Music, music, music!

A few years ago I read a piece in the Onion about broken dreams. Discarded musical instruments played a large role in this. It made me think about the false starts I've had trying to learn to play a musical instrument. I also pondered my advanced age (53 at the time, 56 now) and had an epiphany that it was time to try again, this time for real. I got a mandolin and started learning.

I had to discard the idea that I'd be able to play an instrument quickly, and instead resigned to long weeks of hard practice with no sign of improvement. I'm good at math and enjoy repetition to an extent.

I'm happy to report that it's going well. First and foremost, I'm really enjoying playing every day. Looks like this one will go in the museum of realized dreams.

Bored of the Rings?

In a word... no.

I read the JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings as a teenager. I remember liking it, but I'm not so sure I "got" it.

I did a stint in my life as a street hippie, and adopted the name Frodo for a while, then Stryder (spelled "Strider" in Tolkien's books).

Prior to the release of the movie The Fellowship Of The Ring, I reread the trilogy and really enjoyed it. But I still didn't really follow it nor was I prepared to delve any more deeply into the Middle Earth and it's geography and people. It wasn't until I saw all three movies twice and re-read the trilogy for the third time that I saw the real magic. I've been taking some of the tours on The One Ring and reading some of the exemplary materials on LOTR on Wikipedia. Wikipedia has articles not only on the books but on individual characters and geographical locations - wonderful stuff.

I have to ask myself, of course, whether this is a cop-out. Shouldn't I be studying up on contemporary politics, or at the very least the arts? The fact is I do that also. But the brain occasionally needs a little good old fashioned intellectually challenging fun. This is mine, at least for now.

My Morning

I had a kind of a neat morning, but not the kind you'd talk to just anybody about. So I thought I'd come to you, my closest friend, and tell you about it. No big deal, just a series of events that seemed to convey a common message.

On the way in I heard a great song for the first time, Waltzing Along, by James. Kind of inspiring, and it made me feel good.

Tomorrow's Veterans Day, so tomorrow's the beginning of a 3 day weekend. Veterans Day is always important to me. It reminds me of the price that was paid for my freedom, and helps keep me from taking it all too much for granted.

Anyway, I figured I'd stop for coffee in Roslyn, VA, which is right across the Potomac River from Washington DC. As usual, parking was tricky and I ended up parking right in front of Freedom Park, a small elevated walkway set among the skyscrapers of Roslyn. As I got out of the car, I saw a woman walking her dog. She looked fairly happy and non-descript, except for the fact that she had no arms. No big deal, in and of itself.

I decided to take a stroll through Freedom Park. While there I...

• Stopped in front of an actual section of the Berlin Wall and thought about it's history and the millions of lives effected.


• Stood behind a bronze casting of the cell door where Martin Luther King was held in Birmingham, AL, and considered the price paid (and still being paid) by champions of human rights.


• Took a stroll on the actual cobblestones of a pre-World War II Warsaw ghetto and thought of the millions of lives destroyed by Hitler's "final solution" and the incredible struggle that ensued to stop it.


• Stood in front of a replica of the "Goddess of Democracy" statue from the ill fated demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in Peking, and thought about the hundreds of millions of people who suffered and continue to suffer under communist China's iron rule.

Finally, I went and got my coffee. As I walked back to the car, I passed a man who, again, looked fairly happy and non-descript, except for the fact that he was in a wheelchair and had no legs.

I'm not trying to give a single message by this blog entry. Suffice to say that, as I walked the three blocks from my car to work, I felt a little prouder to be a human being than I normally do.

Maryland Renaissance Festival

Recently my wife and I attended the Maryland Renaissance Festival. It was our third time.

The festival is a whole lot of fun. It's an excuse to drink and eat in excess, to dress in weird clothes and to oggle fellow festival goers.

The location of the festival is a small-town-sized complex with permanent buildings and lots and lots of beautiful shade trees. It's populated by a large number of actors and acrobats who stroll about in fantastic costumes (here is Jane Seymour and her lady-in-waiting being wooed by a pirate).



A lot of the attendees also dress up, most of them in period dress but a lot of the kids come in their goth attire, complete with black capes and multitudinous piercings. It's people watching at it's best. I got to wear my beautiful renaissance period Scottish fighting jacket and tucked my black jeans into my boots, and my wife wore a gown and a large cockroach pin, very lifelike.

Musicians wander about playing period music, and there's a schedule full of dramas, comedys, acrobatics and music on 3 different permanent stages.

The arts and crafts available here are serious including renaissance and medieval weapons of all kinds (only actors are allowed to carry these however), sumptuous clothing, and jewelry. I almost bought a sword, a replica of the one Strider/Aaragorn carried at the battle of Helms Deep.

We're looking forward to doing it again next year. What a great way to take a vacation, not just to another place, but to another time.

Alaska

My wife and I are back from Alaska. We did lots of neat touristy stuff in Fairbanks, but the BIG deal was a trip to Bettles. Bettles is a town 35 miles north of the Arctic Circle. It was an hour small plane ride north from Fairbanks.

Being totally cut off from civilization in terms of electricity, phone service, radio and television, they've had to come up with ways to supply that themselves. It has an airstrip and as such functions as a gas station for planes and helicopters. It has a lodge which is where we stayed. Because Bettles isn't connected to Alaska's road system, you don't need a license to drive there. It's a genuine frontier town and the people that live there exude the independent spirit required to survive in such an environment.

Oh, yes, and the weather. In the winter it gets down to 160 below fahrenheit. Guess you'd need a windbreaker.

While up there we chartered a plane to take us flight trecking for an hour and a half into the Brooks Range. Above is a picture of what we saw. You can see the tip of the wing at the top of the photo. The plane was a little 5 person job, narrower than a car. It was a bit scary but we had confidence in our pilot. Most of all it was spectacular.

We saw the Northern Lights on 3 separate nights while we were there.

The trip to Bettles was something I'll never forget. It's one of the coolest things I've ever done.

Warn A Brother

Nothing in particular to say. I just thought this was funny.

Bettles

Back in Fairbanks from my trip to Bettles, AK. It was awesome in the true sense of the word. We chartered a small plane through the Brooks Range and saw some beautiful Northern Lights, both of us for the first time.

More later, I've only got 10 minutes on this Vistor's Center computer.

Google Earth

If you haven't seen Google Earth you owe it to yourself to download and install it. It takes about a minute. I'll describe it briefly but words don't do it justice.

I'm not talking about maps.google.com - Google Earth is a separate program, not a web page. With it you can fly around a world made up of actual satellite photographs - yes, the entire earth. You can explore anywhere you like - the Andes, Washington DC, Damascus, the North Pole. Major metropolitan areas like New York and Beijing tend to have higher resolution. It includes the option of superimposing map and business information.

A lot of computer geeks have come to the conclusion that all great uses of the Internet, all super apps, have already been invented. Leave it to Google to prove them wrong.

Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention, it's free.

Mobile Blogs

Ralph is here

Too cool - I just set it up so I can blog by sending instant messages on my cell phone. My wife and I are getting ready to take a trip to Alaska, so I'll try and blog from there. God, I love vacation time.

I'm leaving in the cingular blurb. They're OK with me so far.

--

Mobile Email from a Cingular Wireless Customer http://www.cingular.com

A Good Day To Protest

My wife and I joined the protest march on the White House against the war in Iraq this past Saturday. It was fantastic. 100,000 people attended, according to DC police chief Ramsey.

Sure the going was slow - we moved only 3 blocks in 3 hours. But the point wasn't so much to cover ground as to be heard.

Some of my favorite signs were...

• Make Levees Not War


• The Rapture Is Not An Exit Strategy


• Who Would Jesus Bomb? (I carried this one)


• These Colors Don't Run... The World

It reminded me of the old days a lot, except I saw no drugs. People weren't there to party - the atmosphere was much more serious.

Hopefully we'll see more of these, until the need for them goes away.