Interesting take on Amsterdam. I try to keep in touch now that my relatives are getting older.
I like revisiting this because it shows up in my dreams. The only place I really have been
able to call the home of my family. Omaha, yes, but Amsterdam is where all the points
converge for us. It was pretty well calcified when I saw my whole family and their tombstones
lined up in the cemetery, one by one...

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.zillowblog.com/zillow_blog/images/sanfordcarpet.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.zillowblog.com/my-hometown-amsterdam-ny/2006/07/&usg=__YLQmbt4U8cdRuNthlVo9E8e_lMM=&h=320&w=505&sz=73&hl=en&start=1&um=1&tbnid=NVOg3SFJbZ_YWM:&tbnh=82&tbnw=130&prev=/images%3Fq%3Damsterdam%2Bny%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN

Someone brought up a point about the new Wal-MArt which opened up recently, which Brooke and I decided to go shopping at this weekend. The location is up on the hill on 72nd Street where the Ranch Bowl used to be. Of course, that's my frame of reference because the fact of the Ranch Bowl is as old as my any of my memories of Omaha. Then Angie makes a comment, God, I just don't know because we used to do so many things at the Ranch Bowl and now it's a Wal-Mart! Which was a point I hadn't even connected at all, but God, amazingly true...then immediately, I got to thinking about the various shows I was able to see at the Bowl... one hell of a bruiser of a place to see a gig...
It started back in 1991 with Pearl Jam for me. My first real concert ever. My parents let me go out on a Thursday night, school next day for the first time ever. And I had enough to go see this show. Went with Sigler in his parents' grocery getter to see Eddie Vedder and the boys. Tribe After Tribe opened. 311, a few times. Mudhoney, Frank Black, Mike Doughty, Blue October, Galactic, Koko Taylor, Clutch, Shannon Curfman, James McMurtry, Bob Mould, and of course, I can't remember any others for some odd reason... when a band came through there, without fail, the drumbeats would ripple through you and the guitar would wail through the air. Total bruiser bar with a hard concrete floor and chain link separating the bar from the main floor. I know it was during a couple of the 311 shows where the crowd was so thick, everybody so excited and moshing around I also got knocked over and stomped completely. You had to fight the tide through that, because it would skin you alive if you succumbed to it. Tickets to the Bowl were never more than 20 or 25 bucks and I guess that's maybe due to the hike in cost for tickets or something like that. Toward the end, when I saw Koko Taylor in what must have been 2001, they set up tables on the floor and put drapes over them, lit candles. That particular show was probably one of my first blues shows (not many since actually) where it was all class and the rest was blues. Totally different atmosphere than anything I could have hoped for. The back story of how I got in there, involving me picking up the guitarist and drummer from the airport, still kind of blows my mind.
I suppose a major reason why I can't remember a lot of shows was because the ones I mentioned already were the big ones. The Bowl was legendary for their local shows and I couldn't count how many bands I saw there. Crappy, thrashy, junky bands. Bands that so far as anyone knows went nowhere. But that was the beauty of the place... I know my friend Garrity said he saw Widespread Panic there a while back in its history and the show got called because neighbors had filed a complaint for the noise. Something like that was said to have happened for Bob Weir's Ratdog. I thought that was the point of having music in bars and not outside. Even so, the place would get packed so tight that it was like a sweat lodge in there. During the winter, the windows would fog up on the outside, and then people would be ducking outside real quick to have a smoke, freeze near death, then come back in and pick it up again.
The thing you could never truly forget was that there WAS in fact a bowling alley. My sister and her friends used to play there on weekends, for lack of anything better to do. It was a real deal bowling alley and rock joint. You could play volleyball on a team during the summer if that was your thing. Now it's a f*&%in Wal-Mart for all that's worth. In its last days, the place looked delapidated, its spirit crushed.

Accents. I hear them all day as anybody who plays on the phone all the day will... but I'm trying to tune the ear to that very thing... Texas will be difficult but they're generally a dead

Today I'm grateful for

Democracy
Barack Obama

Don't get me wrong. Looking back, I might have taken John McCain. Joe & Kari & I stood downstairs at the 48th St and shared our own visions. Mostly Joe and Kari, they're both very heated in their expressions of passion. Joe was saying how John McCain was actually a good man, a good politician who might have seen his better days pass him. He still has that special spark within him to try to make his country a btter place. But maybe his methods and his focus has wandered a little bit. It would be hard for him to keep up with it all. We needed someone younger, with the vitality needed to man up for the job every day for 365 x 4. Palin was a nail in his political coffin. Crazy bee-zo that she is. I guess now we're finding out just how crazy she really is. Just my opinion from what I'm being given. McCain might not have made it for years not because he was 72. There's Viagara for 72, but just out of the sheer volume of mess that he would have had to sludge through. That Obama will have to sludge through, God bless him. As Willard said in Apocalyse Now, "the shit piled up so fast here you needed wings to stay above it. " And that's the best you can say right now to this man, God bless him. I think this guy is a leader, a politican of a different kind. Sure, a politician but a guy who will try to help this country reclaim its true feathers. A true leader leads from his gut. That's the kind of guy I think we gave ourselves now. He'll make mistakes, sure, but he'll also try to make good. You could see it on the night of the 4th. Standing triumpant, arm raised high with a fist. This guy's here to roll up his sleeves and try to get to work. He got the Congress to do it to. He is starting to look like a leader, like he did in '04 at the Democratic Convention- a man on fire. I thought it was possible back then when I heard him speak. I sit here now, four years later, amazed. A meteoric rise. He was gone a couple years and then he was back with a vengenance. People have hope now. Never mind that "a little hope is a dangerous thing" like Red said in Shawshank. We don't want to think about that now. We're hoping we never have to look back.
And one thing is true, as Kari was saying now there's a crack in the foundation, and no matter what happens, they won't be able to fill that crack enough. It's too late for that. The door is opened. I reflected upon my recent education about Native Americans, wondering if a tribesman would ever make it all the way to the top like that. If the country will ever completely turn around that way, see land return to their lawful owners. Anybody with any sense would say hopefully it's not in my lifetime. The hell to be paid. Still, this is the beginning, this where democracy will spring forth, if it ever completely does. The way Obama ran his campaign from start to finish was the way it needed to be done. The way it gets done in the world of the forefathers. I could hear some saying that Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, all of them would likely be wiggling in their graves a little bit. Not Lincoln I imagine. No old Abe probably cracked a little bit of a smile from beyond the pale. They've been talking about King, Kennedy, Bobby and John, Malcolm, George Washington Carver, WEB Dubois. Frederick Douglass. You can't help but feel that warm feeling come over you if you think about it, how far back the legacy goes. The bricklayers for hope. The beginning of a new day.
The economy will be one thing. Iraq, Iran another. Foreign policy. I say to hell with foreign policy right now. Screw it. Economy is job number one. You get this baby flying again and those cats will be filing for green cards, they'll want to come over here, not wait for us to go over there. That'll be a whole new problem. This talk of working toward more efficient forms of energy, creating new jobs with a new enterprise all together is particularly interesting. The idea of getting scientists and physicists, engineers, architects together and make the approach toward developing new sources of energy as industry. It seems obvious now that the machine has been busy just grinding the gears, trying to make everyone happy by just whitewashing everything. What a bunch of clowns. What a bunch of infiltrators, intruders and magicians. Giving us the old bait and switch now for eight years. They watch us get bombed four times in one day, and then spent the next seven years tap-dancing so we would forget. What a bunch of jackasses.

Today I am grateful for:

sleep and naps or both
sense of humor
redemption
warm blankets
dogs
hugs, holding hands w/ someone you care about
food - spiritual food and leftovers
my cubicle which I've finally decorated
my family
college football on Saturday (no major allegiance)
the end of the World Series (looking toward next year)
the last remaining warm days of autumn
haircuts (badly needed ones)
fruit (healthy produce)
songs that are beautiful but don't get stuck in my head
the talking heads
the grateful dead (I'm grateful for the... get it?)

Grateful that slowly I can bounce back a little bit better from harder realities. But it's like this guy told us last night, trying to kick the drink again, "I just don't bounce back like I used to." And no doubt he doesn't. What the good doctor Evans once referred to as "resilience," why some of us are weak and others tend to have more visible fortitude. Even so, it seems important to just keep on with whatever one has in front of them.

I don't know why you thought I needed to hide

the night I let my father slip into the night

it was cold and rainy and I just wanted to cry

and there you stood, waiting by the bedside

waiting for the big demise, you knew it was coming

just a matter of how it all came out

Today I am grateful for:

-the clear, crisp coolness of the morning, reminiscent of autumn
-leaves on the linoleum, they make me want to clean, but I walked
into a building yesterday and it looked like they were part of the decor
-poems, with my feet kicked up on the ottoman
-curling up on the couch with a comfy blanket
-chinese food, with Brooke, waiting for the crab rangoon at the end
-the importance of pictures on the wall, throughout the day
-cranberry juice in the morning
-knowing I miss being in the right bed when the alarm goes off
-driving on tires that I feel safe with, when other people's tires spin on the wet pavement
-the alkaline smell of the wet pavement
-the measure of standing still, of staying the course (even if a Bush first said it)

Today I'm grateful for:

-laying on the bed and reading poetry
-freedom to not run anymore, standing still, sitting still
-having the chance to see Mississippi in the morning
-Halloween candy
-fog machines
-prayer chains
-silences for a long time, quiet

The older I get, the more I listen to people who don't have much to say.


Today I am grateful for-

-my father, plain & simple, that I have a relationship where I can open up to him

-that I can admit my faults to people who love me, and they still love me

-that this experience teaches me greater that unconditional love is possible

-that people close to me still try to teache me lessons

-for ham sandwiches waiting for me in the fridge

-redemption and the promise of resilience

-humor, that anything can seem funny after a vail of tears

-the right to vote

- the right to shrug off my heavy coats.



The heavy coat. Bearing down on yourself, don't know why I ever think that's going to be beneficial, maybe on a watch for the rudiments of pride. Can you really ever smash pride?

There's this other sense that you want to be somebody, stand up, be counted, have people

recognize your true worth. That, out in the real world, when your glad-handing your way through the day, it will amount to a steady progess. Trusting the process. That it is a process even if it just feels like a continuum.



After the weekend, with my father here for such a short period of time, I reflected on the several pictures that he showed me and Brooke before we ate dinner. I asked him at one point, seems like you have had occasion to see some pretty heavy things from other countries, other histories. Not in so many words, mind you, but that was the gist. He could tell about the different places of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Warsaw, and their direct ties to past history, and let's say, recent times. He showed me St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg, which had been ripped down one side by shrapnel by German bombs in World War II. Entire buildings which echo the haunting shadows of the past. The train lines which go south in one direction, or west, or else north, strecthing all the way to Siberia where prioners were taken for the gulags... We do and do not possess these kinds of tokens of a dark past. Only we do not recognize them as such always, we are not always to carry them with us. Not the daily reminders that the country we are continuing to become and the country we are really still very close to one another. Not like there. Not the reminder of sixty to a hundred years of history stacked on top of us... though I'm not so naive of that as to think of what happened South of here, or through the northeast, the midwest for the people who were here long before us. Enough of that soapbox.



Keeping it simple. My father mentioned that at my grandmother's funeral. How she managed to do that on many occasions, throughout the life that she knew of her. So it comes back to trying not to complicate things... give oneself the chance to settle down a little bit, settle down and keep it simple. But keeping it simple has a great deal to staying true to yourself again. Knowing where your place is in the world. I read an article about how to build resilience- which I've heard defined as "the ability to bounce back." That life gives you the punches sometimes and it's all how you beat it. Not look at it in terms of how it beats you down, how much its wearing on you. There's the Time that weighs you down, but then there's also keeping up with time, staying in the present moment. Knowing that this moment is right now/ not forever. It can be changed in the second moment if that is what is required.



I know I take things too seriously sometimes, maybe more than most people. But I don't know how it is for most other people. I just don't know what it's like for a tremendous amount of people. Onlya precious few. But those words keep coming back to my lips it seems, "life is short... life is short" and conversely, time flies. And forever may be a long time to contemplate, so it should and can be taken only one day at a time. At least for folks like me...

Gratitude... be grateful for afternoon naps, morning coffee, Brooke singing while she gets ready for work in the morning... memory, "I know something about you that you don't know," it had always been a mystery, but it was something I could guess, something I could look at it. I need to be reminded that I deserve to give myself a chance, a chance to really work something through to its completion, to get lost in the process for awhile, to stand with the winds of time and be swept

Just spent a few minutes viewing a google search on Hubble space telescope images for various parts of the galaxy. If you can say that the galaxy is the largest term that you can use. It seems, instaed, that what must be larger would be the universe... since you have to think of it in terms of Frank Zappa's notion that it is all one note... all one big loud sound in the echoing, burgeoing universe. And maybe that's just what I came away with today as I viewed the Christ-C nebula or even the Pleiades, hard, white, crisp stars -some brighter than others. But I often ask myself, as must the astronomers, viewing these entities from light years, literally hundreds upon thousands of light years away, where and how far and what must exist in that space? Why did we wind up here amid these galaxies of seeming lifelessness. It's not so much an extraterrestrial thing... but the billions of years which must have had to occur before the inevitability of human life began to stir in the marshes and the reeds of this planet. And then there's us, adapting making ourselves more in tune with being able to function in this world, with all its hazards, all its challenges, sometimes we make terrible errors which seem costly beyond our understanding. Other times, we simply hurt other people, seemingly without reason, but mostly because we are in conflict with someone and cannot bear a something, basically things aren't running our way. So we go through this whole song and dance with another human being, all the while forgetting that there are stars which may or may not have already burned out, whose light still reaches, whose light protrudes through the fabric of the universe. That we are not stars in the least, our light is quite comparatively short to the rest of the existant plain. But it is still a light, and greater light we seldom see, though we forget that that very thing is a light of sorts. So there are those stars and perhaps they are reminders of the formula, the greater design that seems to permeate all things. The Crab Nebula, the Horsehead Nebula, all reflectant of other entities we find in our world. But it makes us feel small, insignificant on the one hand while on the other, it seems there is no limit to the power of a creator of such wild and terrific things. That that power must weild and have such great force for its creation, that it must have limitless intentions for a race like ours.

The hawk is hungry & other stories / D'Arcy McNickle ; edited by Birgit Hans

Third Floor

PS3525.A2844 H38 1992

They came here first : the epic of the American Indian / by D'Arcy McNickle
Third Floor
E58 .M18

"Not all music is meant to be beautiful." -Sam Riley in Control.

Quite the opposite actually, sometimes music, poetry, art is meant to convey the deepr, darker sides of human existence. To explore fear, paranoia, neurosis in an effort to express isolation, alienation, self-deprecation and why? Is it to serve as some selfish, burrowing need within a person to root out all the lingering traces of innate evil which so many philosophers and later, psychologists, exist within each and every person. But, to an extent, this sentiment would depend chiefly on the artist or the prime mover of the work. They may have their own particular intentions for bearing their soul to the solitude, at least temporary solitude of the page. But even so, there must be some sense of desparation that the author would feel toward warning the rest of humanity of the same dangers with which their soul has been affected. Think of The Plague by Camus which on one level, the surface level, deals with the plague and ensuing events of quarantine in the small town of Oran, Morrocco. Naturally, the events and occurrence make great press, as they still do in our times. Indeed, whether through truth of fiction, we could find this story rather entertaining in the same way that a horror novel or true crime writings would be. But we gain so much else from a novel like this one when reading between the lines, working the analysis and uncovering harrowing truths about the human condition.

the crow's feet follow you morning

after morning, you portray as being younger

still to those who seem to be around you,

but they're often party favors, with no room

for weak types, no room for angels,

but instead, the time to bolster needs has arisen,

when autumn sets in, the retaining wall flattened,

you hover beneath the crabapple tree looking

for a bite, the tart pulp smeared on your lips.

Rough Draft...

Standing by the wreck of the Missouri,
she and I were prehistoric, gazing upon the flight of birds,
they whorled up in patterns, let loose their wings,
and fell upon air pockets above the water,
the catfish flopped up on the rocks above the banks,
their fat bellies pulling them back down into the muddy deeps,
the otters on the far banks, burrowed farther into earth,
the autumn breezes beginning to send their signal,
the leadening weight of the season an echo to all passing creatures.

We dreamed for a moment of a life that never was,
but could have been, but might never be, unless we made it so,
the waters, untouched now by clipper, or man, and buoyant,
a tableau, millions of brushstrokes, thousands of thoughts to the wind.
Alone, the waters would pass as they always have, the southbound
current steady at five knots if there were a clock to measure it.
But with us, the river harkened itself, bearing down upon us
in the same way heaven can always be planted, here, now, now.

And in the hours that followed, the silence of that lilting river,
its slow plod, as we drive home in that same silence of which we shared,
fell into our rhythms for just awhile, in the quiet chir of the crickets
somwhere on shore, somewhere in the weeds, the grasshoppers
leaping around cornstalks, the long cut of the skyline, thick beds
of clouds, bordered by the dying sunlight, licking the heavens
a dull gold, a deepening sleeve of orange, the end of all wars,
that now would be the peace that we had promised each other,
that nothing need be said, in this prehistory, by the wreck of the Missouri.

http://www.geeksquad.com/tools/detail.aspx?id=339- Geek Squad Q&A page

I had a similar issue as well. I looked all over the net reading through all these forums and posts and called tech support to no avail. No matter how many times i changes my setting and reset stuff on both dekstop and laptop nothing worked. Finally, someone had an idea that worked like magic and was very simple! The problem was not with the computers, hardware, or the ip settings... the problem was actually with the linksys software. I know this sounds crazy, but what i was told to do was: uninstall the software, reboot, let your computer automatically detect the new hardware, the install wizard will pop upand ask you if you have the linksys cd, pop the cd into your laptop and only use it to install the drivers. just reboot again and you should be good to go! hope this helps...

http://192.168.100.1/-- cable modem's status page

Click on the Start button >>> go to RUN>> type in "services.msc" >>

click on OK- On the Services Local page double click on theoption "Wireless Zero configuration"- Here the Startup Type shouldbe "Automatic"

- Click on the "Start" button and "Apply" the settingsand OK.
Deleting Preferred Network Click on the Start button >>> Settings >>> Control Panel >>>NetworkConnections >>Here right click on the "Wireless Network Connection"icon and select Properties-

Click on the "Wireless Network" tab- Make sure that ""Use windows to configure my wireless network settings"" is checked- In the "Preferred Networks" box select each network name and click on "Remove" to make it empty- Click on OK.

**Click on the "Advanced" button(below the Preferred Networks) and makesure "Access point(infrastructure) networks only" is selected- Andalsomake sure that "Automatically connect to non-preferred networks"shouldbe unchecked >> click on "Close" and click on OK on main propertieswindow.

Connecting to Wireless Network (WLAN)

Click on the Start button >>> Control Panel >>> Network Connections-Right click on the "Wireless Network Connection" icon and select "ViewAvailable Wireless Networks"- If you see your wireless network in thelist, highlight it by 'single' clicking on it-

Now click onthe 'Connect' button below- If your wireless network is secured, it would ask you to provide the network key- Provide the wireless network key and confirm it again in the confirmation box andclick "Connect" & you should be able to go Online Wirelessly!!!

I've been wanting to go back to the priests lately. Open the spring action door, walk into the cloister, cross myself and kneel down on the long wood pew. I remember sometimes when you went face-to-face, which I often did, it felt awkward to go behind the screen, talking to a wall, thwen on the other side you'd have a proverbial sponge. Unless I confessed murdering someone, or worse. Then, they'd have a conscientious duty to either turn me in or convince me to turn myself in. And that could get dangerous. Muddy. But when you walk into that place, it can be suffocating. I used to think that was an entirely internal experience. Knowing that you were about to cough up your worst attributes, the things you'd done. How could you breathe? Like your body was going into that shock mode, like you were about to hyperventilate. But that wasn't it at all. You could say what you wanted. Lie if you felt you had to need to. But always and every time, God knew the truth. God knew what was in your heart. Just about every preist I ever came into contact with, whether liberal or conservative in his religious leanings, would tell you the same thing--- delight in the truth, for it will set you free. And depending how you want to respond to that statement on any given day, either the light that shines upon you is quite white or else it fades to dull grey.

The truth and the guilt was what sucked the air out of that room. How a priest could stand to cover himself in cloaks and stay in that room, not knowing how many people would come through there, not knowing what personal burdens would be laid upon them-- unfathomable. How you could muster up the courage to not sit in judgement for so many judgements which had been rolled out that way. If you were a priest. But I received sanctimony for everything that had come from my lips before. It's like the quiet stillness of a cold freezing room with so many spirits, so many demons, and there you are with all your black vows. Your great little deaths.

I am not, as she says, trying to trick myself into imagining

or fancying us together--- there is no trick in that:

either she is running parallel to me, or one of us

is lagging behind, out of spite, out of apathy, out of range,

ignoring the lingering within earshot, self-deafened,

imposed upon, or feeling bereft, afloat on a raft in a Martian sea.



Sometimes I try to trick the bogeymen, the white hooded

figures which lie somewhere in my occipital lobe, strangers

to flight, estranged by sleights of hands, bedeviled by mists,

or Bidwell's ghost, but with me as the spinner of a wheel,

looking out at the world, judging, reshaping, discarding

and ignoring the design, my hands shifting back & forth.



Often times, the bogeymen are like Stygian boatmen,

they stop to carry you through the darkness, sometimes quietly,

respectfully, and other times, speaking to you in low tones,

whispering the madness, in sheer, cold sentences, like steel staples.

But I've tried to look instead to my reflection, where the cold

black waters meet my face, knowing it as a mirage.



The workings of love, the love that acts, the kind you can kick

across the floor, wrestle with, stumble over on the dance floor---

force you forward, or they grind you down to a white-flag surrender.

Creating faith from uncertainty or despiar from doubt,

even so the person who shudders in its wake ultimately has

the upper hand, that no matter what the cost or how deep the scars,

there is still golden grace in the palm of the hand, once it is wished.



Sometimes love is knowing that you don't need to talk about it anymore.
To move on with the business of trying to love again.

List of things I need:

Safety or the feeling of safety, like people aren't out to screw with me, especially in the home,

esepecially with people I am trying to trust

This kind of runs chills down my spine. This poet was gifted with vision to say the least... he seems to be possessed of loneliness. I'm not sure why the lonely-hearted poets have always spoken to me so loudly. Maybe it's the same sense of being lonely in a world full of people you are so sure are unlike you, despite that delusion, despite how little that takes into account. Or maybe I just like some of the images here, the ideas. Glen Uig
by Richard Hugo
Believe in this couple this day who come to picnic in the Faery Glen. They pay rain no matter, or wind. They spread their picnic under a gale-stunted rowan. Believe they grew tired of giants and heroes and know they believe in wise tiny creatures who live under the rocks. Believe these odd mounds, the geologic joke played by those wise tiny creatures far from the world's pitiful demands: make money, stay sane. Believe the couple, by now soaked to the skin, sing their day as if dry, as if sheltered inside Castle Ewen. Be glad Castle Ewen's only a rock that looks like a castle. Be glad for no real king. These wise tiny creatures, you'd better believe, have lived through it all: the Viking occupation, clan torturing clan, the Clearances, the World War II bomber gone down, a fiery boom on Beinn Edra. They saw it from here. They heard the sobs of last century's crofters trail off below where every day the Conon sets out determined for Uig. They remember the Viking who wandered off course, under the hazelnut tree hating aloud all he'd done. Some days dance in the bracken. Some days go out wide and warm on bad roads to collect the dispossessed and offer them homes. Some days celebrate addicts sweet in their dreams and hope to share with them a personal spectrum. The loch here's only a pond, the monster is in it small as a wren. Believe the couple who have finished their picnic and make wet love in the grass, the tiny wise creatures cheering them on. Believe in milestones, the day you left home forever and the cold open way a world wouldn't let you come in. Believe you and I are that couple. Believe you and I sing tiny and wise and could if we had to eat stone and go on.

Perscription.

Some yoga. Exercise. Ride a bike. Make it to the YMCA.

Eat healthier. Eat a salad instead of a cookie.

I don't need to eat every cookie I see. Blood sugar.

Cool down. Be cool. Like Troy said, "You're alright