King Midas In Reverse

The past week in Robertville. the continuing saga

Was a long week. Tuesday was the election and I was on the road the next morning. My wife did not win, bless her heart. Her opponent billed himself as the non woke candidate and I listened to a podcast he did on a Christian radio station. I think the religious right was really gunning for the school boards.

Unfortunate.

I am proud of her for trying and throwing her hat in the ring. 

I left at six in the morning. For some reason, my GPS told me not to take the standard 91/71/210, to instead go north on the 15. I did so but somehow missed the turn for the mile and a half jag to the 395. 

The next thing I knew I was stuck in the middle of the Mojave desert. Hesperia, Phelan, Adelanto. Oh shit, what have I done?

After a long period on the Old 395 I wondered what would happen if I just shined on the show and drove to Bishop or Mono Lake and enjoyed myself? Would the world come to an end? In any case, the show must go on and besides, I didn't bring a camera.

Next thing I know I am driving past Boron, the place where my friend Kevin was imprisoned for several years for growing a couple pot plants.

Leslie and I visited him very early on.

It was actually pretty driving across the Tehachapis on the 58 but it took about eleven hours to do it and I was pretty fried.

I checked in to the dingy Motel. 

Warmboe came by and picked me up and we had dinner at Max's.

I had their excellent broth and tasteless matzoh balls and bantered with my friend.

The next day was my birthday. 67, if you need to know. 

Either an old fossil or a spring chicken, depending on your personal vantage.

I set up my booth, only to find that they were short eight foot walls for an important dealer who was pretty finicky and rather put out.

I told them to take mine and to give me shorter ones so they didn't have to build more. 

They were very appreciative but it meant I would not have walls paper or lights in my 32' booth until the next day. 

It would be very tight making everything work in my setup, an interesting challenge.  

It usually takes me a day and a half and this was an incredibly large booth. 

I must say that henceforth on, the crew could not have been nicer.

I managed to get it all together and finish and went back to the hotel to change for my birthday dinner.

I picked a Hong Kong style Cantonese restaurant that Dave, Melissa and I had eaten at before. HL Peninsula Pearl in Burlingame.

Alyssa, Loughlin, Dave, Melissa, Paulina and Warmboe joined me. 

The food was delicious and I think it was a good choice. Lobster noodles, duck braised in blood orange, fried rice, pork chops, ginger beef, sweet and sour, we went for it.

At least one of our party was a conservative Republican and with nerves being so frayed I let word out prior to our supper that there would be no political discussion. 

We didn't miss it.

All I can say is America, you made your bed. 

You deserve everything that you are about to get. 

More politics later, if and when I am finally able. 

Matt Gaetz, Attorney General. 

Clown show. 

Really putting your best foot forward.

Next day the show opened. I had a really good day, selling five or six nice paintings. No home runs but some good sales. Hot dog.

Unfortunately, like the Palm Springs Show from ten days prior, the next day I sold very little.

Sunday was nothing. I wasn't despondent but I know that I will have to kill next week in Santa Barbara to take any financial pressure off.

Hopefully I will do okay. You never know.

My old friend Fred Salazar came by. 

He had been absent from the show scene for years. 

We used to go to blues clubs in the city after the shows in the old days. The Saloon, Slims.

I miss Fred, it was good to see him. So many people left the antique world, either by choice or on a gurney. Once we filled six rooms, now we barely make a half a room.

But the people that are left, my fellow dinosaurs, are survivors and very good at what they do. 

The only ones left.

Where is that comet again? Strike us quick.

I lost a great friend to pancreatic cancer on my birthday, Linda Wilson. 

She fought the great fight, went out on her own terms.  By the time it was diagnosed it was too late.

She was a dynamo in Fallbrook, one of the most incredible and charismatic people I have ever met.

She will be sorely missed. 

Loved her and still love her husband Peter.

I am so happy that I got the opportunity to know her and to be her friend.

*

Not much else to report. Breakfast at Christies ever morning. Another dinner or two at Max's with Bill, JP and Alyssa.

I stayed at Bill's my last night.

His place is quite a trip.

Crazy piles of this and that.

Tortured doll parts and lovely flowers and pottery.

After breakfast with Bill Monday morning I got back on the road. It still took me ten hours to return, fell asleep at a rest stop, exhausted. Drank a red bull and promptly fell asleep. This shit is getting harder and harder to do, especially three shows in four weeks.

This Fosters freeze going to seed on the 5 was about the only interesting site I saw.

If I had brought my good camera I would have wandered inside.

I got back Monday night, quite grouchy, poor Leslie. I apologize. Too much time in traffic sours my disposition.

So that's it. A decent week, some good sales, a few leads. Good food, great friends on my birthday. I am about to do something I haven't done in 39 years tomorrow. I am going to paint again, I was asked to be in a show. 

I sold a painting today. 

Tomorrow I will buy canvas and get prepared to dive in to painting again, see if I still have it. Which reminds me, this great quote was on the Fallbrook School of the Arts a few months ago. I really like it.

Milo grabbed the gold

The Grateful Dead were one of the most successful rock and roll bands of all time, generating what is estimated to be over $393 million dollars in ticket revenue during their long tenure.

Their most current lineup, Dead and Co., generated over $130 million dollars in revenue on their most recent 30 night Las Vegas Sphere run alone.

This does not include merchandising and record sales, which are absolutely enormous. 

That in itself is said to bring $70 million in annually. A lot of gelt.

The Grateful Dead members have gotten very rich, god bless them. 

I have seen wildly divergent estimates of Bob Weir's net worth, somewhere between $60 million and $200 million dollars.

I bring this up because of something I have noticed recently. For the second time in the last six months a longtime member of the Grateful Dead family has had to appeal to a Go Fund Me site in order to get proper medical care.

Harry Popick is a familiar face to deadheads, having run their monitors for years. I was not a close friend of Harry's but I was a friend to many other members of the sound crew, including Don Pearson, Howard and Chubbs. 

Apparently Popick suffered a debilitating stroke.

Ultimately, after Garica’s 1995 passing, Popick was able to keep busy after parting ways with the band, using his union membership to seek various work opportunities. Popick suffered a stroke, and despite recovery efforts, which included extensive physical therapy, he experienced issues such as chronic muscle contraction in his right hand. Further hardships ensued, and Popick left his family and friends in California for familial duties in Florida, which coincided with a cancer diagnosis and subsequent surgeries, including an unrelated hip replacement followed by the challenges of a global pandemic–and its own set of woes. Recently, he was diagnosed with hypertension and sciatica, which implicates daily tasks. 

This was posted on David Gans site:

Candace Brightman was the brilliant visionary behind the Grateful Dead's lighting. She made all the beautiful things happen visually. She is hurting too.

Candace wrote this in a note on her Go Fund Me page:

The money you all contributed has been a huge relief. We have no pension or health care. dumb .

But the love, wow gorgeous! Mahalo. You,ve changed our life in a wonderful way.

My vision went way down hill a few weeks ago. i'm not freaked. I live to laugh.

ive been trying to order a 50" tv/ computer display from the mainland, but they've stopped shipping to Hawaii!!! and i need to get a 2nd septic pronto. Trex the stairs.... more panels in the roof......but we can't drive.... BOO HOO. and we fall over a lot. Larry takes it gracefully, I whine. or laugh.

No pension or healthcare? A company that has generated about a half billion or more dollars in revenue can't take care of the people who got them there? Seriously? It seems indecent to me. These were not bit players or hangers on, they were major cogs in the machine. Apparently, when the band is done with you, you disappear and end up having to rely on charity.

I brought this up with BigDave the other day. His response was something to the effect that he had worked for Microsoft as upper management and they weren't obligated to give him a pension so Candace and Harry have no right to expect one either.

Perhaps he is right.

But I thought that the Grateful Dead were far bigger than that and there was certainly enough pie to make sure that everybody was taken care of and received a fair slice.

Guess not.

San Diego: America’s Wildest City

Crimson And Clover

Hail Hydra

It was a tough night for me (and for many in our nation) and looks like it will be one of the worst birthdays imaginable, for a variety of reasons that I don't feel the need to un-peel here.

But I bet that they are popping champagne corks in Moscow, and in Pyongyang too for that matter. 

All hail the new world order!

And please for those responsible, down the road, own this one. It is on you.

The Things I Do For You

I have seen a lot of great music in my life and I feel lucky. But you think of the ones that got away... I never got to see Jim Morrison or Hendrix. Ditto Janis or Otis. The Beatles. Alas, I am too young. Never saw Van Ronk or Fred Neil either. Or Prine.

But I did get to see Mose Allison. And Duane Allman when practically no one knew who he was. And Howling Wolf. And Lightning Hopkins. Elizabeth Cotton and Fred McDowell. Steve Goodman, Michael Bloomfield and Grace Slick. Chambers Brothers. Big Mama Thornton. Arthur Lee and Love, many times. The debut of Thick as a brick. Lee Michaels, Buffalo Springfield. The Cream reunion in New York. The Rolling Stones with Stevie Wonder for Mick's birthday at the Garden in 72.

One of the greatest performers I was ever able to hear was one Jr. Walker and the All Stars at the Belly-Up. God bless him, he was one of a kind. No one could blow the sax like Junior.

Population Puppets

There's an interesting phenomenon happening globally, the birthrate is falling dramatically in industrialized countries. This is creating havoc because all economic systems, like here in the USA, depend on younger people to bear the economic brunt of the effects of an aging populace. Social Security and Medicare programs all work by putting pressure on the young to support the old and infirm. 

And now all of these childless cat ladies are throwing a real wrench in the system.

Countries are dealing with the problem in different ways. I had to laugh recently when Russia told its citizens that they needed to make more babies. The country recorded its lowest birth rate in the past 25 years for the first six months of 2024, according to official data published this September.

When the workers asked when all this shtupping was to take place, already feeling beleaguered by long workdays, they were told to go home and screw on their lunch breaks.

The birth rate "is now at a terribly low level—1.4 [births per woman]," Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in July, according to AFP. "This is comparable to European countries, Japan and so on. But this is disastrous for the future of the nation."

Putin has previously stated the importance of boosting the nation's birth rate and population, saying that "the preservation of the Russian people is our highest national priority."

Health Minister Yevgeny Shestopalov said Russians should "engage in procreation on breaks" during a recent appearance on Russian national television, according to The Mirror.

He told an interviewer that there was no reason why Russians shouldn't attempt to conceive during the work day.

"Being very busy at work is not a valid reason, but a lame excuse," he said. "You can engage in procreation during breaks, because life flies by too quickly."

Asked when people who work 12 to 14-hour days would have time to procreate, Shestopalov replied: "During break times."

China is in a similar crisis. They have had shrinking birthrate numbers for three years in a row. The country that once instituted a one child policy is now encouraging people to have three. The numbers haven't been so bad since Mao engaged in his reign of terror against his own citizenry.

The total number of people in China dropped by 2.75 million – or 0.2% – to 1.409 billion in 2023, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Tuesday. The drop surpassed that recorded in 2022, of about 850,000 – the first time the recorded population had declined since the mass deaths of the Mao-era famines.

In 2023, total deaths rose 6.6% to 11.1 million, with the death rate reaching the highest level since the chaos of the cultural revolution in 1974. At the same time, new births fell 5.7% to 9.02 million. The birthrate was the lowest ever recorded at 6.39 births per 1,000 people, down from a rate of 6.77 births in 2022.

China has for years been battling trends that have led to an ageing population, which were driven by past policies of population control –including the one-child policy – and a growing reluctance among young adults to have children. In 2023 it was overtaken by India as the world’s most populous nation, according to UN estimates.

Chinese officials fear the impact that this “demographic timebomb” could have on the economy, with the rising costs of aged care and financial support in danger of not being met by a shrinking population of working taxpayers. The state-run Chinese Academy of Sciences has predicted the pension system in its current form will run out of money by 2035. By then the number of people in China above 60 years old – the national retirement age – will have increased from about 280 million to 400 million.

Japan is also struggling with an aging population problem. It has the highest percentage of people over the age of 65 in the world. But in an artistic sense at least, one town, Ichinono, has come up with the most elegant solution to not having people around - make puppets to take their place.

Read this article, very cool.

With most of the population gone, residents of one village in Japan have come up with a novel plan to make it less lonely — replacing people with puppets.

Fewer than 60 people live in Ichinono, and most of them are past retirement age as younger people have moved away for jobs or education.

So, using old clothes, fabrics and mannequins, residents have stitched together their own population of puppets to keep them company.

Some of puppets ride swings, others push firewood carts, smiling eerily at visitors.

“We’re probably outnumbered by puppets,” Hisayo Yamazaki, an 88-year-old widow, told the Agence France-Presse news agency.

Incredible photos by the AFP/Getty's Philip Fong.

I know many people who have led full and remarkable lives and chose not to procreate. My wife and I made that decision as well and I am glad that we did, my cancer causing such turmoil and uncertainty in my life and not wanting to put children through that.

With all the trauma, environmental degradation and existential angst present in our world, I understand why many people no longer want to leap into parenthood, biological clocks and species survival notwithstanding.

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the U.S. is also at a historic low fertility speaking. And what is the only thing keeping the population number steady?

Immigration.

Egads, can this be true? The conservative bogeyman might be our only salvation? Say it ain't so, Joe. Of course, we don't want any of those poisonous, inferior genes from third world countries, however nordic models and psychotic capitalists from South Africa are acceptable.

And there is another factor at work or at play here. Go to any jobsite, at least in my corner of the United States and see who is working construction?

Latinos.

Not white kids, they don't get their hands dirty anymore and they don't like to show up for work. Manual labor is beneath them. I worked construction from a laborer and electrician to superintendent and project manager before I had my own company, I did every shit job imaginable.

But kids for some reason would rather live their parents until they are forty these days and not sully themselves with hard or dirty work.

So when the new Trump regime gets rolling and starts with the mass deportations they may want to ask themselves how they are planning to pick the fields and build the houses, cook the food and get their geriatric asses wiped.

Because there may not be anybody left to do it.

Let's bring back polio

 

Many of us, on either side of the political equation, are stressed out by the coming election. Unfortunately, the problem we have is really not with our leaders, it is with each other. So, after Tuesday, the ongoing culture war will continue.

No matter what happens, the chasm between us is so wide, the demonization so great, and the absence of a middle ground so palpable that we are guaranteed to have four more years of political misery.

Why? Well, we have gone through this before but it bears repeating. The twin political silos make so much money on their partisan slants that they can't afford to offend their readership and be neutral and objective. 

Every syllable on Fox is uttered in order to fulfill a prior scripted frame, the Dems are evil and I suppose Democracy Now is similar on the other pole of the equation. 

Once upon a time, we worked together, on both sides of the aisle. Hatch and Kennedy, Rudman, the Concord Coalition, we managed to achieve something for our country and rise above politics. No more. This largely ended with Clinton. From Bush II on, it was ram it through through with sheer political muscle. Obama was as bad as Bush and it got worse from there. 

We are completely polarized. And now a Donald Trump can bitch about immigration and pretend to forget that he killed a bi-partisan fix because he didn't want to see it accomplished on Biden's watch. Great country we have here, filled with imbeciles.

Not garbage per se, just low information dunces who are perfectly content to accept cockamamie conspiracy theories because they no longer have the faculties to process critical information, if they ever did.

And that, unfortunately, is not going to change.

*

Hungary's Victor Orban is joining his friend Trump in calling for no more war in Ukraine. Which really means total capitulation and letting a murderous aggressor win and take its neighbors land.

Fine world we live in.

*

Interesting article. Not content merely to control women's ovaries, we are going to make it impossible for women in shitty or abusive relationships to leave their husbands too.

Vance has been outspoken in his disdain for divorce and has blamed it for what he characterizes as the breakdown in the American family. During an event at a California Christian high school three years ago, he claimed that Americans can obtain divorces too easily, shifting "spouses like they change their underwear," and suggested they should remain in unhappy marriages for children's sake. 

“This is one of the great tricks that I think the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace, which is the idea that like, ‘well, OK, these marriages were fundamentally, you know, they were maybe even violent, but certainly they were unhappy. And so getting rid of them and making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear, that’s going to make people happier in the long term,’” Vance said in a video published by Vice, arguing that the children of those failed marriages bear the brunt of the split.  

Autumn Leaves for cello and piano

Pangenome

 

New evolutionary discovery, the pangenome.

In simple terms, the pangenome is the complete set of all genes found within a species.

It includes every gene present in all the different strains or individuals, covering both the common genes shared by everyone (the core genome) and the unique ones found only in some (the accessory genome).

So even though individual members might have different genetic makeups, the pangenome represents the full genetic diversity that the species has.

...they discovered an invisible ecosystem where genes either get along or clash with each other, making evolution unpredictable.

“These interactions between genes make aspects of evolution somewhat predictable and furthermore, we now have a tool that allows us to make those predictions,” added Dr. Domingo-Sananes.

More on the human pangenome here. 

Billy Strings

Shanky Saturday

So these two gigantic lamb shanks have been sitting in our freezer for like, forever. 

Fred Flintstone could have rolled his car over with one of these bronto babies on the window sill.

We bought them at the beloved and greatly missed TipTop Meats to cook for Stan and Tracy in La Jolla but never got around to it and let's face it, neither we or the lamb shanks were getting any younger.

So we had a change of plan, we would cook steaks down there instead, which would not require the dutch oven or three hours of work in a kitchen that practically has never been used.

The appointed night for the shank's consumption was tonight. 

I came home early, browned these ungulate behemoths, then prepped the usual accompanying vegetables, added a nice jammy red wine from Portugal, beef broth, tomatoes and a host of seasoning and got down to cooking. Or should I say braising? 350 degrees in the oven for two and a half hours, turned them an hour in.

I was going to make a polenta but decided there was already too much food and that it wasn't necessary. 

I sort of followed Chef Billy Parisi's recipe.

I have made shanks quite a few times but this time I removed the lamb and big chunky vegetables to a platter at the 2:30 mark and strained the liquid in a sieve.

I cooked down the liquid for about twelve minutes at high heat and made a thicker sauce, added a bit of corn starch and flour. 

Leslie came home and plated the dinner and poured the extremely tasty sauce on top.

Pretty outrageously good.

Grateful Dead 5-31-92

Well, Phil is gone and I haven't played any dead music in a while so here goes. The second set of this show was one of my favorite later era dead shows. Tune in around 2:16:19, The Attics of my life, Spoonful > Other One > Morning Dew was inspired and powerful as was the encore.

I was thinking about a good other one for Phil and this is one of my very favorites.

We always baked in Vegas, in more ways than one, it was incredibly hot but it was also a beautiful venue with the long desert sight lines and occasional storms. Very treasured moments for me. Dosed to the gills, of course.

I went to Vegas every year until Jerry passed, not sure which year this pic is from but I think Julie Bowers took the shot.

Thank you, for a real good time. 💀

Bird of a feather

I saw a merlin in the river valley the other day. 

The merlin (falco columbarius) is our second smallest raptor in the area, the only thing smaller is a kestrel. I have never seen one here before.

But you will have to take my word for it because I didn't have my camera and had to make the capture with my cellphone.

That doesn't work too well.

The merlin is not endangered but it is rare to see one.

I texted Beth and sent her the pic and she told me that I had probably seen an osprey.

I'm like, gimmee a break, I have hundreds of merlin pictures and way more osprey shots and I do know what they look like.

This was a small falcon, but not a kestrel.

Here is a picture of the first merlin I ever got a shot of, up at San Jacinto.

Really lovely little raptors, very distinctive.

Here is a kestrel.

Very different.

And here is an osprey, in case you forgot. Or a pair of them, rather.

I dare say, not even close.

So I stand by what I saw, a merlin. 

I am told that we once had kites in the river valley and when I moved here forty four years ago I knew where there was a golden eagle nest upriver, past Morgan Springs. Can't get up there anymore, everything has been gated off.

I don't have a lot of things that bring me joy anymore. I don't touch my guitar, stopped doing martial arts decades ago and never get to the beach. Stopped playing blackjack and can't afford Hawaii.

Life has got me in a headlock.

One of the things that makes me happy is getting out and taking pictures of birds and I have been so busy trying to survive and have a go of things that I haven't had my camera out in about three months.

I understand that even the birds are worrying about me.

"Where the heck is he?"

We all have to survive, and create joy in our lives. 

Hopefully I will make it back out to my raptors soon.