Doc Watson, the man and his music

I saw Doc Watson last year at the Downtown in Johnson City. Attending with friends, I very nearly missed it; now I'm glad I was there.  The Downtown--the sound alone is phenomenal in that space-- is one of those places one is likely to hear the best of musicians at any given time, and it's my understanding Doc Watson graced that stage many a time.

The night I heard him, I was surprised by his appearance: his blindness meant little to this observer, because he had something else--a presence that went beyond what he couldn't see with his eyes.  Tall, white-haired and a bit fragile, all that was forgotten when he took his guitar in hand and began to play. Call it magic, skill, charisma or all of the above, that man could play the guitar.  Those old fingers fairly raced over the strings, drawing enchantment into the room. All those in attendance were still--we couldn't move for fear of disturbing the aura.

Long live his memory and the music he shared with us.

Memorial Day 2012-a Salute

I've got to admit I'm a war-like passifist.  In other words, I don't like war and would prefer to pursue any way to get around it, but once we're in, let's win it and get our soldiers back home.

One of my cousins is my personal hero. A Vietnam-era veteran, he wears the scars of war in both body and mind, but he does so with dignity.  I remember well when he left to join the war effort, spiffy in his pressed uniform and close-cut hair--a youthful eagerness enveloped him then. He was always one of my favorite cousins and it was hard to see him leave and know he might not return. When he finally came home, some years later, I found a man much older and "wiser"; one who experienced much in my place, and one who would do it again should he be called.

So, with this experience in mind, I thank all the men and women who fight to keep us free. Salute!

Topless mountains-can we still call them mountains?

I saw my first flattened mountain a couple of years ago while driving to Kentucky. Soaking up the abundant, verdant beauty around me, I was unprepared for the specter looming in front of me: the mountain was gone. In its place was a gaping hole in the sky.  Dust, grit, carved tracks and deep ruts, despair and sickness filled in the gap, while someone--possibly you or me, made off like bandits with the energy robbed from that place.

The shock of that day is still with me and hard to think about, but recently I was again confronted with it, this time through a movie--The Last Mountain. In it, I saw more than just that one mountain stripped and flattened--there are thousands of acres of land decimated all the time, most of it in Appalachia.   The wealth from mining goes not to its few workers who run mammoth machines, but to robber barons who stand on the backs of our people, strip the earth of its resources and then send it someplace else.

Will we ever learn that the earth is more than a resource and that much of what is here is finite?  Can we restructure corporations so that blind acquisition no longer drives them to rob our world to line the nests of the few?

 The thing about most energy sources is that once we use them, they are gone. Whack the mountaintop off, rob it of the coal and other minerals collected through the eons, and there is no more. Gone; used up.