well worth the cash, as well as "Live At Ludlow Garage" if for anything, a forty-four minute Mountain Jam from April 1970. "One Way Out" captures the band firing on all pistons in 2003 and should not be missed. While there are no previously-unreleased gems found on this one, it's worth finding strictly for Oteil Burbridge's phenomenal bass playing. Other great live releases find the band (again) in 1970 and the mid-70s.

Kerry 3 Bush 0

Well, in watching the dry and torpid debate last night, I still have hope in the Democratic challenger. While neither Kerry nor Bush were at the top of their game (whenever is Bush at the top of his game other than reading "My Pet Goat"?), most Americans agree with me that Kerry topped Bush for the third straight time. For the first time since I've been registered to vote, I placed a campaign bumper sticker on my car and even hung a sign in my window. It's not that I just hate George Bush, though I do, but that I honestly believe that John Kerry will make an adequate president. I haven't said that before since I've been conscious of presidential politics. I also hope that this will be the first election in my life where I've voted for the winner (don't ask, I've bounced across the political spectrum and have supported many a third-party candidate). Some funny things last night:

Bush never said that he wasn't concerned about Osama bin Ladin. Or did he?

Kerry was actually funny when he related himself to the president in "marrying up", though he may have moreso than Bush. Pretty funny, self-deprecating moment that shows how Kerry honestly understands and can publically note that his wife may have, as we've been told, a little bit of money in the bank.

No Child Left Behind is actually a job creation program. Yeah, and so is invading a nation illegally, jerk.

The SF Chron reports a story that the United States is the only industrialized western country to reject a U.N. plan "adopted ten years ago to ensure every woman's right to education and health care and to make choices about childbearing" because the statement mentions "sexual rights" (p. A9). The President refuses to even profess publically that he's concerned about the treatment of women because he's concerned about a woman's right to ultimately decide what she does with herself? He's bent out of shape by "activist judges" and a "creeping government" at home yet fails to note the hypocrisy of his own statements? Welp, my fellow Puritans, let's all don our black outfits and big hats with buckles, find those Hester Prynnes, and stone them for what, ultimately, even most Christians even belive in, which is the concept of a person's free will. Georgie's gonna set the record straight by declaring women unfit to make choices for themselves, be deemed repectable in the eyes of the United States, and be denied the right to be protected from men in certain parts of the world who still practice female circumcision, kill women for adultery, forbid them to be seen in public on their own, deny them the right to be literate, ban them from becoming spiritual heads of churches, enslave them and export them to the United States as prostitutes, and deny them the right to vote strictly because a decision a woman makes on her own signifies the lack of control a man has over her? Crimony sakes, I think I'm going to throw on Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant to remind myself of why Arlo nearly was sent to Vietnam in 1966 due to the fact that he was arrested "for litterin'".

Why do I keep 'blogging? I guess because 10:30 a.m. is a little early to be drinking.

In His Most Literal Sense

The SF Chron has a great article about the historian Howard Zinn, professor emeritus of Boston University. Many people are familiar with Zinn, as they've read or heard about A People's History of the United States. Zinn is also a leading writer for the Progressive magazine, another fine newstand find, if the employees of your nearest chain bookstore haven't buried it behind The National Review or the latest in a succession of Reagan tributes. I love A People's History, and assign it as a required supplemental text in my AP class. What I think I love most about the book is how it stirs such knee-jerk reactions in parochial-thinking people. "Communist," "America-hater," and other labels are thrown at Zinn, all because he happens to analyze history from the perspective of those whom often aren't heard, including the working poor, immigrants, ethnic minorities, women, and recipients of government policies that are not so helpful or even constitutional. As an amateur historian and educator, I fully support the history this intellectual writes, as the job of the historian is to discover and connect with the people, events, and issues of the past. While, as Mark Twain cynically states, that "the ink of history is merely fluid prejudice", Zinn has attempted to tell history from a different perspective, that which challenges the "commonly accepted" versions of the history that we are taught. If Zinn has a prejudice, it is against those who feel that the role of the historian is to promote the state or stricly the positive aspects of this nation's past. Maybe the man is too much of an ideologue, but if he truly is such an evil America-hating communist, then label me one as well, for we must, then, make sense of this quote from his interview:

To be patriotic in the most literal sense
is to not be for the government but for the
country.

Howard Zinn is more of a patriot than most Americans and most of our presidents, including the current one.
I'm not sure whether anyone reads this or not, but if someone does read this and is familiar with Zinn, I'd love to read her or his comments on Howard Zinn.

Eat A Peach For Peace

Last night my wife, my son, and I traveled to Cody's Books on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley to hear David Mas Masumoto read from his latest book, Letters To the Valley. Masumoto, a farmer in Fresno County, writes about his experiences on his farm, the importance of finding stories in one's life to share, and his philosophy of a connectedness that he has with the earth. His prose is reflective, colloquial and identifiable, and ultimately, beautiful. He read from his latest offering with his daughter, a sophomore at U.C. Berkeley, and then signed people's books. In talking with him afterwards, I shared the importance of another book, Four Seasons In Five Senses, to my family, as I would read the vignettes to Heather and William while he was in her tummy. I also shared stories both of being raised on a farm in Brentwood as well as my experiences of working in Riverdale, a town very similar to Del Ray. Mas signed both my book and a copy of Letters that I purchased. An amazing evening with a wordsmith that values shared stories, shared connections, and the connectedness of generations for those stories to be passed along. His website can be found here. Pay him a visit; you'll be the one who walks away enriched and rewarded by meeting he and his stories.

I'm interested in tomorrow night's debate. This will be John Kerry's last chance to nail Uncurious George. Watching the "gap" shrink, the "bounce" remain, and the American people see just what a dolt the president really is makes me hopeful again. Tomorrow night's topic is domestic issues, an area that Kerry will have to be careful due to his own record as well as the fact that Bush doesn't have to worry about the names of any other countries or their leaders. My bet is that Bush wins, but that the election still runs close.

Okay, finish reading this and head over to Lefty's Corner. Great concert reviews, political insights, and a member of the Liberal Coalition, a blog group that will help you navigate your way through myriad political beliefs and support for your own progressive political leanings. Chris is a wonderful man, a great friend, a great writer, and one who truly looks out for his fellow humans for the betterment of society. Check him out; you owe it to yourself.

Returning To Roots

This last weekend, my family and I visited sunny Fresno, where we had previously lived since the mid-1990s. Heather was thrown a baby shower by two of her closest friends from graduate school yesterday, and so we made it our first road trip for little William. The trip allowed me to see some of my best friends, made in Fresno but truly some of the best people in the whole world. With many of them, I saw Huey Lewis and the News at the Fresno Fair. We enjoyed the show, the band performed really well, the crowd enjoyed itself, and the experience of being with the people who I moved away from but never left brought a warm feeling to my soul. Feel the power? :)

My little son has continued to amaze me. Being around other little humans for the first time in his thirty-some-odd days on this trip, he saw how others walk, crawl, cry, sit up, fuss, eat, and learn about the world. Will is slowly finding his voice as well as his hands, and it fascinates me to think that his brain, being a work in progress, is working while it is learning how to work. It's a great feat for Will to be able to pop that pacifier right back in with those hands! The best is when he looks at me as I sing to him, patting him on the back while rocking him. I get emotional just typing this! What a sappy sad sack.

Tomorrow I'll rant and rave about Round Two of the debates and how John Kerry continued to show the country that his opponent does not deserve another term of office.

And I'm Not Going To Take It Anymore

Just after finishing my earlier blog this morning, I completed my usual rounds of checking my on-line liberal media sources (wink, wink) to find the following. I'm mad as hell, and you should be as well, and not because we're in the midst of a campaign:

Bush lied.

So did Cheney.

And Bremer is in full C.Y.A. mode.

Look out for the pot calling the kettle black on Friday night.

Cheney should also get the source of his lies correct. He told Americans to find the facts at www.factcheck.com. Go to this site; you'll dig it. While you're at it, go to the real source to find out the mistruths, stretched truths, and outright lies by both parties and all four candidates at www.factcheck.org.

About Last Night

No, not the 1986 Ed Zwick film with Demi and Rob, we're talking the Veep debate. We had the privilege of having dinner with friends Karin and Brad, and so we were glued for the first hour before having some great eats. What I watched, in light of the previous Thursday Presidential debate, was a vice presidential whipper-snapper being thrashed by the seasoned, polished, and brutally sharp incumbent. Edwards played the role of the inexperienced but sincere trial-lawyer-cum-politician, delivering his lines to the audience as well as the television cameras. Many of his lines were scripted and could have been cued by anyone knowing what Edwards came to do; hammering Dick Cheney on Haliburton, manipulating the country into an unjust war, the administration's lack of honesty, encouraging voters to dump Bush. He failed. Miserably. While polls show a mixed electorate's response to last night, which is nothing but good news for Kerry/Edwards, the vice presidential pretender to the throne attempted to take on Cheney as Cheney wished him to, with the mainstream, glossed-over soundbyte topics that keep ignorant voters attentive but knowledgeable voters unsatiated. What Edwards attempted to do was challenge Jabba the Hutt to a wrestling match. Edwards emphatic claims fell way short of Cheney's calculated, evidence-based, methodical responses. Edwards failed, not because he retorted with his own solid agenda-based offerings but because he did not expose the failed and flailing ideological presuppositions of the neoconservatives that have hi-jacked the administration. What needed to occur last night was David slowly but surely plucking off the Goliath that, in falling, would have crushed George W. Bush's re-election hopes in the process. Edwards needed to address the issue of class warfare being waged by the Republicans in the White House and Congress, the frightening agenda of the right-wing of the GOP mounting an attack on Americans' civil liberties and freedoms in the form of the Patriot Act, constitutional amendments banning recognition of gay civil unions, the Supreme Court's right to rule on cases involving the Pledge of Allegiance, and the GOP's attempts to paint evangelical Christians as a bunch of ignorant tools by scaring them with the outrageous prevarications that Democrats are attempting to ban the Bible in certain states. Edwards also needed to address the issue of consistency: (the only flip-flopping going on here is this particular writer's usage of the semi-colon versus the comma, but we'll leave that to another couch session of fault-finding) the Bush administration has, in fact, never waivered from the claims that al-Qaeda and the Hussein regime were linked; that Saddam Hussein was connected to the attacks of 9/11/2001; that the majority of Americans are benefiting from Bush's tax cuts; that faith-based initiatives do not breech the church/state divide that Thomas Jefferson put in place two hundred years ago; that the U.S. has a worldwide coalition of supporting nations helping evenly handle the Iraq quagmire; that the country is truly better-off than it was before Bush's rise to power. Not only has the administration remained unwaveringly resolute on each of these points, the administration has been on the wrong side of each. These issues will be critical for historians in weighing Bush's legacy and historians will have a field-day with them. The facts are irrefutable and when viewed in light of the needs of the nation as well as the direction it needs to head in the next three generations, posterity will view the Bush administration as a colossal failure and anachronistic in guiding the nation towards further progressive health and well-being. Unfortunately, while the Bushies may succeed in the short-run, historians such as myself will have the last laugh. Loud it will be, as I have the privilege of teaching generations of young Americans just how damaging George Walker Bush was for the success, power, and image of the United States in the early twenty-first century.

Hopping Mad

The line, it is drawn, the curse, it is cast. I want Jonathan Edwards, YES, THE Jonathan Edwards, to channel hellfire and brimstone down on Dick Cheney in tonight's debate. The trail lawyer may fare well, the Great Awakening Preacher would do best; it's time for the neoconservative spate of lies to be truly smashed tonight with a single relavatory speech that debunks everything Wolfowitz, Cheney, Feith, Libbey, and Rumsfeld stand for. How Condi Rice can look at her role in her "husband's" administration is beyond me. What is truly needed tonight is a spectacle so bloody, so purgative, so sacrificial, that Americans across the land all head for the nearest place of worship to atone for their sin of allowing these men to govern this nation and steer this world to such the precipice of disaster that we, as a nation, now teeter on. Last week, the nation and the world saw just what an inept, unprepared, un-curious George the president truly is. "It's hard!" whined the commander-in-thief, complaining that the world's most powerful office requires ability, skill, and an intellectual capacity to guide a nation with a vision. Of course it's hard, and it's why the nation's voters chose Al Gore for the position four years ago, and it's why I pray that Americans vote against you for a second time, in three weeks. John Kerry was a formidable debate opponent and in my opinion, one who stood for a vision, however nuanced, for the country other than one last seen sauntering toward the O.K. Corral, gun in hand, gleem in eye, swagger in step, and all ideas left behind. Maybe W. truly is the "Left Behind" president- a vision of apocalyse, moralistic right versus wrong, and yet one whose moral vision claims to come from an ancient holy text but is loaded with as much fiction as the Timothy LaHaye books that fly off the bookshelves at bookstores and Costco.
At any rate, the Bush spinsters have been terribly busy since last week's trouncing, now trying to scare the country into believing that a "Kerry Doctrine" would put executive decisions at the mercy of foreign leders and the world in harm's way. I'm sorry, but what, then, by default, has the true Bush Doctrine done for the nation? Kerry's brilliantly-delivered zinger, the Pottery Barn parable, describes the president's debacle in Iraq-no vision, no Plan-B efforts to stem any possible errors, and not the single thought of direction change when things go wrong. This perfectly describes the swath of destruction left behind every one of W.'s efforts for the last three years. The sweetest revenge with a Kerry victory, much better than lining up W. and his minions and shooting them all, would be the curse of each of his people to live long lives; long enough to see historians shred the policies, the lies, and ultimately the damage left from their bankrupt vision of world policy. November 2 can not come soon enough for me.

John Coltrane is one of my favorite musicians. To call the man brilliant is an understatement. To call his ability to create music visionary would fail to describe what Coltrane was: a saint. I'm not saying that the man was holy, perfect, or better than anyone else just because he had the ability to manipulate brass, wood, and plastic to make beatiful music. I call Coltrane a saint because the man pursued the face of God through his music; Coltrane attempted to talk with his Creator in a language beyond words and context. Beyond his masterpiece, A Love Supreme, coltrane further attempted to define the noise of God, and these attempts have been captured in the recordings of the man's last three years on earth. Recently, I stumbled onto another of Coltrane's meditations on the almighty, his recorded-in-1967-but-not-released-until-1974-gem, Interstellar Space. Coltrane speaks in tongues throughout his fifty-minute prayer, conjuring up emotions and thoughts that make one contemplate the heavens. Not the spiritual realm, but other planets in our solar system. The conversation he holds with these bodies is found in a five-song cycle of saxophone/drum cathartic explosions, each with its own attempt at recreating the vast cosmos within Coltrane's own mind. Challenging modular runs, "sheets of sound," sometimes a cacophony of notes, all, when added up and absorbed as a whole, speak clearly and mindfully that as one exists in the larger space of the universe, the inverse is truly and spiritually true just the same.

Bruce Springsteen spent much of 1980 learning about the nation as Walt Whitman saw it in the 1890s, 1995 and 1996 telling Seinbeck-esque tales of the common American, and is now spending his October in what many see as the completion of his journey: rallying Americans to participate in one major aspect of civic life, voting. It has been no secret that Springsteen can not stand the current administration; yet this week, Springsteen is currently using his buly pulpit to rally people behind an anti-democratic, anti-Bush platform. Headlining the Vote For Change Tour, Springsteen is nudging Americans to help see a greater reality, a brighter future, and a better country by getting involved and expressing thier voices. Granted, most people are attending these concerts strictly to see Bruce and the E Streeters jam with John Fogerty, and most of Bruce's words will be preached to a choir of thousands of fellow believers, but the bigger impact can only be seen if those in attendance hit their co-workers, their adult children, their friends, their neighbors, and their towns, with the message that voting truly speaks the hearts of Americans. Bruce is not a prophet, nor a political force to be reckoned with; yet he does qualify as a patriot who wants to see "d"emocratic forms of expression return to public discourse. I support him on that, and if that means that W. gets sent home to Crawford, Texas, then I support him even more. Bruce is doing what everyone patriot who stands out front of Safeway registering people to vote is doing, and that is crying out for people to be involved and to care. I can't fault anyone, of any political affiliation, who encourages and rallies the people to speak their minds. Will the tour matter? Probably not. It's the effort that citizens are speaking, and someone had better be listening. Whether heard now or not, the more people continue to speak, the louder their voices grow, and the more they continue to be ignored is when change will truly occur on a mass level. Boston 1773, Tiananmen 1989, Eastern Europe, 1990.

My son, William, is the most amazing person in the world. He's only been on earth for one month and yet he's changed the way I will see it for the rest of my life. I've slowed down, breathed deeper, looked around more, been happier, been more helpful, and more mindful of my own presence here since Will's arrival. I hope that I may be more of a friendlier, happier, better person not only to Will but to everyone. He's getting cuter, and more baby-like. The first month and babies are still little aliens to our world, and they do look as such. Will's now beginning to look like a little baby with full facial expressions and animation in his actions. Sure, he just lies there sleeping most of the time, but when he's awake and looking around, absorbing the world around him, he's the most fragile and wise person at the same time. Granted, he does look a bit like the vampire in F.W. Murnau's classic 1922 Nasferatu, but he's my little Max Shreck. Already having mastered French and the fundamentals of jazz, Will's next project is to tackle the issue of being able to sleep without his pacifier. More news at 11:00.

Going to catch John Scofield tomorrow night at Yoshi's. The next night, a total change of pace, I'll be dancing to Huey Lewis as he delivers his latest version of the News. Go, now, and listen to the Allman Brothers Band's latest album, One Way Out just to remind yourself that Derek Trucks and Warren Haynes are the two least-stoppable forces in rock guitar today.