End the War on Freedom

AirRacer89 at YouTube - Totally amazing. A stunt pilot rolls too fast, breaks a wing off of his airplane, goes into a diving spin, recovers, lands the plane, and walks away.

Over the weekend, I spent a lot of Saturday through Monday at the Sprit on the Mountain Music Festival at Eastover Resort in Lenox, MA. Saw a lot of great bands, including friends of mine, Linda Worster, Mark Kelso, and HuDost. My favorite acts from bands new to me were from Bill Miller, Rev Tor, and Sirsy. Bill Miller did an incredible rendition of Stormy Monday, playing blues on his acoustic guitar. He may just be the fastest strummer on the planet. Rev Tor had me dancing like a madman. What a backbeat! Sirsy is a pretty lady on standing drum kit, vocals, Jethro-Tull-style flute, and fun, plus a tight guitar player, who covers the bass line by electronically transposing his bottom guitar strings down an octave (I think). I would have danced to them as well, but my body was sore from the Rev Tor madness of the night before. I did get to sing along, "Nah nah nah, nah nah nah, nah nah nah nah nah", to "Waiting for Rain", loud enough to evince a comment from Melanie.

And, I got this nice winter cowboy hat:

My wife has been planning a hiking trip for quite a while. She started by preparing the kids for their yearly overnights with Flying Deer Nature Center, two nights on the trail, near home, for our daughter, and three nights on the trail, this time in the Green Mountains of Vermont, for our son. They got new sleeping bags, sleeping pads, and rain coats this year, and our daughter got a new backpack. My wife also bought two 3-man tents, a backpack for herself, and two summer-weight sleeping bags. Plus a camping stove, water purifier pump, and other sundries. She studied maps and hiking directions, and practiced setting up the tents and purifying water. She and I slept outside in the tent on the other side of the road from a nearby pond one night shortly after she got the first tent. It was fun.

Well, we went on that hike over the weekend. We started on Saturday at point A on this Google map, walked east about a mile to the Apalachian Trail, which we followed down the river gorge until we were south of Plantain Pond, at the top of the map. Then we went north to about 1/4 mile southeast of that pond tip, pitched our tents in a camping area, and spent the night. Yesterday, we retraced our steps to get out. Roundabout 3 miles each way, with lots of downhill on Saturday and lots of uphill on Sunday.

But it wasn't that simple. Never is, eh?

Our starting point was an Apalachian Mountain Club (AMC) parking lot, with a path to a very nice cabin, that you can rent. We headed out the wrong direction from the cabin, on a path that would have taken us south of, and then over Bear Mountain. Fortunately, we ran into Nate, an AMC ridge runner, who told us we could certainly go that way, but given that we wanted to go north, he could show us the way around the north side of Bear Mountain, and save us some time and a lot of effort. We told him we were planning to cross Mount Race, and sleep at the falls campground on the other side. That was about seven miles, over rough terrain. And my son had already told us of his hikes over Mount Race in earlier Flying Deer overnights. It's a hard climb, on bare rock. I think Nate realized that there was no way we were going to make that, and decided to go along to make sure we didn't get into trouble.

Shortly before we met Nate, I twisted my right ankle, and fell down. Was still able to walk, as there's very little left to rip in either of my ankles. But it hurt a bit, and the twist and fall drained a lot of my will. Wish I'd decided to call it a day right then. A little later, I twisted the left ankle, not as badly as the right.

By the time we got to the bottom of the gorge, we realized that there was no way we were going to get over Mount Race. We decided to stop at the next camp site, 1.3 miles away, uphill. I was exhausted, and sore, by the time we got there. We set up the tents, had a nice dinner, made water, and the family, a friend of my daughter's who came along, and Nate had s'mores while I lay in the tent, unable to move.

I awoke a couple of times in a near panic. The third time, around 11pm, was a full-blown panic attack. Fear. Terror. My wife was in the other tent, with the two girls, and my son was with me. She heard my whimpers, and came over, switched places with our son, opened up the tent, gave me her pad, which worked better than mine, and calmed me down until I could sleep for a few more hours. I awoke a couple hours before the rest of the group, and sat in various painful positions, trying to keep my feet from going to sleep.

Nice oatmeal for breakfast, lots of waiting for girls to get packed, and we were on our way back. I was still exhausted, so I had decided to walk straight home, at my own pace, and let my son make sure the wife made it (she travels a lot slower than I do, even when exhausted). It took me about three hours to get back. I reclined in the car seat until they showed up an hour later.

Fortunately, the weather was beautiful. No rain. Low eighties. Had I been soaked as well as exhausted, I may have just laid down to die, forcing those AMC ridge runners to call for help to carry me out.

Lots of lessons learned, but I was not into this trip in the first place, only went because my wife was so excited. Won't happen again.

On Saturday morning, my family, and a couple of friends, went to Tanglewood to see the dress rehearsal for the Boston Symphony Orchestra's concert of yesterday afternoon. The Saturday morning dress rehearsals are a relatively inexpensive way to see high-brow music for a lot less money ($17, 12 and under free). My wife went early with a regular to these rehearsals, and ran for seats when they opened the doors at 8:30 (performance at 10:30). She saved us front row seats. The "front row" for these rehearsals is about 10 rows back, leaving a buffer zone for the conductor to talk with the orchestra, but they were still incredible seats. Their program was Rapsodie espagnole by Ravel, Violin Concerto No. 1 by Bruch, and Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov. Pinchas Zukerman (wikipedia) played the violin solo for the Bruch on the "Dushkin" Guarnerius del Gesù violin of 1742. I enjoy my recordings of Itzhak Perlman, a close friend of Mr. Zukerman, playing his Soil Stradivarius violin, but there is nothing like live music. To say that I thought I had died and gone to heaven would be an understatement. The Bruch is not a particularly notey piece, though it had it's fast parts, but Mr. Zukerman handled it all, with seeming ease. And the sweetness of the sound that he evinced from his violin was a wonder to behold. I did not cry, as I have done before at a concert, but I closed my eyes in rapture and opened them wide in wonder. At one point he motioned to the string bass section to get louder. He even made kicking motions with his foot. "Kick it! Kick it!" Hehe. What a heavenly experience! Thank you, Mr. Zukerman.

George Potter at The Mental Militia Forums - new fiction. I'm collecting the pieces here. Links below are to my copy. This post will stay at the top until it's finished, or languishes too long. Look below for new posts.

• Part 1
• 2. Adopted Daughters

John Scott Lewinski at Wired - I just yesterday watched the last episodes in seasons 1 and 2 of the BBC's Torchwood series. Downloaded them from iTunes. There was one really bad episode in season 1, but the rest of them were fun. Some were very good. Every episode starts with Barrowman saying: "Torchwood. Outside the government. Beyond the police. Fighting for the future on behalf of the human race. The twenty-first century is when everything changes. And Torchwood is ready." (In the first season that last sentence is "And you've gotta be ready.") John Barrowman plays the leader of a 3-man, 2-woman team that protects the world from a space-time rift centered in their small English town.

The BBC plans to start filming in August a short, five-episode third season, to be shown as a mini-series in one week. I look forward to it.

Louis Armstrong and Danny Kaye at YouTube - Glorious rendition of "When the Saints Go Marching In". I especially like the part where Danny Kaye puts on his Satchmo voice. [mom]

I went to Radio Shack today to get a mini phono jack to RCA adapter so that I can play my iPhone through my son's bass amp at Jazz Band practice on Tuesday. I found that, but also brought home a pair of Koss UR-40 Headphones. Very nice!

Superbowl.com has the Superbowl commercials up. You have to watch the same Planter's Nuts commercial before each one of them. Guess they have to pay for their web site. I'm slowly going through them. Usually worth the time. Oh, Giants won the game, 17 to 14. Didn't watch it.

Arhive.org's Live Music Archive has a huge collection of concert recordings, mostly by obscure, unknown bands, but they have 2,861 Grateful Dead concerts. I'm listening to "Terrapin Station" from Live at Swing Auditorium on 1977-02-26 as I type this, with the rest downloading. Good stuff!

Wishbone Ash's Best Album is now available on iTunes. I purchased it right away. Yay!

Michiko Kakutani at The New York Times - no spoilers that I noticed. Not that any review would convince me not to get a copy first thing Saturday morning (and no, I'm not going to stay up until midnight to grab one at 12:01am, but my daughter might). Amazon, of course, has it for $18.

Erik Mongrain has a unique and incredible guitar-playing style. He often puts the guitar down on his lap, like a slide guitar, and "air taps" the strings with all ten fingers. Check out more music videos here. He's playing a concert in northern Vermont a week from tomorrow (6 May, 2007). I'm tempted to make the four hour drive. [irc]

YouTube has a 1973 recording of the group Focus playing their one hit wonder. Thijs Van Leer (singing) was a crazy man. And Jan Akkerman plays the guitar nearly as fast as John McLaughlin. Me like. iTunes link. [crooks]

Halffast at AR15.com - another survival novel by the author of Lights Out. Kept my interest through the first six chapters. Going back for more.

Nicole Belle at Crooks and Liars - dead of pnuemonia at the age of 73. Story incldues a link to this YouTube video of "Sex Machine". Git on up!

Publicola has been blogging about music a lot recently. Today, I'll join him, with my favorite band. In college, I played a Led Zeppelin album every day, which meant that I ran through their entire stock of albums at the time every week.

Here's "Whole Lotta Love", a remaster of the studio version synced to a bunch of video clips:

A live version of "Black Dog":

And "Kashmir", also live:

I went to a HuDost concert last night, in the meditation hall where I live. Well, I thought it was a HuDost concert. After an amazing set by Moksha, Jamal, and Linda, it turned out that they were just the warm-up band. Incendio was the main event. Jim and JP played incredible Spanish guitar, with a lady bassist (and occasional guitar player). Lots of dancing and clapping occurred. My shirt got soaked with sweat. Whooo haaaaaa!!

The HuDost web site has an itinerary of upcoming concerts with the two bands. New York City, Philadelphia, Ardmore, Tokoma Park, and Chapel Hill on 2, 3, 4, 5, & 6 of August, then Sedona in September. Catch them if you can.

I wrote in January about Deborah Henson-Conant, the "Wild Woman" of the harp. But those exclamations were on hearing her recorded music and seeing a few short video clips after my wife and daughter attended a concert. Yesterday, the whole family drove three hours to Arlington, Massachusetts (north of Boston), and participated in her Mother's Day Matinee "Invention & Alchemy" DVD/CD Release performance (check that link for upcoming shows, including a Hallmark Channel appearance on Wednesday, May 17, at 7am). She played excerpts from the DVD and treated us to her unique one-woman harp, song, story, and humor (and, for a couple of numbers, one man on tuba) show. And what a show it was!

They handed out latex gloves at intermission. After watching the DVD section where they dressed the entire Grand Rapids Orchestra in white lab coats and played on stage with latex gloves, her partner and producer, Jonathan Wyner, instructed us in pulling the gloves onto our heads, and in blowing them up and letting them fly up into the auditorium.

Deborah recited "Ladle Rat Rotten Hut" from Howard L. Chace's Anguish Languish. Quickly. What a riot!

A glorious time was had by all.

You can read more about, and order, the DVD here. We bought a copy, but got home too late last night to watch it.

Jet Li, Morgan Freeman, and Bob Hoskins star in a different-than-the-usual-martial-arts tear jerker. Yes, I said a tear jerker starring Jet Li. Oh, the fight scenes were tremendous, but there was a real, sappy, story behind it. Yowza!