It has been a busy past few months, starting grad school and all, and to be honest it is starting to catch up to me. Please don't get me wrong - I love being able to finally pursue my Master's after all these years of desiring to do so, but I have gotten to the point where I have to pace myself more lest burnout take effect. That is true with other things as well. In doing so, I am starting to get some focus back, and in months to come I will be adjusted I am sure to the routine and then it will be much more manageable.
One significant event to note is that as of October 1st I have been collecting vintage records for 30 years - wow! And, as I write this today, my collection currently stands at around 900 LP records and 1113 CD's. The collection covers the gamut of what many call the "big band era," as that is my favorite type of music, but it is so much more encompassing - for instance, over the past 6 years I have gained a significant number of polka recordings too, which as I have argued are an underappreciated yet vital part of the big band legacy. My biggest accomplishment though has come more recently as I have acquired the machine to record many of my LP's on CD, and that has also been quite a milestone. Of course, there is no way in Sheol that I would be able - or need to, for that matter! - copy all 900 of my LP's onto CD. For one thing, much of the material has been reissued in CD form already. But, about 10% or so of my LP collection probably will never make it to CD reissue, and those are the ones I have been working on. So far, I have 22 discs made, and there are currently 14 more planned, but I am going to pace myself - most of the recordings I will be doing on the weekends rather than during weekdays due to school and other responsibilities, and also it would get wearisome sitting there and doing those for an hour straight at a time sometimes during a day. Modern technology has made the process easier, I will grant that, but it is still up to the operator to pay attention to tracking sequences, etc., and that does require a lot of attention. But, fortunately this is not a project that is time-dependent; I own the machine now, and I can take the time to do good recordings without rushing and fussing. So, it will probably be an ongoing project.
I remember the very first record I got back in October of 1982 - it wasn't even a big band record, but was a Harry Belafonte recording Mom picked up for me at a local junk store called Fitzwater's in Rio, WV. As many know the story, I cut my teeth on big band recordings by listening to a guy who played them on WBT-AM radio out of Charlotte, NC, by the name of Henry Boggen. Henry had a show in those days that was on from 10 PM Sunday nights to 1 AM Monday mornings, and although he played a lot of big band material, he also played a lot of 1940's-1950's pop too (such as Tony Bennett, Rosemary Clooney, Doris Day, etc.). And, among those wax-stacks was the occasional Harry Belafonte record. Mom assumed that I was looking for that sort of thing, and therefore since I was in school the day she went shopping, she picked that up for me for a quarter. The album was not bad actually, although not one of my favorites, and today I have sort of outgrown that. But, its significance is that it was the first recording of what I perceived as my music that I got. The following month was actually when I got a lot of my first big band LP's (all of which I now have recorded on CD). I still remember those nights of listening to Henry's show with great fondness - especially during the summer when school was out, I would sit at the kitchen table with the radio on, drinking instant coffee and eating potato chips, while the cool night breeze blew in the open window of our mobile home we lived in at the time. Some nights Mom and I would play Yahtzee or cards while listening, or I would read a book, etc. A lot of times though I just listened to the show, and as I did so once I started collecting records I would count how many songs Henry played that I had on record, and that was just a fun little pasttime I did. Looking at my collection now, I see that I came a long way from the stuff Henry played, as about 60% of Henry's nightly program lineup is not even in my collection (nor is it anything I want either). Yet, for a poor kid growing up in small-town West Virginia with little else to do, it created some fond memories for me.
This is the first LP I ever got in my collection - totally unrelated to my more-developed musical preferences later, but still a milestone.
I miss a lot of things from those days when I was young too, as I am sure many of us do. It becomes more apparent as one sees the way the world changes around them too. Could it be maybe I am getting old? Who is to say - I mean, I am approaching my 43rd birthday here in just about 3 weeks or so, and my age shows more than it used to. For instance, if I painted my midriff yellow right now, it would look like I was wearing a floatation device! And, I marvel at how grey my hair has gotten too - I look at myself in the mirror now and wonder who that geezer is staring back at me, only to realize it is me! I also pee more (I get aggravated at how much time I spend in the bathroom - it's ridiculous!) and feel more tired and achy than I once did. Funny thing too - I used to be able to walk for long distances, eat a whole pizza by myself, and I had the metabolism of a garden shrew at one time. That too has changed. But, I am not depressed about it - I accept growing older as a fact of life, and intend to do it gracefully and enjoy the journey. The thankfulness I have now is that I am not younger - these kids today are in a world that is a mess compared to our generation. They don't know the simple pleasures many of us enjoyed at their age, and I feel like they are missing out. I grew up very poor - with a single mom and no income other than foodstamps and Dad's child support check every month, we didn't have much - but even in the midst of the necessity I had back then I still knew how to be creative with life. I developed a love for reading at a young age, got into this great music I just talked about, and spent a lot of time as a kid fishing, gathering stuff in the woods, and catching all manner of critters from land and water - and, it was fun! I also basically taught myself how to cook, I learned how to draw and do sketches, and in time I could converse in two other languages (German and Latin) before I graduated high school 23 years ago. Nowadays, these kids have all this gadgetry and don't do much outside their own bedrooms - the thought of catching a live frog for instance would be repulsive to them, and they'd feel sorry for the fish if you caught one due to these stupid new "environmental sensitivities" (soon, it will even be "politically incorrect" to fish - Lord have mercy upon us!). As for eating wild foods - ramps, wild garlic, poke greens, etc. - forget that too - if it isn't served at Starbuck's they probably won't eat it. For all the technological advances today's youth have, I still have to wonder if maybe something still is lacking. Kids are almost not allowed to be kids anymore - someone in one of my graduate-level classes mentioned recently - and a valid point, I might add - that many of the supposed ADHD diagnoses going around these days may just be simply kids being distracted by so much clutter in their lives - they text, they Google, they tweet, they spend all this time on MySpace and Facebook, and they have their ears crammed with Bluetooths, i-pod earpieces, etc. Not to mention the video games, etc. too. Technology is good, and it indeed can enhance one's quality of life, but only if it don't rob other aspects of life that also give quality - the hands-on and exploratory nature that a child has must be encouraged and developed, as this is where they grow. I mean, really - whatever happened to chemistry sets, Sea Monkeys, Venus Flytrap kits, and ant farms as constructive things for kids?? Not to mention erector sets, Licoln logs, and for those of us who grew up in a church-influenced environment, those plastic Noah's Ark sets? I miss all that stuff. Most kids won't even know what it is. And, good books too - authors like Robert Newton Peck, Beverly Cleary, and William Saroyan were characteristic of leisure reading in our generation, but most kids today wouldn't understand the worlds of those books. I could also mention Saturday morning cartoons - we grew up with those, but you don't even see them on anymore unless you have satellite TV and get a channel like Boomerang, on which you can still watch stuff like "The Smurfs." Heck, even Friday night sitcoms no longer exist! It is definitely a different world - again, am I just showing my age or what?
Speaking of reading material, just last week I got in the mail a copy of a good book I read an excerpt of back in 1980 in a Readers Digest magazine entitled Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without A Number, by Argentinian journalist Jacobo Timerman. I was reading this stuff at age 10, and it was really fascinating. Timerman was a Russian-born Jewish writer whose family emigrated to Argentina, and in the early 1970's he got into some hot water for criticizing the regime of Juan Peron, and was thrown in prison. The book chronicles his saga, and although a bit unpleasant to read (he goes into detail, for instance, about torture tactics his captors used, including stripping him naked, dousing him with water, and administering raw electric shock on his body) it is still enlightening. Although a religious atheist, Timerman does acknowledge that if it weren't for a godly rabbi and a priest aiding him on occasion, he may not have survived. Also throughout the book one gets the impression that anti-semitism was a factor in Timerman's imprisonment - the Peronist government did have some Nazi sympathies, and many Nazi war criminals found a welcome haven in Argentina following World War II, so this is not surprising. And, although Timerman is himself a self-professed atheist, it raises some questions for us as Christians, in particular those of us who likewise have Jewish roots - if we were in that same position, being persecuted for our faith, would we be able to perservere like Timerman did? Many Christians have suffered, and have even been martyred, in modern times in similar circumstances (people like Dietrich Boenhoffer, St. Maxmilian Kolbe, St. Edith Stein, and others come to mind here, as well as late Assyrian Patriarch Mar Benyamin Shimun, who was murdered in cold blood by the Kurdish criminal Simkoo during the World War I years). But, in this day and age, where "political correctness" and inclusivism seem to even define Christian churches, I fear that the same type of courage and character of these great people may be lacking - many seek to accomodate the oppressors and make them into "good guys" rather than standing on their own convictions and addressing evils in society. There are days, as a matter of fact, I often regret being here in this generation and wish I had been born in an earlier time - I know it is not realistic, and God has his plan for me being here "for such a time as this," but the limits of my humanity long for something far less crazy. I am sure maybe others feel that way too, despite eschatological hopes and optimistic determination to create change for the better. My best to those people, and in a sense I am one of them too, but at the rate our society is moving now, I wouldn't be expecting much that is earthshaking at this point.
So, that conversation took a rather dark turn, didn't it? I guess it is time to bring it back around a little. Now, what shall we discuss next? As mentioned in some previous articles, I am in graduate school now, and it is an experience. When talking about change, I note it at my alma mater, where I am also pursuing this graduate work. I value high academic quality, and my college has that. However, there are other changes on that campus in the past 16 years since I was there pursuing my undergraduate degree that to be honest are hard for me to swallow. Those are beyond the focus of this writing though as they deal with spiritual issues, but the change has not escaped me. Some things though remain constant. One of those that was a refreshing discovery is a little Laotian guy who for years has hung out on campus, and yes, he is still there! We all called him Sammy, although his real name was Thang-Kam SaiSi (I hope I spelled that right!) and he is practically a college mascot. But, we all loved Sammy - he's a great guy, although he's had a few rough patches in his life that I will not divulge here he told me about in confidence years ago, and my guess would be that 20 years from now he will still be hanging around campus. That is all I am going to say about him here, as I want to do a separate story about him later to acquaint you all with him better (some of my old classmates reading this already know him anyway). However, people like Sammy are a bright spot in our otherwise hectic lives, and it is a blessing to see he is still hanging out on campus.
I suppose it is time to conclude for now, but Lord willing I will write again soon. My best to all who read this, and may you have a blessed week.
