Time, Time, Time

I never have enough time.  And I’m always craving more time.  Days flick by like I’m an accelerating time traveler.

Every year at Christmas I take off two weeks.  I always have big ambitions for my windfall of free time, but I never get done all the things I plan.  This year is no exception.  I have two days of freedom left and I’m depressed that I won’t have more.  I never have enough time, and I’m so envious of all my friends who have retired.  But those friends tell me that they’re as busy as ever.  I guess we never get enough time, even when we have all our time free.

And it’s not like I’m doing anything very important.  I go to bed at night regretting the friends I didn’t see, the albums I didn’t play, the television shows I didn’t watch, the books I didn’t read, the dirt I didn’t clean, the clutter I didn’t organize, the thoughts I didn’t think, the ideas I didn’t write about, the characters I didn’t develop, the photographs I didn’t take, the programs I didn’t write, and so on.  And that doesn’t even count the big ambitious goals I’ll never do like learn how to play the guitar, build a robot or become a chess player.  The list goes on and on.

My days start the same way every day, and my nights end the same way every night.  These morning and evening routines remind me just how much my life is like a clock, or how much our lives are based on rhythms.

I get up and let Nicky the cat out of the bedroom, petting him while he meows loudly at me for locking him in for the night.  He yells at me every morning.  I pick up his wet food bowl and follow him to the main bathroom where I get him fresh water for his daytime water bowl.  I take the wet food bowl to the kitchen and put it in the sink to rinse out, and then put on a finger cot and squeeze out .5 ml of medicine and go rub it in Nicky’s ear while he’s drinking his water.  I set my watch timer for 25 minutes and go check email.  Nicky comes in and sits in his chair next my desk chair and I pet him while I read emails.  When the alarm goes off I go back in the kitchen and fix Nicky one quarter can of Fancy Feast.  I then get a syringe and fill it with .5 cc of lactulose.  I pick Nicky up and put him on the counter and calm him down  with some petting and friendly chatting before forcing his mouth open and squirting the medicine onto the side of his mouth.  His reward is the bowl of wet food.

Now I go back to the bedroom take off my clothes, start the shower, weigh myself and touch my toes 15 times.  I shower, dry off, put on my underwear.  I go back into the kitchen and repeat the procedure with the lactulose but this time reward Nicky with one teaspoon of Yoplait original yogurt.  Then I go to my exercise room, put on my socks and do 15 minutes of physical therapy exercises for my back.  After that I put on my pants and shoes and do 130 reps of rowing and 30 arms pulls on the Bowflex to further strengthen my lower back.  Finally I eat my breakfast.

With all that done I can start my day.  What I do each day varies, but it’s surprisingly routine.

At night, around 10 pm I do Nicky’s medicine again, the third round of the day, in three parts spaced 25 minutes apart.  I usually watch TV while waiting between doses.  Finally, I lock Nicky in the bedroom, with his bowl of wet food, some extra crunchies, his heating pad and some new water in his nighttime bowl.  I then go to my office where I sleep in a chair because of my back.  If I didn’t lock Nick in the bedroom he’d walk on me all night long.  I undress and put on sweat pants for PJs, and put Restasis in my eyes.  I then go put on the alarm, turn off the lights and go to bed in my La-Z-Boy.  The last thing I do is think about all the things I didn’t get done during the day and think about all the things I want to do the next day.

Nicky’s getting old and I have no plans for another pet.  I’ll have to alter my routine, but I guess I get a few more minutes of time for each day.

In about a year I hope to retire.  That will get me a lot more time, but it will never be enough.  And then one day I’ll run out of time completely.

Maybe it’s time to think about the things I really want to do.  Maybe now is the time to prioritize my activities and time.

Is that even possible?

The year 2012 is almost over.  I wonder if there’s anything I really meant to do before it finishes?  How did it get to be 2012?  I remember so clearly 50 years ago thinking 1992 was the far future, and 2012 was unthinkable almost.

Time, time, time…

Does time really exist?  Is it a quantity we can bank or squander?

I love my life and what I do.  One of the things I like to do is bitch about not having enough time.  Bitch, bitch, bitch, that’s how I am about time.

Doesn’t everyone?  Does anyone ever have enough time?

So it goes.

JWH – 12/30/12

Living To Do Everything–And Getting Nothing Done

We want it all.  To do more, see more, go more, feel more, taste more…

We rush to fill every hour with more activities.  We hate to miss anything our heart desires.  Yet, how much do we really get done?

Patricia Hampl said in Blue Arabesque:

Isn’t that why I’d majored in English to begin with, without knowing it?  Not to teach, not to be a librarian, not for a job.  To be left alone to read an endless novel, looking up from time to time for whole minutes out of the window, letting the story impress itself not only on my mind, but on the world out there, letting the words and world get all mixed up together.  To gaze at the world and make sentences from its passing images.  That was eternity, it was time as it should be, moving like clouds, the forms changing into story.

By doing too much, we do too little.  Hampl blames modernity on our failure to see the sublime in life.

Is it more enriching to hear 1,000 different songs than to get to know 100 songs by playing them 10 times?  Is it a richer experience to study 10 songs by living with each a 100 times?  Or should we devote ourselves to 1 song until we can sing and play it note for note, either in perfect imitation or in wild improvising? 

The time spent is the same, but how deeply do we experience time when listening to 1,000 songs versus listening to a song 1,000 times?  How productive is contemplation?

I woke up this morning, lingering between sleep and wakefulness, entertaining myself with thoughts about what I would do today.  I’d like to pick just one goal and accomplish it each day, but no matter how hard I try, the whirlwind of life diverts me from the ambition I pick.  I can never focus because my environment pulls me in endless directions.

For example, between all forms of books, hardbacks, trade editions, paperbacks, ebooks, and audiobooks, I have about 1,000 books waiting for me to read.  What would life be like if I only had one?  Ditto for friendships, movies, television shows, photos, albums, hobbies, household responsibilities – all vying for my attention.  Not that I have a 1,000 of each – some much less, but others much more.

I can’t honestly say I have 1,000 essays and stories waiting to be written, but the number is large.  If I had no other distractions and only one idea I wanted to write about, how much more could I accomplish in one day?

I think we all want too much.  Wouldn’t we all benefit from a stay at Walden’s Pond and being Thoreau for a year?

While laying in my dreamy state of mind this morning, my subconscious told me I could get more done if I did less.

Why don’t I listen?

JWH – 8/26/12

So Many Books, Too Little Time

My motto should be:  “ Quot Libros, Quam Breve Tempus” or so many books, so little time.

My patron saint is Henry Bemis.

In case you don’t know Henry Bemis, he was played by Burgess Meredith in a very famous episode of Twilight Zone, “Time Enough at Last” about a super-bookworm, Henry Bemis.  Henry was a bank clerk who never could find enough time to read, until the world came to an end.

I never can find enough time to read either.  It’s a life of quiet desperation for words.   I have more unread books on my shelves than I will be able to read if I lived to be 100.  I also have a book buying addiction – I buy 7-10 books for every one I read.  I’ve always rationalized I will read them someday, but at 60, I know that’s not true.

I had an epiphany the other day.  I was flipping through some free books I had picked up and it dawned on me that I will never run out of something to read, even if I didn’t own a single book.  I have access to so many free or cheap books, that owning books doesn’t matter anymore.  I even pictured myself finishing a book and just leaving it where someone else could find it, and then stumbling onto my next read.  There’s a service for leaving books for other people to find called Book Crossing.

There’s also a movement called Little Free Libraries, where people build tiny waterproof libraries to give away books.  They put them in public places, or in front of their homes, with a sign “Take a book, leave a book.”  I wonder if I built a little free library box for my yard, would there always be a book in it I’d want to read when I finished my current book?

Where I work we’ve had a free book table for years.  I always find something to read there.  Today I snagged The Victorians by A. N. Wilson, and Us and Them: Understanding Your Tribal Mind by David Berreby.  Yesterday my friend Ted handed me Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.  Before that I brought home The Closing of the Western Mind by Charles Freeman.  Don’t be too impressed, I doubt I’ll actually read them, but like Henry Bemis I dream of the day when I could.  Ted is giving away hundreds of books.  Over the years so have I.

I’ve also rediscovered libraries, and my main library now has a used bookstore as part of the library.  So there’s a library book sale every day except Sunday.  It’s classic section always has at least one book I’ve always wanted to read.  Last Saturday I came home with five such books, for about $9.

And even if I couldn’t find a free book, there’s never been a time I’ve walked into a bookstore and not found a book I wanted to read.

This makes me wonder why I hoard books.  Generally I don’t read books off my bookshelves because I’m always hearing about a new book I want to read.  Serendipity always selects my next read, so why should I bother gathering books to somehow plan my future reading?

Well, it’s an addiction.  Not a bad one.  I don’t have to steal to keep up my habit.  The worse aspect about it is my house fills up with books and I have to decide which ones to give away.  That’s what I’m doing this week.  So far I’ve brought five cloth bags of books to the free book table at work.  The fall classes start this week and they will disappear quickly.

Another source of books is friends.  I know enough bookworms telling me about great books that I could mooch off of them for the rest of my life.

There’s also an Internet service called BookMooch.  You list books you want to give away by mail and people contact you.  You earn points towards mooching books off of other members.  I have access to so many free books that this service wouldn’t help me, but people living where books were hard to find should love it.

And just remember the new world of ebooks.  Feedbooks and Manybooks fills my Kindle and iPad with classics and public domain books.  And Books on the Knob daily reports all the great free ebooks that are available.   My library provides me with free ebooks to check out, and Amazon Prime lends me free books too.

I could reduce my bookshelves down to one volume, a Kindle, and never have to worry about finding something to read again.

I don’t think I’ll give away all my books.  I have too many I keep for sentimental reasons, but I do think I might try overcoming my book buying addition.  There’s no reason to hoard books.  Well, I can think of one reason.  If the world came to an end like in the Twilight Zone show, it would be great to have a stockpile of books to read if I was a sole survivor.

JWH – 8/21/12

What 12 Lessons About Life Would You Teach Your Younger Self If You Had A Time Machine?

Nobody likes taking advice from other people. 

What if you could get advice from an older, wiser version of yourself?  Would you take it?  What if you had a time machine and could travel back to visit your younger self and spend one day to help him or her prepare for the future?  Would your younger self listen and learn?

What advice would you give you?  How would you be convincing.  What proof could you bring?

There are two ways to approach this problem.  First, you could teach yourself how to get more of what you wanted in this life with hindsight, or you could convince yourself that you should be a totally different person, a better person.  If you collected rare baseball cards you could tell yourself how to get the rarest ones for your future self.  Or, you could tell your younger self, don’t waste a lifetime on collecting baseball cards, just play a lot of baseball.

As much as I’ve enjoyed my life, as much as I love my wife and friends, I have never been the person I wanted to be because of introverted habits and laziness.  I would go back and try to convince my younger self to become a different person knowing full well it would erase me and my current life.

If you had a time machine and could spend a day with a younger self, what age would you target?  Why?  What would you say?

I’d go back to 1964 when I turned 13, when I understood science fiction.  I think Jim-13 could understand Jim-60 and time travel.

Here’s what I’d try to teach Jim-13.

1. Give up my addiction to science fiction.  I have a life-long addiction to fantasy that I overindulge with books, television and movies.  I’d work very hard to convince my younger self to never look at television again, and to promise to read no more than one novel a month.  I’d try to convince him to read more non-fiction and classics.  I’d tell him when he did read SF, to find and read the very best science fiction, but no more than four SF books a year.  I’d try to convince him to seek out SF books that taught him more about reality and not use science fiction to escape reality.
2. Study science and mathematics.  I wouldn’t try to help my younger self get rich by telling him to buy key stocks, or which horses or football teams to bet on.   I’d try to teach him that the key to a good life is working hard at something you love and that being a scientist is probably the best way to spend a lifetime.
3. Give up junk food, eat healthy, and exercise.   I was an active kid, and skinny until after I got married, but I have an addictive personality and I ate lots of junk food.  Seeing Jim-60 weighing 234 pounds would probably be pretty convincing evidence.
4. Don’t get involved with drugs.  Hey, I grew up in the 1960s, so that will be a hard lesson to teach.  I might tell him to experiment under certain social conditions, but convince Jim-13 that drugs will waste a lot of time and money.
5. Pay more attention to other people.  I’ve always been introverted, self-centered and egocentric.   I’d try to convince Jim-13 that getting out of his head and focusing on what’s going on in other people’s heads will lead to more social success and a richer life.
6. Warn him about sex.  Hey, he’s 13.  I’d try to convince him that all those gazillion hours of sex fantasies won’t get him laid.  I’d try to teach him not to think about what he wanted but learn to observe women and study what they wanted.  I’d tell him, yes, all the girls have pussies, but the organ you really want to lust after is brains.  I’d tell him to learn to dance.
7. Take good notes.  I’d try very hard to teach Jim-13 to keep a journal, studying the art of writing as deeply as possible, learn to draw and sketch, and take one photo a day.
8. Find ways to make money and save it.  I’d teach him working provides social contacts and access to mentors, and that saving money will mean freedom to do more.  I tell him that easy money from time travel tips is wrong and a waste of time.
9. Finish school as fast as possible and get into college as soon as you can.  I’d convince Jim-13 that it’s very important to become independent as soon as possible and college is one way to do that.   Try to get in by 16.
10. Move in with your grandmother.  My parents were alcoholics and at age 13 I was about to go through some very bad years.  If I could have gotten away from them it really would have helped me tremendously.  And my grandmother managed an apartment building in her old age, and could have used the help.  If I could have grown up living in one place and had a stable life for junior high and high school I would have been a much different person.  I’d tell my younger self to not leave Miami until after college – to even get into the University of Miami for college.  Maybe even study marine biology.  I’d also advise him to leave for grad school and to study physics or astronomy then.
11. Find mentors.  I think the key to success is to start work young and find mentors that can help you understand the game in any situation.
12. Learn to focus and work hard.   I’d tell Jim-13 to push himself to work a little harder at his favorite projects each day.  To learned to focus his concentration a little harder on every task each day.   If you can spend 30 minutes focused on learning calculus one day, try for 31 the next.  If you can grind on a telescope mirror for 2 hours on one day, try for 2 hours and 5 minutes the next.  If you can run four miles one day, try for 4.1 the next.  Just keep pushing your body and mind to go further.

I know this is a fantasy and time travel isn’t possible. But playing this little thought experiment is very educational. I can always pretend its advice for Jim-13 from Jim-60, but it could be advice for Jim-80 to me at this moment.

But if this little fantasy was possible it would have played out different than what I wanted.

Convincing my younger self of all of this would be hard.  If I could print out all my blog posts into a book, I give him that.  I might bring an iPad to show him how far out technology gets.  I might bring him the book Replay by Ken Grimwood.  I might bring him a photo album of my life. 

I was a bullheaded kid, so I’m not sure I could have convinced him of anything.

I’m pretty sure he would have demanded that Jim-60 stay in 1964 so he, Jim-13 could return in the time machine to 2012.

I would have agreed.

JWH – 8/4/12

The Dangers of Building Your Own HTPC and Living Without Cable TV

As I reported earlier in FYI: DIY-FIY (Do-It-Yourself, Fix-It-Youself), my HTPC started crashing intermittently, the worse kind of electronic failure to troubleshoot.  I tried everything to fix it.  Eventually I decided it must be something wrong with the motherboard, so I bought a new motherboard and new CPU, one of those new AMD A6-3500 CPU/GPU combos.  For a few weeks it worked beautifully, much better than the old machine, but then it started acting up.  This time something different, it just wouldn’t boot.  In the rebuild I used a new, but old hard drive for the boot drive so I could save my recordings off the old boot drive, and use it as a second drive.  The only parts from the original machine was the case, 2nd power supply and the original memory.  I had two theories.  One, the used hard drive was bad, or two, the original memory was my problem all along and it had gotten worse.

Now all of this is very aggravating.  I had gotten used to having a home theater PC connected to my den television and now I’m making do with off the air broadcasts, Netflix discs and streaming, and a Roku box.  This still provides more TV than I have time to watch, but it doesn’t let me record shows.  However, this time around I have a backup DVR.

I bought a HD HomeRun Dual network TV tuner.  It was a snap to install.  Just plug in the over-the-air antenna, Ethernet cable and power cable and run a small install program on each of my PCs.  Now I can bring up Windows Media Center on any computer in my house and watch live TV, or record TV from two tuners.  Very slick.  So I can still record shows while my HTPC is broken but now I have to watch them on this computer.  This also simplifies my HTPC setup because it no longer has a TV tuner card in it.  And because I bought the new A6 with Radeon HD 6530D graphics it doesn’t have a video card either.  The new HTPC worked much better and drew less power.  Great until it started crashing.

I was so happy when I got the HTPC going again.  I thought I’d have years of worry free service, but dang, I must have jinxed myself, because the new HTPC is completely dead now.

The other day I ordered some new memory and just tried it out, but it wasn’t the fix.  I’m now hoping it’s the old hard drive, and not other bad motherboard.  So sometime in the future I’ll have to take everything apart again and start troubleshooting all over again.  Another troubling idea is the HTPC is being damaged by electrical spikes.  But this is a long shot.  However, the 2nd hard drive went out just before the machine started crashing.  I’ve bought a UPS to protect it in the future.  It already had a good APC surge protector.   

But I’m putting off fixing the HTPC off for awhile.  I want to get some other things done this weekend.

This is a real lesson in building your own computers.  Normally you buy a computer and it comes with a 1 year warranty.  You can even buy extended warranties.  If something goes wrong you take it back and someone else fixes the machine or gives you another one.  When you build your own machine and it stops working you’re the one that’s got to fix it.

More than that, this whole affair of giving up cable TV has taught me a number of things.  Comcast got me addicted to DVRs, so giving up cable means learning to live with live TV or building your own DVRs.  I’ve starting to wonder if DRVs are worth all the trouble.  I love the simplicity of only having 5 channels I care about, instead of over 200.  But even then, how much do I even care about those 5 channels?  The absolute gem is PBS. 

When my HTPC died I had 200 documentaries I had recorded from PBS that I wanted to watch.  This is very revealing.  Why hadn’t I just watched those shows when they aired?  TV documentaries are like the books I buy but don’t read.  I keep thinking I’m going to watch those shows or read those books, but my to-be-watch and to-be-read lists just get longer and longer.

Last night my friend Janis was over and we were just going through the Netflix menu on my Roku.  I’ve got 196 shows in my queue waiting to be watched, and we found dozens of foreign movies we wanted to watch in the suggestion lists.  There is no shortage of TV to watch.  Then why do I want to hoard TV shows on a DVR?   Isn’t this like going to a restaurant and buying a meal with the intention of eating sometime in the future?

I have a hang-up about controlling time.  My DVR infected me with a time control disease.  I think hoarding books is a time control disease.

I am tempted to simplify my TV watching yet again and give up the DRV and HTPC.  I’d miss playing Rdio and Rhapsody through the den stereo, but I’ve also rediscovered the greatness of just listening to a CD again.  CDs sound so much better than streaming music and MP3s.  I’ve been going retro in the last several weeks.  I’ve been buying DVDs of old westerns and watching one every night before I go to bed.  It shows I can live without cable TV, or even HTPC TV, or even broadcast TV or even Netflix.

Which makes me ask:  Does it matter what’s on TV?

JWH – 7/21/12

Living in Real Time

If you’ve ever gotten used to having a DVR (digital video recorder) for your TV, you’ll know what I mean about living in real time.  The HTPC (home theater PC) I built to record TV shows stopped working the other night.  I went out to the living room to watch the news and my computer was dead.  No news.  No electronic TV guide.  I had to watch TV in real time by clicking around the channels to see what was on.  I ordered a new power supply, but that apparently wasn’t the problem.  I took everything apart and put it back together and it started working again.  Then it stopped again.  Maybe the memory is flaky – I don’t know.

Every now and then, the electricity goes out and I’ll have to live without power for a few hours, and on some occasions a few days.  Sometimes I’ve had to live without internet.  Time seems to flow at a different rate when you live without electricity, the internet, cable TV, or TV without a DVR.  Some people go crazy when they don’t have their smartphones. 

All our gadgets alter our sense of time.

I recently read Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy and I was struck by how little technology they had in their lives, and how slow information flowed.  The Russians were having a war with the Turks and the news came by telegram to newspapers.  Each day people waited for new news of the war, and discussed the latest telegram.  People in the 1870s Russian traveled by train, horse, cart and carriage.  If they wanted to know what a friend was doing they had to wait days for a letter.  It took weeks and even months to travel from one place on Earth to another.

Time works different when I have to be in my den chair at a specific time to watch a TV show.  Normally I like to watch TV starting after 10pm, until about 11:30pm.  I watch recorded shows, Netflix or a DVD/BD disc.  I rarely watch TV live.  Watching TV in real time is a total pain.

Now there is Netflix/DVD/BD time, DVR time and real time.  Netflix and discs are old stuff just waiting to be watch whenever I feel like it.  DVR is recent stuff, waiting to be watched when I feel like it.  And real time is always now.  DVR time lets me time shift and actual watch more TV.  I seldom feel like watching TV in real time, but PBS has several amazing documentaries every week I want to watch.  I’m over 100 documentaries behind in my DVR watching because they produce them faster than I can watch.  Those shows just wait for me on my 1.5 terabyte hard drive.  My HTPC watches TV for me.  Watching TV on my time schedule seems to make time go faster.  I never have enough.

I’m wondering what my life would be like if I don’t fix my HTPC.  Will I confirm to TV time, or will I just abandon the TV and only watch Netflix and discs?  When I was young this would have been an impossible situation.  Young people have to see movies opening night.  They have to watch new TV shows when they air.  There’s an impatience to see things first.  Years ago I had to be home Sunday nights to watch shows like The Sopranos and Deadwood live on HBO.  Then I gave up HBO and waited about a year for them to come to DVDs.  I think I could do that because I had gotten older and had the patience to wait.  I no longer had to live in TV time, in real time.

Are DVDs real time, or slower than real time?  The illusion is all this technology is speeding up time and real time is slow.  That’s how it feels, but is it really?  Is watching 2 hours of TV really any different if you’re watching it live, DVR, DVD or Netflix?  It’s still two hours of TV?  Somehow watching TV with commercials in real time seems very slow.

I remember when I got my first punch-the-clock job when I was 16, and had to work after school and didn’t get home until around 10pm.  This was back in the second year of the original Star Trek and I hated missing that show.  But work broke me of the TV habit for many years.  The DVR allows us to maintain the TV habit without having to show up on time.  Maybe I just need to kick the habit completely and live in real time.

JWH – 4/26/12 

1959 by Fred Kaplan and Kind of Blue by Miles Davis

If you have a Spotify account you can listen to Kind of Blue while you read my review.   Visit this link and it will launch Spotify and play the album. If you don’t have Spotify, request a free account here.  Having at least the free Spotify account means you can always try a new album when your friends rave about a new album discover.  Kind of Blue was first released in 1959.  I’ve included YouTube versions of its five songs below.

I am becoming more and more fascinated and entertained by history – but not the history they teach in school, but the everyday history of people, inventions and art.  We take every new thing for granted, as if it sprung fully formed new on the scene.  Take the hit gadget of the moment, the iPad.  It was far from the first tablet computer, and the concept goes back to at least to the Dynabook imagined by Alan Kay in 1968.  Nor could the tablet computer exist without the integrated circuit which was patented in 1959 by Jack Kilby, hence the connection to the book I want to talk about, 1959 by Fred Kaplan.

In 1959 Kaplan writes several related essays about how 1959 was a pivotal year for all of us who have been living since.  Essentially, you can do this for any year, but Kaplan makes a good case for 1959.  Whether it’s birth control, jazz, Fidel Castro, atomic warfare, Beat writers Kerouac and Ginsberg, Motown, integrated circuits, Malcolm X, Vietnam, Grove Press, or any of the other happening events of 1959, they all impact on us today.  Everything evolves, and everything trails a history, and the past gives birth to the now.

Never heard of Grove Press?  Well, it took on U.S. censorship and since then we’ve had sex and dirty words in books and movies.  Now you might not think that’s a good thing, but it is a pivotal change in society.  What Kaplan is getting at is you could experience pop culture before 1959 it would be much different from anything you know now.  Not unknown, because everything before is still around, but it would be missing a lot of stuff that’s come out since.

This is hard to explain.  I lived before cell phones were invented, in any form.  People who grew up with cell phones can’t imagine what life was like without them.  What Kaplan is trying to explain in a series of essays is what life was like before 1959, and what came out that year that has changed everything since.

One of the essays that really stood out for me was the one on Miles Davis and his sextet recording Kind of Blue.  It’s easy to understand the impact of technology.  Kaplan writes about the invention of the integrated circuit and we’ve been living with the technology it generated ever since, from computers to high definition TVs.  That’s obvious.  But can you understand the impact of a kind of “new technology” in music?  I struggle for that, but it’s pretty obvious if you spend time listening to Kind of Blue.  Most young people today will not understand the roots of their favorite music, but their favorite musicians who create the music will.

I find it tremendous fun to time travel via pop culture.  For most of us baby boomers, we were kids in the 1950s, and our memories of the times are fleeting and tainted by TV.  It’s easier to remember Leave It To Beaver than the politics of Dwight Eisenhower.  I was born in 1951, so I lived through most of the decade, but I have few memories of it.  I do remember the 1960s vividly, but putting the puzzle pieces of the 1950s together makes the 1960s make more sense.

Kind of Blue is a transition marker in the art of music.  If you like to play the six degrees of separation game, it will link you to many cool people.  It’s both a tipping point and a crossroads.  You can listen to the music, but it’s also fun to read about its history.

Kind of Blue is considered to be one of the best jazz albums of all time, and the best selling jazz album.  A 2001 NPR report claims it sells 5,000 copies every week.   There are no words to describe how beautiful this album is, that’s why I provide the link to Spotify above.  The album has a fascinating history that you can read at Wikipedia or listen to on this NPR documentary – I won’t try to rephrase that history since these sources do it so well.

As I read 1959: The Year Everything Changed by Fred Kaplan, a columnist for Slate magazine and also columnist on jazz at Stereophile magazine, I realized the Kaplan had a gift for music history.  I thought the chapter on Kind of Blue in 1959 was full of wonderful historical details and the his descriptions of music are very precise and vivid.  It’s very hard to describe music in words.  Check out Kaplan’s video introduction to the book in this video clip at Amazon.  It opens with music from Kind of Blue, Kaplan will give you a better idea of his enthusiasm for writing about 1959.

I turned eight in 1959, and I was living in New Jersey, out in the country, where I was oblivious to the world at large.  I’m not sure we even had a TV set at the time.  Kaplan covers a quirky view of 1959, but one I can identify with because all the topics later impacted my life.  I didn’t discover Kind of Blue until the late 1980s.  I was reading Kerouac and Ginsberg in the late 1960s.  Fidel Castro took over Cuba in 1959, and I spent most of my youth growing up in Miami living with the results, so I’m like one degree away from that chapter, plus I spent the 1960s loving hits from Motown which was started in 1959.  I never knew I had so many connections to 1959 until I read this book.

Kaplan is right about 1959, people and inventions from 1959 have slowly weaved themselves into the fabric of my life over the last 52 years.  I wished I had been given a record player and the LP of Kind of Blue when I was 8, because I grew up with AM rock n roll and that has shaped the musical tastes of my lifetime.  I wonder if I was exposed to jazz at 8 if I would have been a different person.  For the most part I don’t even like jazz, but I love Kind of Blue, and Time Out by the Dave Brubeck Quartet, another masterpiece of jazz from 1959.

I have been able to travel back in time to enjoy the jazz of the 1920s and 1930s, and through the swing era of the 1940s.  Then came Bebop, which was beginning of modern jazz and although I can admire it intellectually, I don’t feel it.  I feel the same way about most classical music.  Neither kind moves me emotionally.

Miles Davis worked with Charlie Parker, one of the pioneers of Bebop, and then Davis moved on to Hard Bop, which brought R&B, gospel and blues into jazz.  I bought several Art Blakey and John Coltrane CDs in the 1980s trying to get into this era of jazz.  Again, I could semi-enjoy this kind of jazz, but something was missing.  Why?

Why was Jack Kerouac and his Beat buddies so blown about by jazz of the 1940s and 1950s?  It drove them insane with excitement, but it’s all too cool emotionally for me.  Then comes 1959 and Miles Davis and Dave Brubeck produce two albums that turn me on, but also turn on a zillion other people to jazz again.  When I read Kaplan’s chapter on Miles Davis I wanted to go back and try to get into those jazz years I can’t connect with.  My friend Mike who got into jazz about the same time as I did broke the barrier and left me behind.

For those of you who didn’t take the time to join Spotify, here’s “So What” the first cut off of Kind of Blue.  It really helps to have good speakers to enjoy the textured loveliness of these tunes.

Maybe the reason why I dig this new direction in jazz is because it jettisons so much of the old forms of jazz.  Miles Davis and Bill Evans prepared very little in the way of musical notation for the musicians to follow.  Fred Kaplan explains what they are doing in words, but these seven musicians are improvising from very little structure, mainly just the mood of the piano.  I wish I understood music to know what they are doing, but I don’t.

All I know is this music lights up my mind.  I highly recommend getting a copy of Kind of Blue and play it when you are ready to just relax and listen.  Let your mind go with the music.  It’s very different, yet this album has influenced many artists since.  I really got into The Allman Brothers in 1969, and even got to see them before Duane was killed.  Duane Allman loved Kind of Blue and claims it influenced his music.  In can feel “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” in “Freddie Freeloader” which you can play here:

“Blue in Green” is so moody that it feels more like a soundtrack for a story, or music for a modern dance piece.  This third track was the final song recorded in the March 2, 1959 session.  Give it a listen:

The final two cuts were performed on April 22, 1959.

“All Blues,” the first cut on the back side of the LP, picks up the tempo and is the longest cut on the the album (11:31), and my favorite, but sadly it’s cut short here on YouTube because of the 10 minute limit.

The last track, “Flamenco Sketches.”  This is so far from modern pop music that I’m not sure if young people will be able to get into this kind of music at all.  I think one reason why I love this Miles Davis over his earlier work is because the music is slower.  I couldn’t handle the frantic tempo of Bebop, nor did I relate to the old tunes being blended into Hard Bop.  This music is as modern as NASA, the agency that was created just a year before in 1958.  This music is light-years away from the teen idols I was hearing on the radio at the time.

Is this really the sound of 1959?  The music of bomb shelters and revolutions in Cuba?  It certainly sounds like music for books by Jack Kerouac and Alan Ginsberg, but how many regular Americans listened to this album?  I’m sure its as esoteric as Zen Buddhists to mainstream America, yet it was significant to our culture.

Us baby boomers can’t let go of the 1950s.  Look at TV shows like Mad Men, that started with 1950s ad men confronting the beginning of the 1960s or the film The Tree of Life, which tries to put the 1950s in context of the whole history of the universe.  Or read a book like The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, which is a nostalgic memoir of the times by Bill Bryson.

I wonder what people from generations after us baby boomers think of the 1950s.  It must be as alien as the 1920s are to me, the decade my parents were children, or the 1930s, the decade they were teens.

Kind of Blue was a musical experiment.  A few other albums after it pursued the same techniques, but as far as I know, it’s a dead end for a trend, yet fleeting pieces of its sound show up in music all the time.  Modern pop music is almost a rigid formula – I almost ache to hear something new and different.  What musical experiments are going on now in 2011 that will be written about in the 2060s?

JWH – 7/30/11

Sorry Bookstores, It was True Love while it Lasted

Time waits for no one, as an old song goes.  When I was a kid I used to marvel at talking to adults who told me about growing up without television.  That just boggled my mind.  And my grandmother, who was born in 1881, would tell me about life before the automobile, airplane, radio, Polio vaccine, refrigerator, and indoor plumbing.  I just could not fathom such living.

It never occurred to me then that I would live long to hear young people extol technology they couldn’t live without, or I’d have to face big transformations in my life.  Personal computers, the internet, ebooks, GPS, cell phones, VHS, CD and DVD players, Facebook, texting, Twitter are inventions that change our society at an unrelenting pace.

Two of my favorite pastimes growing up were shopping for records and books.  I loved record and bookstores.  Whenever I’d visit a new city I’d seek out its best bookstores and music shops.  I really miss flipping through bins of LPs two or three times a week.  CDs were an exciting invention, but their tiny size ruined the love of the album cover.  Now even CDs are disappearing and I quit shopping at music stores years ago.  I got used to it.  Time rolls on.

My greatest identity in life is as a bookworm, and sadly bookstores are failing all around me.  Sales of hardbacks and paperbacks are way down from one year ago.  Yesterday, the local paper said my favorite bookstore is likely to go under unless the landlord makes major concessions to a liquidator that bought it.  And that’s partly my fault.  I’m reading and buying more books than ever, but I get them from Audible.com or Amazon.com, or used from ABEBooks.com (all three owned by Amazon).  For every ten books I read, nine I listen to, and one I read.  And that one I read is mainly in paper form now, but my Kindle will probably supplant that.  Time marches on.

Read “What Is a Book? The Definition Continues to Blue” for one of many ways in how publishing is evolving.  I get the feeling I’m living in times like when books went from scribe produced scrolls to Guttenberg printed volumes.  I’ve been messing around with ebook readers since the 1998 Rocket ebook.  Visionaries back then predicted a quick transition to ebooks, so I’ve sort of been expecting the change.  But when it was announced recently that hardback sales were down 43% from a year ago, and paperbacks down 41.5%, I was shocked it was really happening.  Kindles, Nooks and iPads are the future of books. Oh, I don’t think they will disappear, people still ride horses and buy LPs, but time is relentless, and change comes whether we want it or not.

I wonder if books will become collector items now?  But I’ve changed too, and I’d like to get rid of my book collection.  If I retire and start moving around the weight of my collection will be a heavy burden.  Ditto for my CDs.  Digital is just too damn convenient to ignore.  I loved bookstores, but I actually made more bookworm friends online than I ever did at a store.

And there are unimagined kinds of changes too.  Who could have predicted that a whole generation would grow up stealing their music, books and video?  They think everything should be free.   Did communism win after all?  If someone had told me as a teenager that bookstores and record stores would disappear and everything I wanted could be had for free on little gadgets I would have imagined a science fictional dystopian future.  Nor could I have pictured a future where kids wouldn’t sit around and listen to records together, but instead choose to live in their own little iPod worlds.

Time will continue to march relentlessly forward regardless of my wishes.  On one hand I want to feel wimpy and cry over the bookstores, but on the other hand I want to say “Fuck you time, bring it on, I can take whatever comes.”  If the bookstores close I won’t read any less.  I’m sure magazines and newspapers will be reborn as beautiful swans on future tablet computers.  And I’m sure super multimedia books will dazzle us and we’ll think of hardbacks as quaint as parchment.

I do miss the record store, but I don’t regret they are gone.  I’m listening to far more music than ever with my subscription to Rhapsody.  Instead of owning 1,500 albums, I have access to millions.  The internet is better than any newspaper or magazine that’s ever published.

It’s like when I was a kid talking to old people – I pitied them for having to grow up in a world without TV.   Well, I’m not going to feel self-pity because time bulldozed over my nostalgic habits.  Sorry bookstores, it was nice while it lasted.  I expect someday to talk to children and tell them how I used to read by holding words printed on paper and their little minds will boggle at the thought of such primitive living.

—

NOTE:  I sat down here to write a cry in my beer post lamenting that I might be losing my favorite bookstore Davis-Kidd.  I truly love bookstores, but as I wrote and rewrote I realized time has already changed me and I was just feeling nostalgia.  Don’t get me wrong, I expect bookstores to be around for years to come, but their days are numbered.  Time changes everything, and time does not stop.  I hate that so much in my life is no more or has changed beyond recognition, and it’s okay to feel a twinge of weepiness for the old days now and again, but I also know it would be unhealthy to cling to the past.

JWH – 4/23/11

Dear Me

Dear Jimmy Age 10

If you would study more and watch less television I could finish college.

Love Jim Age 22

———-

Dear Jim Age 16

If you could run away to California it sure would be nice remembering the Monterey Pop Festival.

Love Jim Age 52

———

Dear Jim Age 22

I’m watching the Flintstones – you guys leave me alone!

Love Jimmy Age 10

———

Dear Jim Age 35

You need to start putting away money for our retirement, I’m running out.

Love James Age 72

———

Dear James Age 72

What’s in it for me?

Love Jim Age 35

———-

Dear Jimmy Age 10

Turn off that goddamn TV.

Love Jim Age 25

———-

Dear Jim Age 25

Make me.  You sound like Dad.

Love Jimmy Age 10

———-

Dear Jim Age 35

I know two women who told me I should have hit on them when we were younger.  Show me some money and I’ll tell you who they were.

Love James Age 72

———-

Dear Jim Age 17

You should hitchhike to Bethel, New York this summer.  Don’t worry about buying tickets, just remember the name Woodstock.

Love Jim Age 52

———-

Dear Jim Age 17

Tell me the secrets of getting laid

Love Jim Age 16

———

Dear Jim Age 100

Are you there?

Love James Age 77

———

Dear Jim Age 16

Ask one of the older Jims, and then let me know.

Love Jim Age 17

———

Dear Jim Age 15

The Beatles are coming near you, think you can steal $40 for tickets and bus money.

Love Jim Age 52

———-

Dear Jim Age 13

Quit reading so much science fiction, girls don’t like it.

Love Jim Age 21

———

Dear Jim Age 13

Stop reading that science fiction all the time – take up sports.  Boy am I out of shape.

Love Jim Age 45

———-

Dear Jim Age 13

Do you think you could get some older guys to place bets for you at the track?  I need  money to buy science fiction books.  I’ve read all the SF books at the library.

Love Jim Age 14

———-

Dear Jim Age 13

Get your head out of that goddamn book and do something real.

Love Jim Age 57

———-

Dear James Age 99

Are you there?

Love James Age 77

JWH – 9/17/10

Inventions Wanted: Universal Photo Database

I often wish I had photographs of certain people or places from my past.  I constantly damn myself for not chronicling my life better.  I’ve even wondered if anyone else might have photographed those people and places.  This gave me an idea for a great invention, the Universal Photo Database (UPDB).

I have lots of old photos of my mother and father, and some of my grandparents, with a few of my aunts and uncles and my cousins.  If there was a UPDB, I could submit my pictures to it, along with the names of the people in the photos.  Then if anyone in the world put in a search, for example “George Delany Harris,” my father, they’d find the photos I uploaded.  It’s not likely people would be searching for him, but he was in the Air Force for twenty-four years and maybe old service buddies wondering what happened to their old pal would.  On the other hand, other people might have photos of my dad that I’d like to see.

[Jim Harris (me), Patty Piquet (spelling?), Becky Harris (my sister) and Jody in front of house in Lake Forest subdivision, Hollywood, Florida, Christmas, 1958.]

When I was growing up, we’d often go outside to take the photos to have good light.  Us kids would stand on the sidewalk in front of the house, often grouped in gangs of friends.  Photos for the UPDB could also be tagged by location, such as Maine Avenue, Homestead Air Force Base.  My sister and I had a bunch of friends on that street but no photos, so maybe Arthur or Alice, or Gary and Gerry, if such a UPDB existed could post their family photos, and if I searched on “Maine Avenue” and “Homestead Air Force Base” and (1961 or 1962) I’d find them.

Or I could search for “Lake Forest” “Hollywood, Florida” 1958-1963 and I could find photos of the old subdivision where I grew up.  Facebook has accidently created a beginning of a UPDB for the Lake Forest (Hollywood, FL) Historical Appreciation Society.  The group has 90 photographs, some of which seem to come from the era when I lived there, so obviously, this idea of mine might have widespread appeal because there are other people feeling nostalgic for that neighborhood too.  Multiply that desire by millions and billions of people and you’ll see the potential.

[Patty Piquet (spelling?), Michael Kevin Ralph and Becky Harris (my sister) in front our house in Lake Forest subdivision in Hollywood Florida, April, 1959.  Patty and Mike, are y’all out there?] 

The tremendous popularity of Facebook is due to nostalgia I think, but so far its technology is based on simple groupings allowing people to reconnect with old acquaintances.  A UPDB with key fields based on names, locations and dates would redefine our interest in the past, and it could be used for other purposes other than wistful remembering.  Think what it would mean to biographers, writers and reporters?

My favorite science fiction writer is Robert A. Heinlein.  What if every fan photo, interview photo, magazine photo, fanzine photo, convention photo ever taken of Heinlein was uploaded into the UPDB along with information, memoirs, interviews, etc. linked to the photos, wouldn’t that create a wonderful library of information for researchers and fans to study?

Also, how often do you find old family photos where you don’t know all the folks in the shot?  Uploaded those photos to the UPDB and someone might identify the mystery faces.  Or how often do you clean out old closets and drawers and throw away ancient photos?  That’s history buried in the landfill – ain’t that a crying shame?  Every photo is a snapshot of reality from a unique time and space location, and who knows what value it might contain.

Most libraries have a special collections department that collects local photos, but they are impossible to use without visiting each collection in person.  Imagine if all the special collection photos where uploaded to the UPDB?  Or old archive photos from newspapers and magazines?  Or all the school photo annuals?

Imagine if Google Maps was cross-referenced to the UPDB where you could zoom in and see photos based on location and time period?  What a fantastic mash-up that would make.  Now that we live with pocket telephones that have built-in cameras, wouldn’t it be easy to create photo diaries of our lives?  Especially ones with GPS tech built in that could date/time/location stamp each photo?

When I was growing up, buying a roll of film for the Kodak Brownie was a rare event.  For most years of my life I doubt there were no more than 2-3 photos taken of myself, and some years none.  There is a small chance I’m in other people’s photos.  During the decades of my parents life, they probably went years without being photographed.  And their parents and grandparents were probably only photographed a handful of times during their whole lifetime.  If we don’t make an effort now, those photographs will soon disappear.

On the other hand, the current digital generation will have hundreds, if not thousands of photographs of themselves, so they will overwhelm the UPDB and techniques will be needed to weed out the photos worth saving.  One of my favorite blogs, Times Goes By written by Ronni Bennett has a top masthead of 10 photos of Ronni taken across her life that makes a wonderful timeline image.  I wish that everyone I meet on the web had a linked page with a similar timeline photo of themselves.  At minimum, each person should have a photo for each year of their life.  Go look at Ronni’s photos – doesn’t that time dimensional aspect add so much to your immediate impression of her?

Everyone is amazed by what the Internet does now – I’m waiting to be blown away by what it will do in five years, or ten years.  Imagine and contemplate what Facebook could be in 2015?  or 2025?  Picture me singing and smiling like Al Jolson, “You ain’t seen nothing yet!”

JWH – 11/25/9 (My birthday – age 58)