Hammer Mill Days

  You know what they say, man. Everyone as time went by got a little bit older and a little bit slower. Stay in the toaster long enough, and hell, you’re toast. Stick a fork in it. Insert your favorite over-the-hill cliche here. Hey, lookit – I know I’ve been more reflective over the past year than in previous years. When your ass starts to get old, it spends more time looking back. (It can hardly do anything else, actually.) I’ve posted a few reflections on the bad old days . Spun a few yarns about scraping the bottom of the barrel of backwater live music. Hey, there’s always room for one more story, right? Maybe. Hippy anniversary It happens that this spring is the 35th anniversary of a little project that coincided with the birth of Big Green, back in the eighties. I’m thinking of this now not so much because of the anniversary, but because I’ve been digitizing a video of a 1987 gig I played with Big Green co-founder Ned Danison and Ned’s childhood friend

As I write this, we appear to be inching towards that thing we always say we don’t want but nearly always opt for. The difference this time is that we’re flirting with a conflict that, at minimum, will send the global economy into yet another tailspin, and, at maximum, will result in terminal nuclear conflict. Neither seems to me a good option. I have written about this previously , of course – as has nearly everyone. My hope has been that we would begin to back away from the breach, but that hasn’t happened yet. This past week, French President Macron met with Putin and seemed to come away with assurances that the Russians wouldn’t escalate the situation. Somewhat encouraging, though it is a slender thread from which to dangle the fate of this insane world. Mutually supporting motives This threatened conflict has brought the art of Kremlinology back with a vengeance, which must please Putin no end. In truth, the practice never entirely went away. But now there’