bug goes crunch: December 2005

bug goes crunch

Thursday, December 29, 2005

and the evening standard

no whining about headwinds today (not until i get home, that is); i was blown here forthwith. evil overcast and dark it is, too. for all i know there could be a total eclipse of the sun happening RIGHT NOW and i wouldn't be able to tell. no pictures, sorry; the older boy has been taking the camera on his forays through the u-m central campus steam tunnels, and while he brings it back intact (good fellow) he puts it somewhere in the house and i can't find it in the morning. in words, then: no more snow, just water on the bench, and the remains of the deer carcass have been removed. removed! now who on earth would do such a thing? unless the coyote has a den somewhere, and wished to gnaw on the bones in private for the next month (which is highly unlikely), this has to be the work of men. men and deer certainly have a bizarre and complicated relationship here in michigan, and elsewhere to a certain extent. i ought not to say anything more, lest i draw the wrath of the deer "managers" (actually that would be okay - bring it on!). but i could leave y'all with a picture.

what i should do is post some pictures of the steam tunnels.

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Friday, December 23, 2005

he had his own tankard


these headwinds get more tiring every day. i just have to ride more; there have been too many errands and back-and-forths lately, driving the car for the practicality of it. at least i get to listen to music.

no we are having a little thaw, and some spotty rain along with the gloom. when did the sun last shine? it may have been monday. i had to laugh at the nws forecast last night - "increasing cloudiness". it's 100% overcast already, boys. maybe they mean the clouds are going to get taller. in any event, the sun stopped for a moment on wednesday, and now the days will get longer. but i am ready to settle in for a few days off of work, and a cozy christmas with the cicadashells, and a roast beef.

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Wednesday, December 21, 2005

like having another hand


you know, jungle fever is probably not spike lee's best-remembered picture, but that scene where they're riding their bikes in the park early in the morning, and on the soundtrack comes john coltrane's "mr. knight", is something no other director would ever give you. that, and harold vick's soprano saxophone playing in she's gotta have it are, as they say, worth the price of admission.

the track that has really beguiled me for nearly thirty years is "mr. day", as it happens. 'trane's playing is the liturgy, every note of it. but really the whole quartet has this rhythmic urgency that is just unstoppable; it swings as hard as anything ever recorded. what elvin jones does with his hi-hat alone could be studied for hours and hours. and mccoy tyner's playing...okay, get up and go to your nearest piano (an electronic keyboard would do in a pinch) and play these voicings (left to right is lowest to highest):

C#-F#-A#-B-E-G# then

B-E-G#-C#-F#-A#

i mean what the fuck. academically, you have this interesting contrary motion of two major triads in second inversion, okay. but that sound! whaaa?!? this is what excites me.

over the years i have often wondered what non-musicians really hear in music. i guess what i really mean by "non-musicians" is "persons who don't have an analytical understanding of music". this is by no means a question as to the authenticity of anyone's music appreciation; the basic human reaction is at once visceral and cerebral, with no analysis required. it's just that for me, the analytical understanding of what i'm hearing is nearly always there, right alongside the gut reaction. i can't separate the two, nor do i wish to. so i wonder what replaces that in other listeners. it seems that for me, music's evocative power is strengthened and broadened by my understanding; there are certain chord progressions and harmonic structures that make me cry whenever and wherever i hear them, and i know what they are, and i can hear them coming, and they still get me every time. i can sit at a piano or pick up a guitar and bring them on at will. how does this work for other persons?

similarly, i wonder what non-saxophonists hear when they listen to john coltrane (to pick a saxophonist totally at random). me, i can feel every note in my teeth and face and throat and chest. it's warm and dry and completely exhilarating, bordering on the painful even (beginning around 1965, that is). of course, i can feel wayne shorter and archie shepp and dexter gordon and sonny rollins and wardell grey too, and it's those different feelings that make it all so fascinating. so how do you get fascinated when you can't feel these things? again, i don't doubt the fascination exists, and is genuine and compelling. i just wonder, that's all.

Thursday, December 15, 2005

and busses might skid on black ice


such a wintry mix. i don't usually ride the bicycle on thursdays, and i kind of appreciate not having to deal with the glop. i am also coming down with a sort of cold, and may in fact stay home tomorrow if i feel crappy enough.

there seems to be a lot of bluster in the news media about wishing "happy holidays" instead of "merry christmas". i'm not certain how the lines are being drawn; nobody seems to like it, but for different reasons.

myself, i would prefer for merchandisers not to wish me a merry christmas. there is certainly nothing christian about their expectations of my spending habits this time of year (or any time, for that matter; to be sure, however, their expectations are greatly heightened during this season). presuming that i am christian is not so much offensive as it is rude, or stupid; they would be no less presumptuous just because they happened, by chance, to be correct. some folks argue that there is a secular tradition of celebrating christmas in this country, but those persons should consider why it may be that there is not a corallary secular tradition of celebrating, for example, ramadan. or even rosh hashanah. christmas was made a federal holiday during the 19th century, not a time when the u.s. was exactly known the world over for its sensitivity to minorities. i see it as yet another example of how christians get a free pass in what is supposed to be a secular society. christians of all people should know it is what’s in your heart that matters, and that validation by wal-mart or the white house is unnecessary.

for our part, in our home we keep christmas in a manner consistent with our faith. this includes some of the pagan holdovers like tree trimming, as well as being mindful of the meaning of advent. nothing more need be said, really (except the american family association can kiss my ass). speaking of trees, we got a fraser fir this year, which i’ve always wanted to do. throw in a couple of mountain ashes and some rhododendrons and it’ll be just like the black mountains in north carolina...

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

i am a tree; don't underestimate me


it is always sad to see them go like that. this will be especially noticeable next summer (although i don't intend to wish away winter so quickly). i remember the elm in the backyard of the house on prospect street where i grew up. it must have been in the early 70s when it just went, and my dad had it cut down (goodbye treehouse!), but after that it got really hot in my room during the summer; the tree had provided a tremendous amount of shade, being on the south side of the house and all.

riding in was tough with the 15-mph southeast wind fighting me all the way. what's with all this circulation anyway? why can't the air just stay where it is? for a while anyway, until the toxins build up. then we should get some air from somewhere cleaner, like maybe canada. they say canada is really clean. but wait - it's cold too. i don't know, maybe you have to take some cold to get your clean in. whatever. i just want the wind to be like a little milder. except not when i'm going home. then i want it at my back. actually i want it at my back all the time. but maybe that's not really practical. anyway.

not much left of the deer. i wonder if the coyote got any of those good entrails while they were still good. seems a pity to give it all to the crows. i saw a whole load of crows (what some folks would insist is called a "murder" of crows) in the short trees on state by eisenhower last night, or so it looked in the dark. i'm not used to seeing crows in short trees; usually they hang out by the hundreds in the oak woods just west of pioneer high, or i see huge flights of them coming off the u-m golf course, or other places. but not in little stubby ash or crab apple trees like they have outside of the wolverine tower there. they might have been starlings (it was very dark) but they just looked too big. anyway i will keep a watch for them. pesky buggers.



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Tuesday, December 13, 2005

your money in a groovier way


well it was a chilly ride in this morning, finally back on the bike. about 18 °F, 6 mph wind in my face. winter has just totally hit, after that snow thursday night - flurries on and off since then, very frigid, just the slightest thawing on sunday, enough to build up a little ice on the less-traveled parts of the roads.

not much to report, wrapped up in family birthday-holiday-schoolwork-housework when i'm not wrestling with my efdc model of lake lanier, which seems to be circulating the water nicely but is not transporting the temperature in properly, at the upper boundary. so time for some fiddling and diagnostics and, probably, bounds-checking because for all i know the problem is some god-damned array out-of-bounds issue that is causing unforeseen and unpredictable wrongness, as only out-of-bounds issues can.

the crows really went to work on that deer. there is mostly just hide and bones left now.

in my neighborhood one of the last really magnificent elms is coming down. it is the second loss since we moved there in 1994; some other neighbors have gone to considerable expense to save theirs, which is appreciated. but even a healthy tree has to go sometime.


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Friday, December 09, 2005

warmin' up a riff


okay i elected not to ride my bicycle this morning, in the six inches of fresh snow. it really didn't look all that bad, but i had concerns about my well-being along the last mile or so of south state, where the road is narrow and the drivers are anxious about getting to the office before the good doughnuts have been eaten. i could have done it, and probably would have survived. but i have nothing to prove, really, not even to myself, at least about my ruggedness. i never tire, on the other hand, of proving something to myself about my common sense. if there is someone out there who thinks i'm not sufficiently core because i drove my car this morning, well let that person come right down front and show everybody his or her genitals. last night i took a spin around the neighborhood while the stuff was a-comin' down and it was fun; i should like to try that again, this evening, when i am "at play" as they say.

but no play for crunchy now.

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

a white man speaks of rivers

quite cold this morning, a scant 8 °F at the airport. i wore everything except the goggles, which i would have if i had found them. sorry, i have no pictures, as the older son took the camera with him this morning. the bench has a two-inch thick, wind-sculpted layer of snow atop it, white, in its way, but glinting yellow in the slanting morning sun, slanting in nearly as low as it gets, just two weeks shy of the solstice. the deer is looking ghastly; i saw crows there yesterday, and from a quick glance as i rode by it appears as though it is being eaten from the rear end forward. so this circle is closing perhaps relatively quickly.

the song stuck in my head is “i’ve known rivers”, by gary bartz (the alto saxophonist from baltimore). it has lyrics that are based on a poem by langston hughes, called “the negro speaks of rivers”, and musically is one of those two-chord major mode things that bartz and his contemporaries exploited so fully in the 1970s. hearing this song again is heavily symbolic; it strongly connects events in my past with the present-day reality. there is not only mr. bartz’ beguiling alto playing, which inspired me so much back then, inspired me to pick up the alto again, in fact, not abandoning the tenor but adding to it, giving myself “another hand” as john coltrane once said about the soprano. i could perhaps be saddened to remember a time when the only thing that i needed to make myself happy was to be able to play alto saxophone like gary bartz. life will never be that simple again, but don’t you know, being able to play the alto like gary bartz would still make me just as happy today as it would have then, if only for a while.

but that’s kind of the point - only for a while. happiness only has real value during that time in which you are happy, and right then, well, it is the most important thing. it is sort of the life lesson for me, that what it means to be grown up is that i will move from time to time, being fully whatever i am during each of those times, whether that is being incandescently happy or seethingly angry or exhilarated with exercise and cold and alertness. in terms of the cliché, make sure you eat all your cake whenever you have it. then go on and eat the next thing that you have.

but to be connected with that young man and his saxophones, and his piano, is to also be connected with his fascination with rivers and his desire to stand or sit beside them and watch them flow. and that has not changed either, but has also been added to by education and career. i think i can honestly say that the study and application of hydrodynamics, of fluvial mechanics, of geomorphology has only increased my affection for rivers, has only deepened my appreciation of their symbolism, rivers as a metaphor for the eternal renewal and continuity of everything. there is supposedly a chinese proverb that speaks to how rivers flow in places uninhabitable by man. i need to find those words, because they resonate with me.

what is less satisfying in this present, however, is how my understanding of environmental regulations and the hard reality of human impacts on the quality of the planet’s waters relates to an earlier notion of the horrors of pollution and the need to “save the earth”. i makes me sad, sometimes, to be so far away from those achingly sincere saviors of the planet. it’s not that i have compromised my principles or something like that, but rather that i’ve gained an understanding of the scope of the problem, the scale of the problem, and have been in the bellies of various parts of the problem and have had opportunities to learn what actions can help and what actions can’t. and this is not secret knowledge; to be sure, we try to take every opportunity to share what we know, to explain how the science works, and even how the regulations work, and to show how there are some problems you can fix, and some you can’t, and some that are not really even problems in the first place. what is tiring is the stance that some self-styled environmentalists take, that they must smoke out the culprits, the so-called “polluters”, and get them to just do whatever it takes to clean up their mess, so that the earth can be pure again. and that is just so naïve (not to mention just plain wrong) that i can only shake my head and wonder. in particular, the portrayal of wastewater treatment plants as the enemies of clean water is revisionism of the highest order. whose feces is it, exactly? when you pull that handle and flush it down, do you believe some toiling multitude of elves somewhere (in hardhats and blue coveralls) will make it “go away”, for ever and ever? or could it possibly be more complicated than that, more like the so-called “real world” where there are causes and effects and residuals and consequences and things like that?

if man is here living on this planet, man will leave his mark. moreover, the nature and appearance of that mark is necessarily dynamic; the mark looks a little different every day. it doesn’t ever have to be ugly, but it can never go away. any appreciation of the distance between pristine and polluted has to consider the nature of the mark, so that we can place the mark in the right spot between the two. the science of analytical chemistry has evolved to the point where we are fully capable of quantifying amounts of substances in the environment that are wholly insignificant, not just to the relatively robust organisms we call “human” but even to the most sensitive forms of life. yesterday a colleague shared with us a presentation he gave at a recent conference, summarizing the work he was doing modeling PCBs in the delaware river (if you like whopping-big downloads you can learn more here). we are all just so staggeringly far from what the average person might consider “clean” that it is hard to know where to begin. the idea of implementing a TMDL (there is good information about this at http://www.drbc.net/) for PCBs, the production of which has been banned for decades, might strike the uninitiated as strange, or even unnecessary. isn’t that stuff as supposed to be cleaned up and taken care of? what do you mean, it’s going to take 100 years no matter how we approach the problem? what do you mean, we should just leave the sediments where they are? and so on.

i’ve gone on too long. i need to get back to work...in this case, on a temperature model of a reservoir in georgia, so that a new discharge can go into the lake without resulting in unacceptable increases in temperature at the fish hatchery downstream. this is some fancy modeling shit, but for now i just have to get the thing to run without crashing.

Friday, December 02, 2005

no title


well they say it's about 24 °F at the airport, and the wind is blowing from the west at 16 mph. that sounds about right to me. a wind chill could be calculated, but it would be meaningless to the bicycle rider, who makes her or his own wind; vector addition would be the order of the day, but we won't go there. suffice it to say that the ride was interesting.

what the weather report doesn't reveal was that yesterday evening there was a steady wet snow followed by a rather deep freeze, so those streets to which deicing materials were not applied were treacherous. not far from my house there is an intersection that is in a sort of saddle point; whether coming from or going home i approach on a downhill, turn and them climb out again. that is some scary shit when it is all ice underneath. i did not go down this morning, but my heart went pitter-pat all the same. how many more months of this?

last night i took a listen to "into something", a larry young blue note record i had long known about but never heard. it was as great as i imagined. sam rivers is truly a saxophonist after my own heart, sort of a thinner-toned, more reckless version of sonny rollins. i should find more recordings of him. and grant green, bless him - he had maybe 17 or 18 very personal clichés that he would just play over and over, in various combinations, and it is almost unnerving listening to one of his solos that you haven't heard before, but you can still guess where every phrase will go. not to slight him, of course; to develop a totally personal style of playing, that is immediately recognizable in any musical context, is an uncommon and remarkable achievement. especially in these days (although i realize green's work is decades past), with this highly evolved jazz pedagogy that churns out so many university-trained players that all sound (gasp) similar, if not alike. but i digress.


instead, dig it.


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Thursday, December 01, 2005

ready rudy?


oh this is a fine recording. i've had mixed success getting other persons interested in this, but for those who get it, it is really something. someday soon i will figure out the chords to "the moontrane", after which i will be happy for a while.

while listening i am realizing that everyone on this record is no longer with us, sad to say. i am fortunate to have heard both elvin jones and woody shaw perform in concert, at very different times as it goes. larry young passed early on; joe i might have had a chance, especially with his resurgence in the 1990s, but it was not to be. so sorry.

elvin i heard at a detroit-montreaux festival, either 1999 or 2000, with his usual band of young lions, whose names i do not recall. i only heard a little bit (i was on a break from playing at another stage) but he was doing his thing, swirling around in the midst of what sounded the rhythms of a dozen drummers. he was truly remarkable. woody shaw i saw back in the old days, maybe 1979 or so, after he starting recording for columbia, with the group on "rosewood": carter jefferson, steve turre, victor lewis, onaje allen gumbs, buster williams (maybe). that was at hill auditorium. those were those years right after high school when i believed, as much as i could believe anything at that age, that i could spend my life as a jazz musician, writing and playing and working and creating.

i am still writing, anyway.

speaking of blue note recordings with elvin jones and joe henderson, i was also checking out "four by five" from mccoy tyner's "the real mccoy" album, and heard with renewed dismay that an important chunk of the piano solo is missing in this digitally remastered version you get on the internet these days. ass!! having memorized the entire recording it is especially aggravating. as far as i can tell it isn't even an even number of bars, possibly a fraction of a bar; it's hard to count with ron carter and elvin doing their darnedest to confound placement of the downbeat. so anyway, what the fuck? was rudy van gelder on the pipe or something? of course not; shame on me. the only thing that makes sense is that a portion of the original tape was damaged somehow, and that a splice was made to salvage as much as possible.

*shudders convulsively*

it's times like these when i am thankful for the (relative) permanance of vinyl.

now it's on to "inner urge"...