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Nothing explains this song quite like seeing James Taylor play it on Youtube. [link] It's a bit of an anthem from the time. The album Sweet Baby James was released in March of 1970, and the single a month or so later. Discussions about this song are complicated  by the passage of 40 years since its release. Mr Taylor still plays and sings the song, but he sure looks different.

I'd like to avoid spending a lot of time on the "meaning" of "Fire and Rain." Taylor has commented enough times that we know who Suzanne is, and what "flying machines in pieces on the ground" means. Suzanne was a friend who committed suicide, The Flying Machine was an old band that didn't work out, and fire and rain referred to electric shock therapy and the cold showers that followed. And if you ask me, it isn't important.

The song is a song about loss, about happiness that fled like the end of a day. And there's a bit of hope – "Won't you look down upon me, Jesus. You've got to help me make a stand." And the use of past tense to describe the struggles hints that life goes on after loss, one day at a time.

Part of the point of this post is to describe the kind of talent that James Taylor represented in the time between 1968 and 1970. He was one of the first acts signed by Apple Records. When the Beatles think your music is good, that's saying something. His first album, James Taylor, was advertised on billboards like this one [link]. Taylor was a skilled songwriter from the beginning, and he had a unique style playing acoustic guitar. James Taylor didn't invent the hammer-on and the slide, but he did expand the art form. His skills with guitar were broader than I suspected at first. When I heard the "Steamroller Blues" I was shocked at how fast he played.

Any discussion about "Fire and Rain" would be incomplete without talking about the people who have covered it. Cher. Rick Wakeman. Don't bother listening to the Ramsey Lewis version – it's just too hard to imagine a soul-searing pain of shock therapy and cold showers with a cute rumba beat.

Growing up, I liked the Blood Sweat & Tears cover – it was different enough from the original, and yet still had that stark feeling that I think the song calls for.

"Fire and Rain" was simply the advent of a long career for a great artist, a folk singer-songwriter who  brings a hope, an enthusiasm, a love of life, and a wonderful artistic gift to us mass-peoples.

Last week, I tripped over the late Waymon Tisdale's "Way Up." I liked the album and the song (both have the same name), and not long after I got it on iTunes, he passed away. I'm sad that there won't be more Waymon Tisdale music, but I'm glad for what we have. If you haven't heard of his music, but his name sounds familiar, you might be a basketball fan.

Waymon Tisdale played in the NBA for 12 seasons, amassing 12,000 points and 5,000 rebounds with Indiana, Sacramento, and Phoenix. But when his playing time in the NBA ended, his playing time as a smooth jazz bassist did not. Read the rest of this entry »

This song is by John Lennon, and was released in 1971. It's been covered by many people. It's been quoted in an opinion by the US Supreme Court. It's been used to imagine that "the world will live as one" by Bill Clinton on Shimon Peres 80th birthday.

It's not uncommon for me to buy several covers of a song. In the case of this song, I have the John Lennon version, and it's quite good. I also have covers by David Osborne, Bruce Hornsby, the cast of Glee, and even David Archuleta's version from American Idol.

But my favorite version is Gonzalo Rubalcaba's cover for KCRW, found on Vol 3 of "Rare on Air."

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It's not a re-launch. That would imply that the blog was ongoing, already; and that I was about to do something really organized in the near future. Neither is the case.

But I was kind of looking for a new project, and I happened across a couple of observations that gave me an idea. First, I was seeing the beginning of the movie "Julie & Julia." The poor girl had just been flogged in the papers by her ex-friend, and was casting about for something to do. She decided to start a blog about the recipes of Julia Child – 500 recipes in 365 days. And since she had passion for the project, she threw herself into it without looking beyond the moment, so to speak.

The second one was a facebook status posted by my friend Dayna Steele. I knew her as a college student, but later she became a fixture in the Houston radio scene. I realized that she spent a large part of her life connecting people to music.

That's when I chose this new direction for this blog. I want to do two things.

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There are something like 11 million illegal aliens living in the US. The country is full of people with lots of opinions about what to do. And this week, the Federal government filed suit against the state of Arizona over a law related to the topic.

I'm understating the gravity of the issue. People on both sides of this issue are angry. It's difficult to describe the Arizona law without accidentally editorializing – using "value words" that reflect a bias about whether the law is good or bad. I don't intend to describe the specific law or the reaction to it, around the nation and the world – there is plenty of that information elsewhere. Instead, I want to suggest that this problem exists today because we failed in previous attempts to address it. Instead of the hysterical perspective I see everywhere, I want to take a historical perspective.

There are three thoughts that we might entertain today.

• One is about the nature of immigration reform – what has not worked, what has worked, what might work …. how we might go about constructively addressing the issue.
• One is about the history of lingering problems in the US, and what we might learn from them. I'm thinking about fights that lasted centuries, such as slavery, banking, and dealing with the indigenous population. And immigration.
• One is about the long view. On so many issues today, there is a winner and a loser. And if there is ever a decision on a divisive issue, after which we will be united, then the winners and the losers have to live together. For a long time. Living together in a country is often approached as if it were a zero-sum game – that in order for one group to win, another must lose. That's not the only way to play the game.

It won't come as a surprise to anyone who knows me: I'm going to do this backward.

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Pet peeve. People who don't put the carts neatly in the cart corral. You push it a mile around the store, a quarter mile out to your car – and it's full of stuff the whole time. Then, when it's empty, and presumably lighter and of less resistance to the wind, you can't push it over to the cart corral?

When you take a cart, you are implicitly agreeing to be responsible with it, and not to leave it where it presents a hazard to other shoppers. When you fail to put it away, you are in breach of that contract.

Shopping carts left near the cart corral

As you can see above (click on the photo to embiggen, as John C Dvorak says), at least four people have shoved their carts into the snowbank that's right next to the corral. It's close, but no cigar. Close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and public toilet seats. A miss is as good as a mile.

This is nothing short of sloth. Selfishness. Laziness.

Stop it.

Resolve, right now, to never again cut a corner while putting the cart back. You are committing one of the 7 deadly sins here.

If you find yourself absolutely unable to replace the cart, after your best effort, just ask me for help. I'm very good at putting them back. I'm kind of strong. I can push the whole row together tighter. I've practiced and I can often roll a cart into the back of the last cart in the corral from a distance of 50 feet. It's great sport, and if a cart sails wide on me, I just laugh at it while I chase it and put it back like it goes.

And if you see someone else leaving the cart in the wrong place, perhaps someone who doesn't read this blog and doesn't know better, don't fuss at them. Just offer to take the cart since you're on your way into the store and will a) need a cart anyway; and b) walk past about 4 good places to put a cart. Leave judgement to god and Pat Robertson, they've got the energy for it.

If, however, you are leaving when you see a cart sloth, and don't need to go into the store again, feel free to honk at them and point at the corral. Be careful not to text while you do this.

This splice was degrading the signal for the internet.

Not long ago, I started to have trouble with internet pages here at my home office. In the browser, I'd get a message saying that the page wasn't found. Two or three frustrating refreshes later, I'd have a page that should have been up in a couple of seconds. It was a bit of a hassle for me, and Red was so upset she couldn't get anything done.

So I called Comcast and told them about the problem. They said that the signal to noise ratio for me and my neighbors was yellow, not green, nor red. He had heard of a case where a customer put a nail in the wall and unknowingly touched the cable, and degrading the signal quality. They scheduled a serviceman to investigate. The customer service rep also told me that they had upgraded the speed of the signals about the same time that I started to drop pages.

The day came when the serviceman arrived. He took one look at my modem and said that they were changing those out. There had been reports that they didn't do well with the speed upgrade. I thought, "Ha! They broke my internet by improving it!"

Then the serviceman went out into the yard. A few minutes later he came back with the tiny assembly pictured above. It's a "coaxial cable splice." Years ago, some technician connected two pieces of coax cable with it. I'm sure it was the proper procedure at the time. It's a plastic sleeve with two crimped metal collars at each end. The problem, which can be seen at the bottom of the plastic part, is a slim metal strip that runs the length of the splice. It picks up radio noise, like an antenna.

After replacing the splice with whatever they use now, the technician said that my neighbors and I have "green" signal to noise now. About 45 minutes after the guy arrived, I had great signal, a new modem, and no problems bouncing around the web.