The Adventures of Bloggard

Been Around the Block. Got Some Stories. These are Them.

The Clanging of Cymbals and Bells

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495 Third Avenue, San Francisco, 1975. These days I ride my motorcycle, and have plenty of spare time in between the postering runs for The Thumbtack Bugle. And while I was out putting up posters one day, I was looking at one of the posters.

I had been hired to put up a brightly colored large poster with colorful, banner-like flags pictured. It was advertising a special ritual that was to be performed by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist teacher, at the Nob Hill Masonic Center auditorium on California Street.

Sounded weird and maybe interesting, so I went.

I found it kind of noisy at the time — lots of banging drums and clashing cymbals and blatting, discordant horns — it was plenty weird, and I didn’t understand it much at all.

A week later I was speaking with my cousin Bruce (Richard Bruce Hurn), in Berkeley, and mentioned it because he was studying that same tradition, because they had a study center in Berkeley.

He fell upon the ground laughing. Apparently the ritual that I’d attended was a ritual for the dead.

Gosh. looks like I was in the right place after all!

A Gift from 1986

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Panhandle Park, below my Garret Apartment
Panhandle Park, below my Garret Apartment

Lyon and Oak, San Francisco, 1986 — I’d fallen in love with synthesizers, and learned to compose and play. And how to record these songs. In my garret flat, high above the Golden Gate Panhandle Park, with Simmons drums, a Yamaha keyboard, synth modules from Oberheim and Yamaha and Ensoniq, and an early Apple computer, I created music.

Some of these songs had been first recorded while I worked in Dallas for StarTel. The playing is pretty poor, but so thrilling to be able to do it.

Composing songs, however … was effortless. I had a secret method. I’d start a drum machine or repeat a set of chords, and then just listen for the melody that was already in there. Maybe that’s cheating, but it worked for me.

Enough for a Cassette Tape

I realized I had enough songs “in the can,” to make a cassette tape, and I thought what a wonderful Christmas gift to send to all my fans-  Oops, I mean friends and family. A cassette tape featuring songs by MEEEEE!

So I did. And that’s why … [Read more…]

So Long, Steve Jobs

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October 5, 2011: Apple Computer has announced that Steve Jobs died today.

That sucks, and I’m saddened.

I remember an evening, many years ago, I think a Tuesday, at the regular monthly meeting of the Homebrew Computer Club, which was held at the Stanford Linear Accelerator building.

I’d ride my (somewhat small) 360 Yamaha motorcycle down Interstate 280 from San Francisco, and my tushie was frazzled by the time I arrived. But it was worth it. Those were exciting times, with new announcements about CP/M and new peripherals for the Altair. Some of the people attending have now become household words, and I met the infamous Captain Crunch there, who was imprisoned for hacking long distance calls with a whistle that came in Captain Crunch cereal boxes.

And on that particular night, there were two scuzzy guys in the foyer. They weren’t on the regular program, so they’d set up just inside the door but before you went into the auditorium where the “real” program was going on.

They were demonstrating a board they’d just developed that displayed … (gasp!) … colors. (At the time, displays were black and white.)

These two guys reminded me of my hippie days. Steve and Steve, their names were. Wozniak and Jobs.

===

In the wake of his departure, here’s one of my favorite quotations, and maybe it has even more meaning today …

“Almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure–these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” — Steve Jobs

 

A White Sport Coat, and Rocket Fuel

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Henrietta, Texas, Easter Sunday, 1958: I have Easter finery, and it is a white sport coat. At age twelve, this seems especially neato to me, because that Marty Robbins song about the White Sport Coat and a Pink Carnation is still playing on the radio.

Usually, on school days, like my friends, I wear Levis or Lee Riders with a sport shirt. Because it is so cool to do so, I wear black loafers with white socks. Bobby Mitchell. has explained this to me, and he is a great fashion plate.

Bobby, Eddy Frank, Billy Ray, and several others are studying rocketry, and building rockets from aluminum tubes, hacksaws, wood, and gunpowder. Most of these rockets do not work, but we’re not giving up!

Today, however, I’m wearing Easter finery and sitting in my room, bored, because I’m dressed and ready for church, and the rest of my family is still getting dressed.

So that’s why I was fiddling with the rocket fuel.

[Read more…]

Insult to Injury in the Drum Section

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The band room of Henrietta High School, Henrietta, Texas, 1960: I was a hot-shot rudimental drummer, the head of the drum section. My associates were Noah on the bass drum, and … Linda on cymbols.

Noah had it easy. Just hit the bass drum on every beat.

Cymbols are more difficult, because you must stand, counting measure after measure, and sooner or later you get the the one place where you clash the cymbols together with a great flourish.

Linda had a bad habit of counting wrong. Sometimes we had cymbol clashes in the middle of soft passages. Often we passed the correct spot, and when Mr. Raeke glared, we got a kind of belated cymbol crash.

All this reflected upon me, the head of the drum section, so I tried to keep an eye on Linda, and helped her count the measures, whilst playing the rudimental snare part.

Although not particularly good at counting measures, she’d grown even more breathtaking from the first time I’d ever seen her walking down the street, and on this particular day she wore a snug black medium-weight turtleneck sweater which showed off her lovely figure to perfection, each perfect breast the stuff of dreams.

Today she was counting very seriously, and we were drawing near the correct place.

As the band headed into the last two measures, Linda raised the left cymbol high, and lowered the right cymbol low. Standing upright, her head and shoulders nodding in time, she counted down the last four beats.

Up came the measure, and the cymbols swung!

“Thunk.”

No stunning crash. Just a muffled sound. I looked at Linda’s face, but her eyes were blank, staring into space far beyond the ceiling of the room. It was pain. Wordless. Pain beyond speech.

She had caught her left breast between the cymbols.

Margaret’s Lime

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Henrietta, Texas circa 1970: Darrel Blain went to school with my brother, David Strickland, and sometimes rode his bike out to the farm near Hurnville to visit. Like any kid growing up in Henrietta, his mother bought his clothes at John’s Drygoods, and the Library Rummage Sale was a big deal.

But he was enterprising, and he got a job at the ‘Lo Boy, cooking burgers and making cokes.

Then one day, there was this lime.

The limes were kept inside the grey metal ice-maker, in a bucket. At that time, lime cokes were a hot item at the ‘Lo Boy. The formula is simple: make a fountain coke, cut a slice of lime, and squeeze it into the coke.

But not this lime. It was too beautiful.

Large. Deep green. Unblemished and perfect. It was just too pretty to slice up and put in a coke, so Darrel stuck it into his pocket instead.

Later that day, it happened that he biked out to the Hurnville farm. to visit with my brother David. While he and David were lounging around, my mother, Margaret was her name, saw the lime.

She said gee, that would really be good with tequila. She asked if she could have it.

Startled, he was. Actually somewhat shocked, for he had never seen anyone actually drink tequila, much less have it with a lime. He handed it over.

She smiled.

Adrienne Searches on Google

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Weed, California, Spring 2009: Adrienne is still somewhat new to computers, and she comes up with things that often elude me.

(Even around the house; she fixed the ‘broken’ garbage disposal; I’d never have thought to use the plumber’s friend plunger!)

She has good results with the search engine, and uses it all the time.

One day I watched, and she types in entire sentences, like “Where can I find a list of all the major dog sanctuaries in the United States?”

I asked her why she didn’t just enter “dog sanctuaries”. [Read more…]

Grass Blade Whistle

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Weed, California June 18, 2008: Walking the dogs in the huge vacant lot toward the end of day, I plucked a thick blade from an uprising of wild grasses, and made a loud whistle. This both excited and alarmed the dogs. So we had a little game all the way back to the house. Loud whistle. Leap and gyrate. Loud whistle. Leap and gyrate. Loud whistle. Leap and gyrate. Damn, we had fun!

And this reminded me that, back in September of 2007, Derrel Blain, another Henrietta Texas boy, took the time to capture this wondrous technology on his weblog of photos, drawings, and musings, called Daily Art Mas O Menos (Daily Art more or less). He drew the illustrations with ink, graphite, and a Derwent wash pencil.

With his permission, I here reprint “How to Make a Grass Blade Whistle.” Something every boy ought to know.

HOW TO MAKE A GRASS BLADE WHISTLE

Let’s suppose you need to make a loud noise to frighten off a large wild animal (assuming you’ve encountered a large wild animal that can actually be frightened), or suppose you become lost or injured while hiking and need to signal your whereabouts, or let’s suppose you are eight years old hanging out with your cousins in a small town in Texas with not much to do, trying to make as much noise as possible.

In that case you can make a really loud whistle from a grass blade. Strictly speaking it’s not a whistle but a single reed instrument. A whistle has a fixed surface; a reed instrument has a moving surface vibrating against a fixed surface.

Whatever, it still is ear-splittingly loud.

Here’s how to do it.

Find yourself a grass blade, or leaf, or something similar, longer than your thumb. Not a wimpy grass blade from a suburban lawn, but a native grass or weed that’s tough, with about a finger’s width to it.

Hold it between thumb and forefinger so the grass more or less drapes along the length of your thumb.

Grass Blade Whistle Step Uno

After holding it between thumb and forefinger with one hand, so the grass more or less drapes along the length of your thumb, catch the bottom end of the blade with your middle finger.

Pull the grass blade tight along the side of your thumb with this finger, while bringing your other thumb up to replace your forefinger.

Grass Blade Whistle Step Dos

After pulling the grass blade tight along the side of your thumb with your middle finger, bring your thumbs parallel to form an opening with the grass blade centered in it.

Keep holding the grass blade taut with your middle finger, at the base of your thumb, so that the grass blade is stretched tight across the opening.

When you blow between your thumbs, the reed (the grass blade) will vibrate against the sides of your thumbs, much the same way a reed works in a harmonica.

This reed-whistle will be piercingly loud and strident, sort of like a one-note saxophone gone bad, a very desirable quality if you’re eight.

Grass Blade Whistle Step Tres

—–
Thanks to Derrel Blain for permission to archive this essential information.

And now you know.

Go thee forth and share this with young lads everywhere. The world will be a better place.

 
 

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