Hammer Mill Days

It can't be morning yet, right? It's still freaking dark outside. What? Oh, right. My night mask. I'll just pull it off and ... OH MY GOD ... IT'S MORNING! Well, that's my revelation for today. What have you got? Hope you're having a great holiday season, whether or not you celebrate any of the various commemorative feast-days that fall sometime around now. Like Trump in the White House, we've been staked out here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in upstate New York (a.k.a. that farm upstate that every alt band goes to eventually) waiting for someone to tell us it's safe to venture outside without proper shoes. That's right - our shoes are a disgrace, my friends. No bones about it. And when you've got substandard shoes, Spring can't come soon enough. And while we've been cooped up in this drafty old barn, we've tried to busy ourselves with some low-budget Kringle-ing, sending out some old recordings via social media to our gagg...

As you know, this is the week when every news and opinion broadcast, podcast, etc., typically does their year in review. There are, of course, economic reasons for this - they basically run clip shows or pre-taped round tables, which can occasionally be worth watching (Chris Hayes usually does pretty well with these) but are mostly pretty dull and awful. So, inasmuch as this is not, repeat, NOT a news blog or, really, an opinion blog in the traditional sense, I am breaking with this obnoxious practice and running with something I think is more useful .... the century in review. Meaning stuff that happened over the last 100 years, selected at random, and by "stuff" I mean historical and political stories that are, in essence, lost to history, particularly in the United States. One such story is the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88). which I have mentioned previously in the blog over the years. This, in my opinion, is one of those seminal conflicts that set the stage for much that foll...

Hmmm, let me see. Nicely wrapped. Let's see what's inside. Okay ... huh. An empty bubble pack that used to contain a ballpoint pen. Nice. So .... who amongst you could have known that that's something I've always wanted? Oh, hi, everyone. Yeah, it's that time of year again, and Big Green is celebrating the holidays in the usual way. We put on a bunch of cheesy records. We make a little extra rice and mustard greens. And then there's the Secret Santa exchange of gifts, which we do in the traditional way ... one gift at a time, and the recipient tries to guess who the giver is. How exciting. Someone bring me my sodium bicarbonate. This could be a long night! That's not to say that the holidays are any less problematic in our makeshift home than they are in everyone else's. There's a lot to look out for here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill - a lot going on beneath that cool, clammy exterior. For instance, if you're stringing the lights on t...

Well, I was half prepared to do a post on General Flynn this week, but with the advent of Trump's apparently unilateral decision to pull U.S. forces out of Syria and the nearly apoplectic response, it seems more appropriate to concentrate on the broader matter of our foreign policy and how it plays out in what passes for our national conversation. I think it's worth saying at the outset that I have no idea of what our military's mission is in Syria. I keep hearing that it's essentially the same as the one we're pursuing in Afghanistan - training and equipping a local force to fight the war for us - but that doesn't exactly inspire confidence. It is, in fact, a formula for another unending deployment, one that has the support of most of the foreign policy voices in the media. Much of the criticism of Trump's abrupt decision has been from a right militarist perspective, though one that is broadly shared, much like the criticism of his Korea policy. The only ...

Seems like old times, Marvin. You know what I'm talking about, right? Well ... then load up some of your old data cassettes. I have that tape backup deck sitting around here somewhere. Or did I use it for an ideas tape ... ? Ah, yes. 'Tis the season for looking back ... something I always look forward to. (Yes, I did just say that.) And this year I'm looking back on what a hack I've been for the last nineteen years. This is the nineteenth anniversary of this humble blog, which first made itself known under the questionable moniker "Notes From Sri Lanka" back in December of 1999. Even to call it a blog was kind of questionable - I wasn't using Wordpress or Blogger at the time, just flat html pages that I would post via Frontpage. What's the difference, right? (Attn: web developers: pretend you didn't hear that.) So we're walking into the twentieth year of this phase of Big Green's existence, and really ... not much has changed since 1999...

Overwhelmed by all the mainstream news coverage of the COP conference in Katowice, Poland? I thought not. It's possible that the international climate negotiations in Poland have been covered in passing by the evening news shows, etc., but I haven't seen a single mention of them on the various talk shows, most notably on MSNBC, which is purported to be the centrist-liberal network. Their constant obsession is the Mueller probe, and while I can understand the temptation to follow such a strongly narrative-driven story, to do so to the exclusion of all other news is craven on the part of any organization that lays claim the mantle of investigative journalism. Probably the best source on what's happening at Katowice is DemocracyNow! - Amy Goodman and her crew have been broadcasting from Poland all week, covering the activities of the American delegation. Yes, there is an official U.S. delegation, even though our lord emperor Trump the first has chosen to withdraw from the w...

It's called snow, Marvin. The white stuff, falling from the sky? That's not hard rain, it's freaking snow. What the hell kind of weather station are you, anyway? Oh, hi. Well ... we're getting into that time of year when larger mammals hibernate. That's not how we roll, of course, but we do get a little more sedentary (if that can be imagined) as the winter months wear on. Fortunately, we have our podcast THIS IS BIG GREEN to keep us hopping this December. Here's what we've packed inside this hollow tree: Ned Trek 38: The Squire of Mara Lagos . Our new installment of Ned Trek is a takeoff on the classic Star Trek episode entitled "The Squire of Gothos" and features me doing really, really poor imitations of both Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Perle turns out to be a compulsive gambler this week in a Lost in Space-style plot twist. See what you think ... and feel free to play it back at 125% speed. Put The Phone Down . Matt and I begin our ...

I don't take joy in anyone's passing, great or small. We're all living beings with a limited time in this timeless universe, and there's nothing to celebrate when death takes its toll, even when the departed is someone you are not at all fond of. I would have to count George H. W. Bush as someone who fits that description. Despite all of the glowing tributes from members of our political elite and millionaire media personalities, he was an awful president in a lot of ways - one that left a toxic legacy we're still grappling with. The invasion of Panama alone was enough to wipe away any pretense of a "kind and gentle" leader, but the administration of Bush 41 went far beyond that atrocity. In listening to the hagiographic coverage put out by NPR, NBC and MSNBC, it's clear that H. W, Bush's conservative politics is a kind of "sweet spot" for our mainstream press - the ideal foil to the uncouth hair-hatted fiend who currently occupies the ...

Okay, blow out the candles. Try harder. Nope, nothing. Try again. What the hell ... you'd think at your age you would have this worked out by now. Silly kid. Right, so before you call child protective services, let me reassure you that we, of Big Green, are all biologically childless. The line stops here! And it's just as well. No, sir ... I was just in the midst of celebrating the nineteenth birthday of our first commercial release (a.k.a. album), 2000 Years to Christmas , which was released .... I don't know ... sometime after Christmas in 1999. Nice timing, right? Typical. Anyway, that was a few weeks ago, and I'm glad to say it's pretty small in the rear view mirror at this point. So, 2000 Years To Christmas was our biggest seller. That's not saying much. Of course, it was released relatively early in the era of online retail, and over the course of the succeeding decades it has wormed its way into any number of places online. A simple Google search ...

If there's one thing about the Trump administration that's consistent, it's their laser focus on immigrants - specifically the ones with dark skin or non-christian religious beliefs. This is basically Trump's political brand, though it's nothing new in American (and particularly Republican party) politics. This specific strain of bigotry has made its way into national elections for decades, most noticeably since the early 1990s and the Buchanan direct mail scam .... I mean, presidential campaign, right through right-wing hacks like Tom Tancredo and up to the now-sainted (by the phony "resistance") Senator-elect Mitt Romney, who ran to the right of his fanatical GOP competitors on immigration. So it makes little sense to assign this tendency exclusively to Trump - scapegoating immigrants is central to Republican politics, and as for Democrats, Obama was the deporter-in-chief, despite his uplifting rhetoric. That said, it's hard to deny that Trump ta...

Don't suppose I ever thanked you for that, right? Well ... thanks, man. Thanks a heap. Now get the hell out of my sight. Oh, hi. Hey ... no worries. Just practicing. This, as you know, is the time of year when you show gratitude to all and sundry, even your worst enemy. I was just practicing what that would look like in real life. Say, for instance, my worst enemy (whoever that may turn out to be) should pound on the hammer mill door one cold morning, maybe the day after a long, hard gig on the planet Aldebaran 12, where the bars are open until #$@ o'clock (which, for the record, is pretty late). After dragging myself out of bed, limping downstairs, and pulling the door open wide, how would I properly express my thankfulness for the many gifts of microaggression my worst enemy has bestowed upon me? Suffice to say, it takes thought and practice. That said, I am thankful for many things. For the leaky hammer mill roof over our heads, for one. I'm thankful for the fact tha...

At the beginning of this year, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos was worth about $100 billion. By May, his fortune had reportedly ballooned to somewhere in the neighborhood of $130 billion. Now it appears to fluctuate between $137 and $160 billion, this last number from CNBC in October. So, it sounds like he won't be hungry for the holidays. That's more than can be said about the growing number of structurally unemployed and food-insecure Americans who have fallen through our inadequate and now badly shredded federal safety net. This Pharaoh-like magnitude of personal wealth reflects a failing economy - more specifically, an economy that fails to serve a large swath of the population. It is about more than personal wealth. Any dude with $137 billion dollars (and there's only one, so yes, it's a dude) possesses $136 billion more than he could ever hope to spend on himself. The accumulation of untold billions is all about power - the power to affect the lives of millions o...

Sure, you've played that one before. You remember. It's the one about the fascists dropping over for Christmas. Don't remember? Go back and look, dude! Hiya. As you know, we're still shut up in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, working diligently on the next episode of our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN . And when I say "next", I mean the next couple of episodes, each of which is in a different state of non-completion. This is all about Ned Trek, of course ... that time-consuming mashup of space opera crossed with horse-based comedy and political satire. If I recall correctly, we dreamed that concept up on the planet Neptune, but don't quote me. Matt probably pulled it out of Uranus. Either way. So ... the most proximate of the "next" episodes is being edited and finished as we speak (are we speaking?). The second "next" episode hasn't been recorded (or even completely written) yet, but that one's a musical, so we've been ...

The California town of Paradise was wiped out by climate change this week. Now even network weather forecasters are saying that these wild fires that have now claimed 59 lives and counting are fueled in large measure by global warming. When I see the images of this catastrophe on television, it makes me wonder what the national response would be if these homes had been destroyed by a terror bombing or a hijacked plane. No doubt we would move heaven and earth to hold the perpetrators accountable (along with anyone even tangentially associated with them) and to prevent future attacks. What has the federal response been to these fires? Initially, blame the victim. Trump was in an election-related snit and so resorted to parroting his Interior Secretary on the matter. Classy, as always. Thousand Oaks, California - located in one of the wild fire zones - had to deal with three national policy failures in the same week. One was the lack of national gun control legislation and strong enough...

Here's the problem. I hit it and it goes "dang", then "hummmmmmm...." I don't want dang and hum. Who the hell wants dang and hum? Dumb-ass technology. I hate the internets! Oh, sorry. I was just complaining to Big Green's official instrument tech, the dude who lives in the basement. (Actually, I think he may be Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, in a pair of borrowed coveralls.) My 20-year-old keyboard is falling apart, though why I would expect it to survive more than 20 years is beyond me. I am appealing to our tech dude to do some work on it, just in case ... just in case we end up playing somewhere again, sometime soon. You never know, right? Did I ever think I would play on the planet Neptune? Hell no. And yet that happened. Shit happens, right? What's ailing my old Roland A-90ex? Same thing that ails all similar midi controllers with expansion modules. It's the counterweights to the keys .... they are just poorly designed and liab...

The surest sign that Democratic voters put a dent in the Trump administration this past Tuesday was the fact that Trump termed the election as a victory for him personally. It was, of course, anything but. His incoherent, rambling press conference on Wednesday lurched from the usual bragging to open hostility to the press to suggestions that he would triangulate with Congressional Democrats on legislation and quite a bit more. Trump, of course, came armed with cherry-picked, extremely contrived and narrow statistics that spoke to the historical uniqueness of his mid-term "victory", claiming that the only Republicans who lost were the ones that refused his "embrace". (He's conveniently forgetting the apparent one-term loser Claudia Tenney, who fully embraced him and had the entire Trump family visit her district - including the hair hat in chief himself - at various points during the campaign in a desperate attempt to cling to her seat.) That said, among my big...

CQ, CQ ... come in, Rangoon. This is ground station Hammermill calling all ships at sea. If you read me, come in. Ahoy, ship! Damn it. Turn the crank a little harder, Marvin. There's a good chap. Yeah, well ... just trying something a little different this week, since our latest episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN is still under construction and I'm too freaking lazy to post any songs or other media files. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) dug up an old radio transmitter down in the basement of the mill, and we've been trying to fire the thing up ever since. This should come naturally to us, as Matt's and my father was a Ham radio operator, but alas ... I spent my childhood assiduously avoiding the acquisition of any useful knowledge or skills, and if I do say so myself, I was remarkably successful at that endeavor. Anyway, the old radio works like this. I pick up the microphone, put on the metal headphones, and tell Marvin to start turning the crank in the side of the...

Very nearly speechless after the heinous massacre of Jewish congregants in Pittsburgh. I am glad, at least, that reporting on this atrocity has attempted to capture the motivations of this neo-fascist killer. He was driven to attack the Tree of Life Synagogue by his outrage over the work of HIAS, a century-old Jewish organization dedicated to resettlement of refugees from around the world. The president's, his party's, and conservative media's fulminations about the approach of an "invasion" of Honduran refugees, supposedly funded by "globalists" like George Soros, no doubt contributed to the shooter's sense of urgency. And, of course, he had an AR-15 handy. Why not, right? How did Trump meet this outrage? By doubling down on his anti-immigrant tirade. By sending hundreds of troops to the border to stop a group of poor people a thousand miles away. And by launching an attack on birthright citizenship, the principle at the core of the fourteenth ame...

We just did that, man. It's still summer, right? What? October! What the hell ... we've got some work to do. First task: find out what happened to July. (I know I left it around here somewhere.) Oh ... hi, friends of Big Green. Seems like I've lost track of time just a bit. I'm off by about three months, but hey ... who hasn't lost a quarter, right? It's probably somewhere deep in the sofa cushions. Except that we don't have a cushioned sofa here in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. Just chairs. Stark wooden chairs. We sit, straight as a board, until the darkness comes, then we retire. It's hard, but it keeps us honest. (Honestly ... it's hard! The chair, that is.) We ain't got no time for no podcast stuff round these parts, no how. Now GIT! Ah .... sed .... GIT! Whoops ... lapsed in to Bobby Sweet mode just then. (Not to worry. Bobby Sweet wouldn't hurt no one. He just has a hankering for big guns.) Yeah, I can blame the calendar, I can...

Pipe bombs dropped at the homes of prominent opposition political figures. Scare talk about hordes of dark people working their way north towards our southern border. Dog whistles turned up to bullhorn volume in competitive races across the country, including a racist Amos and Andy -style robo call in Florida. This is what election season in the United States looks like in 2018. This is the reality show election that proceeds from the reality show presidency of Donald Trump, who is basically spending all of his time flying to every corner of the country, holding his signature Klan rallies and greasy fundraisers to prop up sagging congressional republicans desperate to hold on to their majority for another cycle. Our local House member, Claudia Tenney in NY-22, is one such republican. Trump came for a fundraiser over the summer; Paul Ryan came by a few weeks ago, and just this week we were treated to the sight of Eric Trump, who gave a pep talk to Tenney's campaign volunteers and ...

Hmmm ... leaving kind of a big footprint there, aren't you, Anti-Lincoln? Seems like you've been feeding on a pretty good pasture lately, am I right? No? Ah, okay. Well, the gravity's back. Isn't that good new?. And now all of us weigh about twenty pounds more than before. Just a little side benefit of Mitch's latest project. (YEAH, MITCH ... THANKS A LOT. Turn that gravity thing down a little, willya?) Something tells me we will need to replace the floor joists in this crumbling old ruin of a hammer mill ... except that I don't know how to do that and I wouldn't know a floor joist if it hit me upside of the head. Mitch has got this whole gravity thing figured out. He describes swarms of little invisible magnet-like particles he calls "gravitons". Apparently these little critters swarm around you by the thousands, holding you down as the world spins out of control. Without their persistent intercession, we would all fly off into space, the ea...

If reports from Turkey are to be believed, Washington Post editorialist Jamal Khashoggi was the victim of a mob-like hit, and a pretty gruesome one at that. I am glad to see some politicians using this horrible story as a means of broadening the scope of this new scrutiny being focused on the House of Saud, namely Senator Chris Murphy, Ro Khanna, and a handful of others. Those of us who want action on the Yemen question have to overcome this culture of privilege in which the life of a columnist (important as it may be) is seen to be worth more than that of a Yemeni child ... or fifty Yemeni children. While it's heartening to see that some legislators understand this issue, it's maddening to think that something so basic needs to be explained. It's not right to kill people - how hard is that? Isn't that fundamental to christian teaching? Sadly, the problem goes way beyond what other countries do. We have a bad habit of supporting paramilitary activities in other coun...

We're fresh out of duct tape, man. All gone. And no, I don't have any large magnets. That wouldn't work anyway - the floors aren't made of metal, fool. Geez. Yeah, I'm getting asked a bunch of dumb-ass questions by my house-mates, bandmates, mill-mates, etc. again. Everybody's all worked up about our mad science advisor Mitch Macaphee and his latest raft of experiments. (Why he keeps them on a raft, I cannot say.) Mitch has been working on selectively negating gravitation, which really should be impossible ... I mean, we all wish it was impossible, but apparently it's not. Naturally, his experimental subject was the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, Big Green's longtime squathouse, and a place where gravity has always reigned supreme ... until now. Now, most people have a sense of how gravity works, but for those of you unfamiliar with the ways of this mysterious unseen power, here's a primer: it holds you down. That's it. When people talk abo...

It's kind of amazing to watch the talking head squad comment on the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi columnist for the Washington Post who was apparently abducted and quite probably killed and dismembered by his government for the crime of being mildly critical of Prince Muhammad Bin Salman. As I'm sure you know, Khashoggi went to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to obtain some documents relating to his planned marriage ... and never emerged. Now denizens of Morning Joe who were not so very long ago praising Bin Salman to the skies - I'm looking at you, David Ignatius - are now wringing their hands over the disappearance of a colleague. Rightfully so - if there's any truth to the murder allegations, this is a sickening and despicable act. What's ironic is that these pundits should be surprised and appalled by such behavior. After all, the Saudis have been killing people by the thousand in Yemen. It appears that Yemeni children's biggest mistake may...

Aw, do I really have to come in now? Gosh dang it. I don't want to do my homework. I want to STAY OUTSIDE AND PLAY. I want to SPEAK IN CAPITAL LETTERS. Oh, hi. I was just undergoing some cheap psychiatry. I think it's called regression analysis ... or something like that. Here's how it goes: you close your eyes and imagine you're Brett Kavanaugh ... I mean, a 7-year-old while Marvin (my personal robot assistant) plays 8-track tapes of Peter Frampton. Yes, it hurts, but sometimes the truth does hurt. And this is about getting to the truth, right Marvin? Marvin? Marvin ! Turn down the 8-track player ... I'm asking you a question. Why are we doing this, just a few days from Columbus Day? Random chance. And we don't celebrate Columbus Day, so even more random. Actually, one of our neighbors said I should have my head examined. It took me a while to work out precisely what he meant by that. (Long enough, in fact, for Mitch Macaphee to stick my head under an el...

I hear Tucker Carlson is worried about an ensuing race war. Sounds like a problem for old Tucker. I guess he should keep the musket loaded and ready back at the homestead. Tucker has heard all these people on television complaining about white male privilege and now he's feeling a little picked on. Like Lindsay Graham, he feels squelched. White men just can't get a word in edgewise, what with all of these stories of abuse and marginalization. This obsession of Tucker's did not start with the Kavanaugh nomination, but the Supreme Court justice wannabe certainly stoked the flames with his shrill rebuttal of accusations of sexually violent behavior back in his high school and college days. In fact, the judge was white aggrievement personified on that occasion, which played very well with white republican / conservative men both on the Senate Judiciary Committee and off. Now he's well on his way to being a white dude folk hero, even if a miracle happens and he doesn't...

I don't know, man. That song seems kind of dark. Dark, but in a happy way. Yeah ... that's the way we do it around here, am I right? No ... that was a rhetorical question. Never mind. Oh, hello. It's your old pal Bozo. I mean, Joe-zo. (That might have been my clown name if I had chosen another, slightly divergent path in life, but I digress.) Having a little band meeting here. Joe? Present. Matt? Present. Marvin (my personal robot assistant)? Present, to the extent that an automaton can ever be TRULY present, but setting philosophical questions aside ... Mitch Macaphee? Not present. Actually, in truth it's just me and Matt, and the topic is songwriting. It goes like this. He's got songs, I've got songs ... all God's children got songs. That said, they're all based on subject matter that's, well, a little dark. Dark matter, if you will. Now, it's not surprising that we would use the stuff that makes up the bulk of the universe as the substance...

When you think about the Kavanaugh nomination, you really need to step back and see the full picture. Sure, stopping the nomination is crucial, and it's perhaps fortunate that he planted the seeds of his own self-destruction decades ago, long before his tenure as a hyperpolitical operative in the Republican Party. (Honestly, the guy is like the Zelig of American conservatism, working on the Star investigation, researching Vince Foster, participating in the "Brooks Brothers Riot" during the Florida recount, and on from there.) But if his nomination fails, they will attempt to fill the slot quite quickly with a much more boring, just as reactionary judge capable of serving multiple decades on the Supreme Court. So ... why not just withdraw this troubled judge? My guess is that they're clinging to this one because Kavanaugh has proven to be such a reliable operative, and because he has a freakishly expansive view of executive power and privilege. (He apparently develop...

Huh. Never saw THAT one before. Do that again, Anti Lincoln. Wow. Are you sure that was developed in the 1850s? It looks a little post modern to me. Ah, readers. Greetings. Here's a handy tip: You know you have waaaay too much time on your hands when you spend a perfectly good afternoon listening to the antimatter 16th president explain that po-mo was invented by General McClellan. For chrissake ... everybody knows it didn't emerge until the later on in the Grant administration. I'll tell you, in Anti Lincoln's tiny mind, history is a total confidence game. If he were the actual Great Emancipator (or Posi-Lincoln, as it were), he would understand the importance of history. Posi-Lincoln loved history more than chicken fricassee. (And he loved chicken fricassee.) We're still in songwriting mode over here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in upstate New York. Every day I pick up my superannuated acoustic guitar and start strumming the five chords I learned as a ...

I come from the land of second chances, so the current Kavanaugh saga has a distinctly familiar ring to it. Mind you, I have not benefited from the level of privilege that Judge K has enjoyed his whole life through, but close enough. I grew up in what was described once as a "rock-ribbed Republican" town in upstate New York, virtually all white residents, lots of professionals and rich folk as well as middle class, borderline working class. It's the kind of place where you have to fuck up pretty badly before it affects you in any serious way. Underage drinking, drug use, and other low-level criminality were widespread. Arrests were not unheard of, but rare, and the impact of these brushes with the law were almost never life-changing. Right down the street, in the heart of the city, people of color face a far different reality. Their opportunities for advancement are severely constrained, and when something goes wrong, it's either life-changing or life-ending. I thin...

Let's see .... how does the barre system go again? Oh, right. It's freaking impossible. Forgot that part. Back to the banjo chords then. I wonder how good songwriters handle questions like this. Yes, if you haven't already guessed, I'm attempting to write some songs this week. Well, I should say one song, but that's being somewhat generous. I can't let Matt carry the entire burden of composing for Big Green. What kind of brother would that make me? I'll tell you what kind. My kind, that's what. Just STAY OUT OF IT. Anyway ... that's why I'm handling this guitar. Notice I didn't say "playing". That's a bridge too far ... and this song of mine doesn't even have a bridge. Frankly, I don't see how Matt does it. He dreams up these songs, harmonizes them in about twenty minutes down in the basement of the Cheney Hammer Mill, then tracks the suckers. Me? I get some lame idea, knock it around in my head for a couple of d...

It was primary week (again) here in New York , where our political leaders see fit to have more than one primary per election season and place one of them bizarrely on a Thursday. Seems like a good time to do some short takes on the stuff and nonsense that has been dominating our news this past week. Where to begin? Super Storm. Hurricane Florence is bearing down on the east coast of the U.S., and is his wont, the President's first comments centered on, well, himself and the amazing job he did when Hurricane Maria battered Puerto Rico last year. He is flatly denying the veracity of the revised casualty figures that put the death toll from Maria above that of Katrina, saying that the higher numbers were made up by Democrats to make him look bad. I'm betting George W. Bush looks at this with envy and wonders why he never thought of just totally and persistently making shit up about New Orleans. Fear. Woodward's book has been all over the airwaves this past week. In ma...

Music is a universal language and love is the key. Or maybe SOUND is the key. Love is the lock. No, wait ... love is the music, language is the universe, and Francis Scott is the key. That sounds right-ish. Well, we're coming up on a little anniversary here at Big Green village, housed in the historic abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in historic upstate New York. (A lot of history up here. Did you know that this area is as old as any other area on Earth?) What's the anniversary, you ask? Thank you for asking. It's actually the tenth anniversary of the release of our second album, International House , which we released back in fall of 2008. My goodness ... has it been that long? Well, I guess it has. It also happens to be the fifth anniversary of the release of our third album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick . And in case that isn't nearly amazing enough, next year will be the 20th anniversary of the release of our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas . Okay, so ...