sunday morning (not) coming down & a country founded in genocide & slavery

yesterday i chauffeured james to his show. i decided i won´t play with his band for a while. but now kidá´s back from hawaii & james likely will be able to expand his repertoire again, which means a lot more variety, happier band, happier james. the timing of my resignation was off! argh! but james told me i have an open invite to re-join. :) i am a lucky person. we are supposed to practice the stompers wed & i hope we just slam thru the first blaster slash lp because it´s in our cells. i asked if we could learn a lot more bob wills, chuck berry, & blasters. and i´d like to do some weird old rockabilly tunes of my liking. he told me that bob wills started playing in bands when he was a child & by the time he was 16 or 17, was fronting his. he only knew break downs, rags, waltzes, two-steps, & square dances, so he would improv his songs around those. and such a beautiful, stomping, happy, brilliant legacy blossomed from that! the old recordings of him & the texas playboys have been our #1 listen in the past year, along with for me zydeco. wills was a virtuouso fiddle player, delightful singer, nimble, funny lyricist, & fantastic band leader. every single player was top-notch, & the instruments dance & weave & harmonize & speed along with such joy. it would be heaven on earth to be able to have even part of that experience, tho for me, it would have to be without the go juice & bennies & bop pills. james had a terrifically successful show last night, & his friend eric sardinas (sardinias?) showed up. james told me many times on the way home that eric is ¨really famous¨ in spain. he was high on happiness talking about his friend, a guy handsome up close & gentlemanly, the latter which i really appreciated! such a guy could be a snake! he must be a songwriter, i think, since he told me, ¨your eyes are mesmerizing¨ as well as that james is ¨an outside cat, but one that will always come home.¨ :) while james played his butt off, i went across the street to the lakewood center & thought, this is so novel for me from lily-white kern county, all the black teenagers having fun, no gang-banger-looking kids, just teenagers enjoying the mall, but there were a lot of them! and constant from outside, audible behind the soothing shopping musical soundtrack, was the sound of police helicopters & sirens. it was unsettling, all that cop activity, but i didn´t think much of it, just it´s part of being in the sh*tty city, mebbe. so i kept walking, looking at the kids & all the clothing & shoe stores, then came across - gasp! - a book store! yes, there´s an amazing book off in that mall! emerged hours later with a bursting bag for me & james, family, & a bunch of k-pop music for maddy, who is really expert on it. k-pop music is boxed in swanky style. i guess new the music sets are quite expensive, so they seem to partially justify it with fancy packaging. i walked out with treasure-loaded arms to a sea of sirens, squad cars & cops. truly, these guys looked like sterotypes: big, fat, pink-faced, ultra-white. cruisers were circling the mall & surrounding shops at snailś pace, lights flashing, announcing, vacate the premises now; leave this place now; get off the sidewalks & leave. inside was lively, happy mall; outside was armageddon. i have never seen such heavy police presence. it looked like footage of mass shootings. what was going on?!? oh god, i thought, this is bad, whatever happened! more & more law enforcement was arriving, more & more sirens. i beat it back to the club & waited for james, looking on my phone for info. all i could find was the kids were doing a flashmob. a flashmob?!?! wtf were all the cops doing there???? a father posted, ¨get your babies home. they just children they don´t know these cops got heat.¨ mike harden finally showed me what he´d located: the mall had been closed due to ¨civil unrest.¨ the source: law enforcement. a member of james´s band told me he was glad the cops were doing what they were because ¨things can escalate quickly.¨ i know james has said the same when he was in the military & had to deal with large crowds that turned into riots. but on the way home, he also told me the town we were in is notoriously racist & the sheriffs dept is a bunch of a*sholes. they are the ones that always cause him problems & try to majorly assault him (instead of minor, which they always do) when he tries to get home or to a gig, even still, over 20 yrs after... ok, back to the subject. he said the white town doesn´t like all the young blacks coming to their mall for the weekend. so the SD sends its battalion to harass the kids until they leave. horrible! how could this be true?!? isn´t this a major civil rights lawsuit? how could this happen in america?!? well, then i found out the kids were setting off firecrackers & jumping on cars. so it was a little more than nothing they were doing. but still... this did NOT justify all that pork. america. these could be its last decades, don´t you think? we shall fall, as did rome. as a teacher, iḿ saddened by the idea bc i was raised in a family that identified our country with democracy, ingenuity, hard work, compassion, & a desire for fairness. but the reality has been a steady worsening of this land due to greed, inequality, & people kept deliberately ignorant, distracted, & sick by endemic screen culture (producing solipsism & narcissism), poisoning fake food, & corporate consumerism. plus it´s a country founded in genocide & slavery. i have to admit: how can such an evil entity truly last? & why should it? it really makes me sad. this country is beautiful, & so are many of its ideals. but look what has happened. just look. ... ... ... well, i don´t know why the coconut went there, but think i´ll leave this screed in place. ... ... ... just 20 mins ago, we were playing music, & he still is. i could learn from james: DON´T LET THE COCONUT RUIN A GOOD TIME! so i´ll just post some pix: one, a little painting i found yesterday for $3 when wonderful mom & dad came to see the new little house; the next two from last night as we had late-night chicken & beans; and the final one from this morn, with dear james loudly singing ¨one woman man.¨ (i was so tired, i fell into bed & didn´t take off my makeup, but don´t think anyone here will tell my mama.) i sure love my husband. he is a dear soul, when it gets down to it, tho like i wrote in a song, ¨he´s so sweet, meanest muther humper that i ever seen.¨ he´s both as well as much, much more. he says part of why he must´ve met me was so he could meet dad, & that dad is one of his best friends, & he loves mom & dad so much, & that´s the kind of thing james says, but nobody else ever has, & dad told him, when me & james were having tough times, ¨i´ve never seen my daughter so happy.¨ so in short, as usual, been down so long, but looks like there´s a way up & out, yet again. here is to still living.

inhale, exhale, repeat. rest in peace, ben.

sinus arrythmia, i just learned, is normal: your heart rate will vary between inhalation & exhalation. cause for alarm is when the resting heartrate overall & steadily (more than 7 days) is outside the normal range of 60-100 bpm. my sister & i each were born with mitral valve prolapse. as kids, we took meds before dental work. she maybe still does, but mine cleared up or maybe originally was a diagnostic mistake, a more recent md said. but i get palpitations, & it´s worrisome. we did a show saturday in lakewood ca at a place built for 50-60 ppl, but there were hundreds of bodies packing the place. i was set up in the walk-through with maybe 200 ppl breathing on me thru the course of the afternoon & i left there really sick. and been sick since. it has felt like covid-light. back when i had covid, i realized, this is really serious: this could take me out. i jumped on getting meds asap. this has brought similar symptoms, but not as severe, so i´ve just been lying around the house like a limp noodle, not doing much of anything... i posted today´s attempted natural remedy on facebook, & many responded that it could be a covid variant, so i keep taking at-home rapid tests, but they´ve all come out ok, so i´m gonna stop. btw, heart palpitations are very common w/¨women of a certain age¨ (iḿ now in that group). and iḿ the daughter of a hypochondriac, ergo prone to unraveling imagination, so i just gotta keep remembering: the human suit wants to be in a state of equilibrium. until it is finished... james was there saturday night when ben passed away. james was singing songs for ben & the loved ones & gatherers, & mid-song, he noticed his dear friend had perished. james knows what that looks like. he finished the song before he told everyone else in the room what had happened.... ben loved & adored elvis, so maybe, & i hope this is the case, he now sees elvis again. i want to believe that could really be; the fancy makes me happy, & i guess that´s all iĺl ever know... i just really had begun to see & understand what a cool & interesting person ben is, just this past yr. but nick still is here, & nick is worth getting to know better. we will make that happen.... iḿ supposed to be at work for extra yearly-planning stuff, but iḿ just not well... school´s about to start, & maddy is now on our staff, & so much is happening, but i gotta get better.... since this is my blog, here are pix from the show taken by krystal kozak as well as a flyer for another upcoming. james continues to be the maddingest, bravest, strongest, biggest-heartedest, amazingest & infuriatingest love of my life. that is all; more rest now.

upcoming show, bd, etc

i made this poster for james - nice and bold and plain, as he likes it. my bd is upcoming & the family has asked me what i want to do, but what i really want is a tiny house here so that they all will visit and feel how much cooler it is here than in bakersfield, how much cleaner the air is, & how peaceful it is. then they will want to be here more. but since the 2nd tiny house was sold out from under me two days ago, i don´t guess i´ll get that wish. but my god, what a golden problem. as part of mama´s bd yesterday, i sat w/her & listened to rachel maddow, her favorite pundit. usually the truths that maddow reveals & connects are too hard for me to stomach. i cry & get mad. but mama is strong & watches her nightly so ¨sheĺl ¨never get caught off guard again, like i was in 2016.¨ maddow spoke last night about the emmett till federal memorial dedicated today, her point being that we don´t give up in the face of violent hate. (3 memorials to the little boy brutally murdered by pieces of human dogsh*it over the decades have been vandalized & destroyed -- inexplicable!!! how can such blatantly violent racism still exist????? -- but this latest one weighs 500 lbs & is made of titanium or some other indestructible material & now it´s a federal crime to deface it, so go ahead, racist dogsh*t subhumans, vandalize it now & go to prison!!!) i was reminded by that bright, brave woman´s commentary (rachel´s, tho mama fits that description, too) that my life is a piece of cake & always has been, so i´d better do something to make the world a bit better every damned day. most immediately, that means making my husband´s life better & easier. we talked just now about moving the music room to the main floor of the house. i hope we do it. soon. hereś to getting to get old, getting to keep having life, getting the chance to become better. too many in this beautiful, horrible world don´t have those luxuries.

mama, tex-ass, the complications of family, bad cops, ¨the planet isn´t going anywhere... WE ARE!!¨ (geo. carlin)

mama said she doesn´t want anything for her birthday so i got her a groupon for 2 spa treatments. i phoned dad to tell him to ask her to check her email for the surprise. he said, maybe i will go with her! so that will be double-plus-happy-making for mama. :)

cousin mary frances, a devoutly progressive roman catholic, is going to texas & i might join her. she needs another lefty to be there in support. plus i love mary fafa and i love my tx family... & i love texas bc it is so beautiful. i love the forever skies and the land for days and the sighing seas of oaks and the endless roads... even the 10-gallon hats & blue jeans & boots & the twangy music & that drawwwl... but the trumpism, the redneckism, the hate, that makes it tough each time. i love my cousin so much, tho she always has baffled the bejeezus out of me... tho not really, bc sheś always been a bigmouth outsized personality, the star of the show whatever room she enters, ¨rita junior,¨ dad sez, tho aunty rita would die twice if she knew what rednecks her two children have become. my cousin jumped on me last time i was there, yelling: just cause i didn´t go to COLLEGE doesn´t mean i DON´T KNOW ANYTHING!!!! and blasted me for some minutes before losing steam.

i had asked her where she got her information. whoops, my mistake. how dare i ask her where her outlandishly xenophobic & kneejerkedy-law-enforcement-loving ideas came from. (i think she was defending the latest bad cop murderer of a black civilian. my cousin, like her dear mother did, loves & adores jeans-&-boots-wearing, gun carrying, drinking & chawing Men; she worships at the feet of the Toxic Male, but she´d never call them that & would call me weird for doing so. as for me, my paternal grandparents were law enforcement. my dear step-grandpa, i have had to admit now that i´m a grownup, was a big hunk of a man, so good to all of us, but in his line of work a life-taker & a neck-breaker. james says in mp school & the military in general they get waaaay more training than those who go to cop school. he sez that´s why there are so many of them who are dangerous idiots. even my cousin´s brother was involved in so many shootings, he got HONORABLY RETIRED from the cop shop... with pension!!!! so just knowledge of my family causes me to know james is right... not my cousin. we need law enforcement. but THEY NEED MORE TRAINING!!! my cousin´s brother, with whom i grew up, was/is a small, iron-obsessed [weapons, weights, motorcycles], fearful boy who was abused in childhood... shouldn´t such a person, who might be looking to get even with Life, get more training than a soldier does before he is armed & sent out onto the streets?? so why am i a skeptic about all of this & my cousin believes that cops are de facto right, that guns are de facto the way, w/o compunction? she is bright, but she seems to consider the examined life to be the mark of a snob or a weirdo, i.e., me. :( and maybe until college becomes affordable for all, it will continue to be seen as the realm of the elite, instead of a place for those who want to build their brains & souls & help the world... isn´t that why ppl go to college?? oops. maybe not.)

more: my cousin is brown as a peanut & was named after a ¨little [black] doll¨ her parents had when she was tiny. it had umber skin and black curly hair, like she does. my cousin does not look white. but she has aligned herself w the philosophies of ppl who 100 yrs ago would have hanged her, but more likely would have had her as a servant.

there are many ppl in just our own family that are like this: they revile ppl who question the 2nd amendment, law enforcement, & who´ve gone to college. but if college now reeks of elitism & exclusivity, what about their criminal wanna-be-mob-boss millionaire hero, the orange stain???? apparently the questionings i mentioned indicate disloyalty to the united states of america... yet ignorance of oneś own government, misogyny, hypocrisy, unchecked privilege, & bullying are just fine!!!

dad and i were emailing this morning about the whole confusion, & what he sent was worth repeating, i thought:

subject: interracial rednecks

dad,

i was thinking about what i said re sitting under confederate flags with shotguns and realized all those family ppl have interracial relationships!! so what IS their objection to liberality??? why is there such hatred toward intellectualism and inclusion????

i still tend to think itś racism somehow.

the white men control the brown ppl (spouses, significant others, children). the brown woman obtains power by being with (controlling) the white man. is this colonialism 2.0, contained within oneś own household?

i just don´t get it!!!

dad´s reply:

It is fearful, tribal behavior and not entirely limited to the uneducated.

The naked apes survived because they were fearful. Watch your cat.

www.HistoricBakersfieldAndKernCounty.com

the heat lately has been uncomfortable here, but quite worrying elsewhere: 130 in death valley. 130 in las vegas!! 123!! james sez, ¨thatś as hot as it was in saudi arabia.¨ (and then i think, he was in saudi arabia? then out leaks another snippet of james´s life. i think i know more now about his life than my own! yet i know hardly nothing about him, i think at times. the experiences heś had are never truly knowable to a citizen like me.)

¨the planet is fine...the people are f**ked!!!!¨ (george carlin)

now iḿ just blablablaing along bc iḿ in front of a fan and it is 80 degrees in this house and i am so comfy in my hot pink muumuu (ha! how the pinup manque has sunk! a muumuu! but what a wonderful sink it enables!!!) yes, dear gawd, my human suit is so happy in this house & temp, but to bakersfield i now must go w/the dog children, for dear mama´s bd. so that means extreme heat. so wherever you be, stay cool, you´ll.

blablablablablablabla

am driving myself nutty looking at tiny houses and trailer hitches.

think i need a chill pill or some other way to release adrenaline!!! here are some pix. after this, more piano!!!!

blogger no longer gives the option to caption individual pix, so these will have to remain inscrutable, or annoying, or unknowing, or whatever.

sometimes peanuts, sometimes shells. -uncle henry

...i thought the neighbor was a nice male, but he neglects his dog, a sweet giant of a bear having the same name as my older stepson. the dog is almost as big as i am but affable, friendly, such a good boy. the male underfeeds the dog & leaves it alone constantly. he is blase & uncaring when others (i´ve done it now 3x) have to go retrieve the dog when he gets out repeatedly. ...resentment is when i drink poison and expect you to die.... (i posted this on facebook because my week has been nothing but shells.) 28 years ago today was the last time I drank alcohol, so tomorrow is the anniversary of my first day sober, July 4th, 1995. Life keeps happening, but thanks to sobriety and adopting a program for living, my reactions are generally improved. Thank you to everyone I've met in this life. Everyone is a teacher -- how to be as well as how not to be, with, of course, much to be learned in the middle. One thing for sure is now I feel like I have a life instead of an existence, which is how it felt before. In general, my sober life has been one of purpose, with some serenity, which I never felt before. Even with life's certain ups and downs, I can be useful and have peace. A good Independence Day to all, Jenny Page.... i went to a teacher conference last week w/the hurricane named corey (talented hyper hilarious brainy principal of our school) as well as other colleagues. we all were upgraded; ¨the room´s larger than my apartment!¨ exclaimed our young history teacher, one of those guys born an old man, adored w/o comparison by our student body, deservedly so. the room featured an entry lounge w/large sectional & tv; a full kitchen; a separate bedroom w/two plush beds, tv, feather pillows, all of it perfectly temperature-regulated. large bathroom, everything built-in, everything new, everything nice. i was swallowed up by the vastness, the silence, the city-fied aloneness of the place, tho some nights i slept like the rock you might´ve heard about. the hotel gym featured sturdy cardio with video screens: i skiied across the grand canyon, biked in reims, france as well as villages in the alps. four of us females sat in the jacuzzi one night while corey regaled all, including strangers, w/her wild & hyperbolic comedic stylings. fireworks boomed from disneyland, their reflections sizzling across the brightened nighttime hotel windows nearby. full breakfast each morning. delicious, of course. busy busy important mentally-taxing info all day at the convention center, brain crammed with school stuff, school stuff, school stuff, then finally home, back to the mountains, back to the birds, the breeze, the blue sky, the pet children.... circling back to resentment, at the conference a little birdy told me that you can mail someone ¨a box of sh*t.¨ ¨what?!?!?!¨ i sputtered. that can´t be real; that´s something you only see in early john waters. ¨here, check it out,¨ the person said, whipping out a phone & proving it. ¨you have to pay more to send human sh*t,¨ i learned. i couldn´t stop gaping. in this world of mind-boggling technology, people can pay to mail boxes of excrement to a**holes -- totally anonymously.... when james is not here, i work inside & outside til i can´t move anymore. i not only love it, it needs doing. i learn about stuff. i eat weird combinations of food & watch subversive, avante garde art, foreign, cult & grindhouse movies i´d otherwise never. last night, a particularly gruesome & brutal flick kept interspersing footage of glenn gould. what keyboard facility! what clarity of tone! startling! i read up on him this morn & so from that awful film learned a new piano technique, ¨finger tapping,¨ taught to glenn gould & others by the famous piano teacher known -- cher & prince-like -- by the single name guerrero. i hope it will help these slow phalanges move along a little quicker.... how does it all relate? it takes fertilizer for growth. from crappy experiences -- inadvertent, intentional, unavoidable, whatever-- can come a message, a wisdom, a betterment. humans are messaging-making machine, i know. from the luxurious aloneness of the hotel experience came a conference bringing fellowship w/other educators, pedagogical goodness. from the brutally ugly film came increased piano possibilities. from the frustrations of my life i (much of the time belatedly) discover character defects, practice patience & take positive action. sometimes i step in sh*t, but that is human, & i know now not to roll around in it, like i did in younger years. i learned that i can pay to have a box of caca shipped to some a**hole or another via u.s. mail, & how is that positive except as a means of revenge? well, by writing about it here, i not only squash any chance i might do it myself (& then feel guilty forever), but now you know. and you, my friend, well, do with it what you will. https://www.shitexpress.com/ https://poopsenders.com/

zzzzzzzzzzzzz

sore, owowow, sore sleepy old age

hello. stomp stomp stomp. and a tiny house. and travels.

don't know if anyone reads this blog anymore, but i still like writing on it @ times. i think i'm finally getting a pretty nice tiny house for the hill above the house. we'll see; fingers crossed. and maybe the vintage trailer will go for a good cause. pingers crosst. school is winding down & i'm actually home today due to being lately fairly ill in the head (physical, not mental). hope i'm not becoming allergic to frazier mountain, like i was bakersfield! btw, been traveling a bunch. dad became 82 years young & we had a family party. he asked for unshelled peanuts as a gift. when he goes on his walk each morn, he shells & eats them as he ambles. mama celebrated another year being our mam. we ate chicken with rice, beans, & tortillas & she immediately donned the lovely blue blouse i was able to find for her. & if you're in colton, go to viva vegan. wow! james said, of jackfruit, which i told him i'd had in a viva vegan taco, "tastes like meat. that stuff's good!" i shoulda known he'd know about it. the hotel that's good around there is the best western plus arrowhead. i left my stuff in the room like an airhead & it's coming back to me via u.s. mail. so the staff is honest. and the breakfast was really, really complete & good. and in san bernadino, you can see the original mcdonald's (all decrepit & creepy & retro-looking) & go to a wonderful thrift store, eco thrift. and in anaheim the other day, i did 3 miles on the anaheim cove trail, surrounded by noisy city but also the flowing santa ana river, then had han's ice cream: animal cookie with caramel milk tea flavors. sticker delishissness. then, thank god, we left the city & got home to the hill. i think i like this flyer, so here it is. come over to sue's sat night for some fun. mro latre.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

oh boy, so tired. realized that since before easter break, i've been home 24 hours only 3x. need more rest!! here are the pix run & the article from cesareo, published in the bakersfield californian newspaper about last night's show. we had a great crowd, & this article was partially why. mare see, c!

The Stompers, 6 to 8 p.m. Friday, Pour House Bar & Grill, 4041 Fruitvale Ave. James and Jenny Page, aka The Stompers, are a guitar and piano duo specializing in incendiary rock and roll, country, and rhythm and blues — with a heavy emphasis on the blues. "We named our band because we both start songs by stomping our feet," Jenny said. The pair will perform a rare local 21-and-over show Friday at the Pour House Bar & Grill. Expect a lot of uptempo rock numbers featuring some Jerry Lee Lewis-style piano work by the excellent Mrs. Page and a harmonica solo or two by Mr. Page, who goes by the stage name "Whiteboy James." His brooding intensity is bookended by his wife's effervescent smile and personality. Some couples make beautiful music together. These two — from their respective and combined originals, to their covers of Americana ranging from Bob Wills to The Blasters — make music to burn the house down. "We're going to be playing some blues and some hillbilly stuff," James said. Jenny added later, "To quote Big Manny (Manuel Gonzales from the East L.A. rock, Latin and blues band The Blazers): 'When in doubt, play more Chuck Berry.'"

stompstompstompstomp

saturday at the doll hut, james was in highest form, a god on the stage, a superhero, an icon! he was a big whoaaaa. we made it back to kern county for easter with the family. we were home today on frazier mountain working on the house. i put up the patio again & took a little sauna. tomorrow school resumes. as does the music. now here we go! our combo renamed & restamped! i hear pour house has good food. yessss! we are going to stomp stomp stomp!!!

what i did during the bizzard

last thurs we left work early bc the blizzard was said to be incoming. fri was no school, only some snow, but the roads here get icy & the buses can't roll. all students in our district are bussed unless parents take them via car. no buses = no school district-wide. one route is a 45 min ride to-from school, to an alpine mountain "club." its only in-out access (unless folks want to go around, taking 2+ hrs to campus) is a twisty, windy, 2-lane road varying from 6 to 9k in elevation. that's the kicker, the one that usually has our district calling school for the day - it's quickly impassable. one time, an entire school bus nearly slid from the drop-off into the pines. i don't know quite how they got it out, only that more than one piece of rescue equipment was involved. anyways, no school. then the wkend hit & with it, the blizzard, hereafter known as "the great blizzard of 2023." the icy downpour seemed first like a christmas movie of old, soft & lovely, then after a while permutating in all the ways snow can, settling into a viciously icy deluge from hell (if it was a place of freezing). i woke on the 3rd morn to turquoise sky & thinking it had passed wrote a poem. even went out in mid-thigh snowpack to clear the driveway, a plus-2 hour task. we snuck out to bakersfield when the i-5 opened, had italian sandwiches & ice cream, drove a box of torrones & pyrenee's bread to mom & dad at their retired teachers meeting. felt the sun on our faces. magnificent! but back home that eve the snow returned with seeming vengeance, the sky black, the winds bansheeing, the white sheets freezing, the house ever-colder, even with fireplace blazing. where were the roads? our cars? nothing but whiteness, a blank blanket almost evilly sub-freezing, melvillian. what to do? there was little. cook. read. hot tea & coffee. check the weather forecast & road conditions 3 times per hour. some exercise, tho it was too frigid to put aside the blankets. call family. a thousand thoughts passed through my noggin & came out the other side. i think james hoped to sleep away his time, but eventually he got up. we didn't practice any music bc he said it was too cold, & i guess it was. we watched chopped then made food in our air fryer. watched films on tubi, that freely-streaming treasure box of cinephilia: gilbert (about gottfried; we had to turn it off twice, sobbing for different reasons); the wolf house (eerily beautiful, creepy, desolately sad, stop-animated parable of south american nazi-ism); & others i already forgot. on pluto, another freely-streaming tv service, we found an i love lucy channel! let the dogs out, in, out, in, out. cancelled gigs. contemplated new ones. watched & rewatched & recited dialogue with the office. played stupid phone games. began obsessing about real estate in places w/o winter weather, ones we couldn't visit bc every road out of frazier mountain was closed. with the deep, deep cold permeating the house & our bones, & nothing warm seeming possible, i thought a lot about gene taylor, how evil the universe & Fate can seem to be, but what to do? the past isn't changeable. say a prayer, put on more clothes, & try to turn thoughts to something positive, try try try.... now here is the good part: through it all, we realized we got closer. james dryly told dad, "i've been in much worse, much smaller quarters, for much longer, with much-less desirable companions." i read a book about a man who lost his spouse to illness & realized how lucky i am to have my james. each day, we wake up. he is handsome, silly, smart, brave, & like all couples, we get on each other's nerves at times, but he is my person & i am his. for what was i complaining? a little ice? i have a roof, my health, & love... family members wrote books this past year: brother-in-law, dad, sister. not sure about bro-in-law's, his memoir about being a drug addict turned preacher & human traffic victim-rescuer, however i've been editing dad's, an exhaustive history of the kern county fair. he's been putting the finishing touches on it for months. he & angie (dear sister) were neck-&-neck to the finish line; angie won, declaring her book, a "cozy romance about pro-wrestling" (and more) finished. dad now says he will send me his entire book via docs so i can complete the edits & he can call his done, as well. meanwhile, in the last days of the storm, i've been reading & editing angie's, marveling at her imagination & how she has taken threads & chapters of her life & wrapped them into a fiction. i cannot do that & never will, but it's gratifying to see the painstaking care & craft that has gone into both her & dad's disparate works. i hope they both publish. i hope her's becomes a bestseller, because it just might-could. well, i think that is it for now. goodness & gratitude bless the sun at this moment shining, our giver of life, our golden, warming source. the little animals are cavorting, tweeting, chirping, hopping, & flying in the warming tundra outside & now, six days after it started, the storm has ceased & this life now is gooder than ever.

foe toes & follow-up

for some reason i have to log out, log into work account, open google photos, screenshot, THEN i'm able to upload pix here. cumbersome. i'm sure it's bc my work account has swallowed up my pc. i don't care much except it's a p.i.t.a. when i want to post pix to this blog here ... to follow up on below's crazy-lady entry, the trip to sf wasn't all horrible. the hotel was really nice & should've provided us a good time except for non-compliant coconut action. i loved the coat shown in the pic, which my sister had given to me (she didn't want it) & that particular pic shown here of my dear husband in a happy moment. i can't even remember the hotel's name, so completely have i blotted away the rest of that part of the trip. and amtrak was nice, providing lulling motion, endlessly interesting landscape, & endless snacking for james via the dining car. and we went to the musee mecanique, one of my fave places on this earth. and the halal guys was a great food find. and it was good brain & body relief to chug out all those miles on all those unending city streets. and afterward, it was great to leave the city, got to get away, all that fussin & fightin, you know i sure can't stay... the other pic depicts penny petunia page & joe louis page (facetiously now named joe louis jordan prima page) venturing into the emerging weather sanity as well the other one showing the turquoise sky of heaven mentioned below.

blablablablablablablablablablablablablablabla

haven't written in a long while, tho much has happened, as i'd bet it has in your life, too. today it snowed & snowed! then the sun came out bringing turquoise heaven to earth. lately i've had a lot of the blues from the cold; they call it s.a.d., tho i wonder if people outside the so-called "1st world" suffer it? a lot of my suffering is cultural, i think, tho some be genetics... last night we watched antiques roadshow. the other day he took me to the desert bc my blues were just not lifting, & the desert wide & gold brought some hours of happiness, then i found a signed rev howard finster print at a junk store owned by an ex-cop right by the air force base & i just about plotzed! what a find!!!! and from voodoo vinyl, on the avenue in lancaster, got another copy of a book i got at age 16, a boogie-woogie transcripts thing, but this one still has the little flexi-record! and also on the av, the art gallery was closed but the ancillary one, the guy let us peek at the upcoming show, punk rock art, & there was ivy! & there was lux! (i mean in portraits, of course.) and then i learned the cramps are having a mini-renaissance bc of that wednesday addams show; she dances in a viral video to googoo muck. and the library book sale, well, it's the best i've ever seen. and the cholos were out in their ranflas & coches & pendletons & stacys & we walked & saw a vast array of humans, many more blacks than we have on our white mountain here, & i told james it was wonderful, what a change, more variety of experience than we saw during our hell-trip to san francisco in december, even, tho i did massive walks each day there, one day from nob hill to the mission, walking & walking to keep the hell away... ok, i'm rambling; just all kinds of stuff has been going on, too much to chronicle here. i can't believe my childhood friend's child took his own life. what tragedy. the world is beauty & tragedy. and then the rest. and we had a weekly gig, it didn't work out, we're gonna get another one, i've gotten to do some good works & also make an ass of myself, as i seem to do. james & i keep on chooglin. life keeps going for now. what else? i don't know. whaddaya want? a wish sandwich is the kind of a sandwich where you have two slices of bread & you wish you had some meat. that reminds me for some reason that today is gene sculatti's bd, art fein wrote a new book, & it sure did my heart & gut some good performing invitation to the blues, the rockabilly version of mellow down easy, & even my babe the other eve, tho the set was a challenge. i'm sure none of this has made sense. here are some pix. which one do you like?

Sitting is the new smoking, or why our dad always has been so slim

(dictated via speech to text, which mean errors are to follow! does anyone else think the creators of voice typing are germanic, due to the system's excessive noun capitalization?) we have had a free little library outside our pad for a couple years now, & it's gotten pretty battered by the elements, but it endures as a local mini-fixture. the current one, just a big box I painted with waterproof coating, is the second iteration since a former sponsee of mine ran over the 1st one, then tried to hit & run, but James was standing at the fence watching as it happened.... anyways, sometimes we get the most interesting books dropped off, and one I have kept on the breakfast table pile intent to read has proved to be pretty damn interesting. the metabolic Factor by Jonny Bowden, turns out, is a modern classic of nutritional advice. on Amazon it's going for 45 to 200 plus bucks. wow! who would have thought.

the scary chapter from yesterday was about how toxins have been endemic in American bodies since around 1955, when chemicals from pollutants, agricultural products, and the s*** they put in our food and body products reached threat level midnight, as Michael Scott might say. this morning's chapter explains why our dad's always been so thin. he is always in motion, but he does not really exercise and never has. yet he has the same body weight at age 81 as he did in high school and few health troubles for a man of his vintage. here we go, the shortened chapter for you to enjoy.

chapter 12, pathway number 5, movement: more effective than exercise at burning fat?

most people don't understand why I distinguish movement from exercise. they Wonder: what's the difference? great question. after all, how is walking briskly to the bus different from walking briskly, or jogging around a track? how is lifting groceries different from lifting weights? after all, your biceps don't know if you're curling dumbbells or milk jugs. let's think of exercise as a specific type of movement. it's a structured planned event with the distinct goal of stimulating the metabolism for some defined benefit: burn fat, build muscle, get faster, get stronger, or train longer. climbing the stairway up to the lobby of your office building is movement. using the StairMaster at a challenging level for 20 minutes is exercise...

movement is just what you do in the process of living... all that [daily movement] is what researchers call NEAT: non-exercise associated thermogenesis. and it's an often ignored but crucial part of your fat burning metabolism [and health improvement]. NEAT Burns a whole lot of calories.To be exact, it burns a whopping 200% more calories than you burn when you spend 30 to 45 minutes at the gym exercising. that's exactly why people who walk and move a lot are thinner and healthier than those who don't, including those who exercise. in fact it turns out that this kind of movement is a huge component of total daily energy use, i.e., calorie burn. NEAT doesn't just include walking around, but all the moving you do during your day. standing up, sitting down, fidgeting!, typing on your computer, even tossing in your sleep! there's research that compares people who exercise for 30 minutes every day but who sit for most of the day with people who have a high daily level of activity just moving around but don't actually do any structured exercise. in terms of health and fitness, those who move around a lot do far better than the gym rats.

[crucial part for me:] the amount of calories you burn through NEAT is dramatically impacted by eating and exercise. the less you eat and the more you exercise, the more the body compensates by decreasing calorie burn from NEAT. that's that law of metabolic compensation for you again....if you're not taking NEAT into account then you're missing the boat. it's probably the most important contribution to your daily calorie burn, right after your resting metabolic rate, rmr, which is the number of calories it would take to keep you alive just laying around all day in a flotation tank.

this is one of the reasons why policy makers suggest walking 10,000 steps per day. and this time the policy makers got it right. 10,000 steps a day is one way to guarantee that we move more in the way that our naturally thin ancestors did. ...

by all accounts, more people do structured exercise today than at any other time in history of mankind, yet despite this, the average man or woman today is far heavier then those of past generations. this makes no sense at all, until, that is you look at the actual statistics on movement. [crucial part again!] our ancestors moved all day, every day. research shows that our hunter-gatherer ancestors walked from three and a half to more often 10 miles every single day, often carrying babies and hauling gear in the process. in contrast, modern men and women sit for 95% or more of their waking day.

... a rash of research has shown recently that inactivity may be the biggest risk factor of all for diabetes and heart disease, two of the end stage consequences of a damaged metabolism. in one study... researchers showed that movement was a far better predictor of health than either moderate or even intense physical exercise. in other words, sitting all day long and then going for a vigorous 30 minute run was not nearly as effective for health and metabolic function as just getting up and moving more in your daily life... jogging for 12 mi a week was not much different than walking for 12 miles a week from a weight loss perspective, and both dramatically enhanced cardiovascular health.

if you're wondering how that could possibly be so, consider the fact that numerous studies have shown that intense exercise, while perfectly healthy, can nonetheless cause compensatory reactions that increase hunger and cravings, which work against the very goals you're trying to achieve. in fact, this discovery led the great science writer, Gary taubes, to write a piece for New York magazine... the subtitle of which was why most of us believe that exercise makes us thinner, and why we are wrong.

[crucial part again:] some believe this effect is mediated by the stress hormone cortisol. intense exercise causes high levels of cortisol, which can have a number of damaging effects that are not typically seen with low intensity movements like walking.... and exercise doesn't make you immune from the damage. see, there's a difference between too much sitting and too little exercise. even if you exercise every day, you don't get a free pass from the metabolic consequences of extended periods of sitting. exercise May well be the greatest anti-aging drug on the planet, but it doesn't totally wipe out the damage done by spending 8 hours a day in a chair. even marathoners are not exempt. runners who sit for long periods of time when they're not training also have an increased risk of disease and death.

that's because the metabolic consequences of extended sitting are significant. the muscles go silent, metabolism slows, and the rate at which you burn calories drops to about one calorie per minute. your fat burning enzymes begin to drop. within as little as 24 hours your body is less able to use insulin effectively. you become less sensitive to insulin while your insulin resistance increases. and insulin resistance is a Hallmark of obesity and diabetes. in one study, sitting for two straight hours increased the glycemic response to a standardized meal by over 45% when compared to 80 minutes of sitting and 40 minutes of very light intensity walking. that means that the group that sat for 120 minutes had a clinically significant increase in metabolic risk simply because of an extra 40 minutes of sitting. ...if you sit for extended periods of time, you're taking some points out of your health Bank account., no matter how many deposits you make with healthy lifestyle choices.

the following suggestions [revealing the target reader to be an office-dweller of means!] will minimize the withdrawals: one, stand up for a minute or so every hour. two, take a walk to the water fountain. three, if you're on a plane, walk to the back of the plane at least once every hour or two. four, at your desk try sitting on a balance ball which constantly engages stabilizing muscles. five, walk up a flight of stairs. six, do some casual stair squats for a minute once every hour or so. remember, the whole point is to interrupt the extended period of sitting as frequently as possible.

kind, truthful, necessary

just wrote a big dispatch about this dumb bird that keeps pecking the window & somehow that morphed into writing about the horrifying fact that the jeffrey dahmer netflix series is #1 with viewers which means children are watching it, & i know that bc one of my 5th grade students mentioned it, & that is just scary & sickening to consider. tho when i was little, i was drawn to the muerte magazines at the panaderia we'd walk to down on baker & sumner in east bakersfield. hmmmm.... anyways, i don't think i should go into all the hand-wringing detail about all of that, it's not necessary, so the post is going to oblivion. and how are you? today it is beautiful on frazier mountain. our "new ward" (as dad calls him) is lewis, who had been at shelter on the hill for over 6 months. he is very old & very cute. we wanted a puppy, but the puppy was a spazz & she would've mowed mom & dad down when they visited, & she was immediately adopted by someone else, anyways, so we took sweet little lewis, who, it turns out, is a texas heeler. we renamed him joe louis, of course. penny isn't sure about him, but it's worked out excessively well, considering. james says we "dodged a bullet" not getting joe louis in his youth bc as his little personality has come out, we realize he would have been hell on wheels, were he still young. he sneaks food & broke through the dog door & for a while liked to walk up behind the cat & snarl, causing the cat to fly in the air like a cartoon figure. he has a raspy bark & doesn't vocalize except to grunt & snuffle like a pig. maddy remarked, "maybe he was raised with a pig." he likes to hide in corners, like on top of my clothes in the closet. we absolutely are in love with this little old guy. did i say he is adorable? there goes that darn stupid bird again. i think it's a warbler. i thought maybe it was pecking at bugs, which seemed intelligent (wait in the nearby tree, hiding, then jump out & eat a bug off the window), but james says the bird thinks he sees another bird in the reflection of the window. so the bird just is dumb. a bird brain, in other words. that's all for now. i hope i get the motor bike for james today & that we get the dogsitter off rover.com & therefore get to go to vegas for our 10th anniversary & buy the army tent that will be a sauna. and i hope somehow kids don't see the jeffrey dahmer show.

death and...

i just did our damn taxes. late, but w/one wk to spare. dear god!!!! why?!?!?!?! i'm not an outlaw like aunty rita & uncle henry, who didn't pay their taxes for yrs... should feel relieved, but i'm just exhausted!!!!!! what a pain in the a**!!!!!! that is all for now except that i have lost 10 lbs & we did get our little old man, joe louis page, arthritic canine extraordinarius, or as dad called him as they stopped thru en route back from angie's bd at the coast, "your new ward."

hello!

-i haven't blogged in some time, so will check in now. am looking at how to build a boulder retaining wall. interesting stuff! there are lots and lots of rocks and boulders around here, but i don't have a skip loader or anything like that, so need to think on it some more. railroad ties would be dramatic, but they're not common to locate. -anyways, mama gave me this computer w a larger screen, so it's nice to use tho it's old & slow. i was shocked by how many old photos are on here of us all, seeing how everyone's aged in 10-12 yrs, realizing tho i don't have my looks much anymore, i'm much more satisfied with how life is now. but man, we had some adventures! i wouldn't changed anything.

-school has resumed & i really enjoy being a kindly cornball there. i know every kid's name & walk the halls greeting & hugging, even. it feels just fine to be warm & friendly w them all. our school is the prettiest you've ever seen, an old mission-style complex nestled right beside fort tejon, with mountains and blue skies all around. every day i drag my lazy butt out of bed & get to work & then am reminded of how lucky i am. -tomorrow's a gig at malainey's with lee campbell on drums. that will be super fun! the one show w lee went really well. everyone was comfortable & happy. looking fwd to it. -last night we watched trainwreck, a doc about woodstock 99. what an aptly named picture. am reminded of a quote i read yesterday: "american life is unbounded promise and hypocrisy, faith and greed, new spectrums of joy and self-doubt, freedom enable by enslavement. all of these things at once." (my dad & curt cobain, hua hsu, new yorker aug 22 2022) & that leads to a profile of the biden family i just read in that same new yorker issue. biden sr (biden's dad) told his family little of his life, having had a history that recalled (for me) that of bill wilson: striving for fortune, hit by the depression, alcoholism, illegalities, madness, disappointment. i am moved by families blighted by addiction, like mine is, like my life has been, like james's has been. and i was moved to read biden has been sworn into office for the past 50 years using a bible that belonged to his "aunt al," the wife of his dad's best cousin. joe's mom would go pick aunt al up every day & she would sit on the left side of the couch, & then every evening, his mom drove her home. their loyalty toward aunt al remained, but the families in general by that time had called it quits. too many sad & difficult days. - in the article, a child of the cousin's family concluded, "they ended up in the white house; we ended up in the trailer park." families are complicated. i loathe some of mine, avoid others, am wary of a few, yet love & cherish many. i would lay down my life for some. that bible still means sometime to joe, & i'm not religious, but i understand. - well, this has been my boring entry. certainly lots more has happened, my trip to texas, the end of summer, stepwork, better health, but that's it for now.

go see Elvis. now.

https://ew.com/movies/elvis-austin-butler-cover-story/

I was surprised when James said he wanted to see this because judging from the trailer, it looked bombastic and embarrassing, at least to me. The young actor didn't look enough like Elvis, Tom Hanks's prosthetics looked clownish, and the use of anachronistic music and vulgar style just seemed so gross. So we went and saw it and all I can say is, go see it. It is an American tragedy and the sensory overload-style well-reflects the story of a beautiful god-touched-down-to-Earth who lost his life, swallowed by fame and the greed of his handler. Austin Butler was uncanny as Elvis in voice and physicality, excepting those moments in closeup early on, creating disconnect because he did not resemble Elvis (but who ever has?). In retrospect, I think it was important to give the audience those moments of disconnect because otherwise the movie was submergingly overwhelming. Tom Hanks's clownish makeup really was appropriate because the colonel was a clown, a snowman, a con man of the circus. All the anachronistic stuff, well it was secondary because the movie was about emotion, not verisimilitude. So what I realized was that everything makes sense once you see the movie. My only remaining complaint is that the casting director could have done a better job of finding actors who resembled the real people such a Sam Phillips and Vernon Presley. Overall, Elvis 2022 was a devastating shock and a total movie-going experience. I was blubbering at the very end with the final reveal of the real Elvis, bloated but still beautiful and ruined by the world. James walked out to go to the bathroom at that moment so I couldn't see if he took it that hard, but he too thought it was quite a film.

one more sober trip around the sun + fun in the casa

a nice man i knew used to say something similar to the former (above) about his birthday, but i use it to explain that on july 4, i celebrated 27 yrs without illegal drugs or alcohol. in somewhat celebration, we made these home videos. the 1st one is insane & brilliant. https://www.facebook.com/jamesandjenny.page/videos/1006756236698680/... we have been playing blasters songs together, so the next video is that. we both have the blasters´ catalogue in our dna alongside chuck berryś, so it is just a matter of getting the fingers to cooperate. (so glad i have completed all of my home projects so that my fingers can heal.) (they were not healed in this video & in fact got stuck a few times. ow!!!) https://www.facebook.com/100004546745776/videos/1056121651946644/... james does hank wms extraordinarily well since he so deeply feels the lyrics. here is an example: https://www.facebook.com/100004546745776/videos/528440612397367/... lastly is a frank stokes song which i was told we do in the piedmont style, tho that is accidental (but cool to learn). https://www.facebook.com/100004546745776/videos/1165649637550138/... the videos merited an enormous number of positive social media comments as did the real-world gig the other eve, which we did with lee campbell on the drums. it was an outside party but went extremely well. the band was happy & played so solidly, it was not at all like lee had been off as jamesś drummer for over 20 yrs. adding to the good was that the hosts provided a stage AND shade, unheard of in my experience when playing in someone´s yard. i could not have been happier unless we somehow had a teleporter to get us quickly back to our mountain home afterward bc we were so exhausted after playing a full night after so much time off.... that was a very long & cumbersome sentence, but oh well. ok, time for beddy-bye. this has been my low-key entry. may all be good in your world.

twiddletwiddletwiddle & starting over

sitting here for a bit twiddling my thumbs waiting on a few possible return calls/emails. might not get them! i understand if i don´t. we´ĺl see what happens! ... we went to taft to register the beast of a camper van. it was hotter than blazes. james had not been there since we went to rosco´s funeral. rosco was a great human, a funny, kind-hearted guy disguised as a dirty old man. he was important in our lives long ago, & important to james as a friend! he used to set up james´s shows at the oasis, an atmospheric, drunken hole-in-the-wall w/a large neon sign & ¨secret¨ back room said to be from prohibition days ... initially, our trip kind of sucked w/sad feelings about how rosco & the oasis, too, were no longer there & how it was so dang hot, waawaaawaa, grumblegrumblegrumble.... but then we took a minute to start the day over & almost immediately the tide turned! we wandered into the neatest junk store & found out from one of the storeś proprietors that the oasis has reopened! we bought neat junk! then we finally went to eat at asian experience, a restaurant touted by ¨that douchbag¨ guy fieri on tv (we walked in & james pointed, ¨thereś that douchebag!¨ at the big pic of the slickly famous chef on the restaurant wall). i´ve wanted to eat there for a decade, so now we´d get to see what the fuss was about! we shared a garlic pizza that was about the best i´ve ever had in california. the crust definitely was brick-oven-baked!... taft now has a nice grocery outlet, so that was the next stop. we were able to get all kinds of goodies at about half the price of the big supermarkets. :) the drive home was lovely, long shadows falling on the golden mountains & hillsides, fields filled with fruit & nut trees... so there is something to be said for starting the day over bc in this case, it truly worked.