the frig blig

For those wondering how my guitar playing is going after six months of lessons. Clearly there’s plenty of room for improvement. I’m still learning pieces in the key of C and (relative) a but getting much pleasure from it.

POGO reported four days ago that a paragraph titled ‘Protect Whistleblowers’ has been removed from the White House website’s ethics section. In fact, a search of the site now returns zero hits for ‘whistleblower’. Seems rather counter to the spirit that prompted the new president’s repeal of a 2001 executive order granting former presidents and vice presidents the ability to keep official documents secret past the 12 years allowed by law.

Maybe O is sayin, you can’t hide once you leave the presidential office, but no snitches tolerated while you’re holding that office?

Last night I had the good fortune to catch the Lee Redfield Quartet at Lucid, a small jazz bar on the edge of the U district. When they cranked, they cranked, and when they wailed, they wailed. They played lots of traditional jazz standards, a few originals, and one Led Zeppelin tune.

It’s a treat to see this band live and up close. Each musician has chops and they create some tasty arrangements, although some of the old film and tv lines are a little cheesy.

(Disclaimer: I’m friends with two of the band members.)

A couple of days ago NPR broadcast an interview with former federal judge and attorney general Griffin Bell, recorded shortly after learning that he only had a few months left to live. Bell said he had prepared a four-line epitaph for his tombstone: “Citizen-Soldier, Yadda, Yadda, Attorney General”.

This inspired me to draft my own four-line stone epitaph (is this a genre?), to wit:

Son
Husband
Musician
Jerk

While visiting my old hometown I paid a visit to the shrine of the old duplex where I had lived for ten or more years…only to find it completely and utterly missing. As my state of flabbergastedness rubbed against my memories of the prior evening when I was reading poems in TS’s house, I went directly to a nearby coffeehouse and wrote the following poem:

gone