The Laughing Wolf – Page 33 – Commentary, Punditry, and More

Quick SITREP 3Sept24

Hope to get back to regular posting here soon, but until then here are a few things of note.

Keep an eye on both Brazil and Venezuela. Brazil is getting a lot of splash over how they are going after Elon, but there is a good bit more going on not getting a lot of coverage. Most of this revolves around internal politics and Lula and his socialist buddies trying to cement permanent power. There is reason to believe our own government is in this up to its ears, from the “election” of Lula on to the current assault on free speech. That said, this could backfire big time on Lula and his merry gang of socialists, and it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch.

Venezuela could tip over into real revolution, but for now most of the outside players are all talk and no real walk. The only “action” so far is the U.S. catching Maduro’s plane (sort of his AF1) in another country (for maintenance?) and getting said country’s agreement to let the U.S. seize it and fly it to the U.S.

Also, keep on eye on France. While U.S. media is focused on Durov and the implied threat to Elon, don’t overlook what is going on in regards their last elections. Macaroon, who apparently wants to be president-for-life, has formally stated he is going to ignore the elections and will not be seating a Prime Minister from the winning party. Apparently the winners of the election are mean poopy heads who threaten our democracy and he’s just not going to go along with it. The winners of the election, however, are not happy about this and proceeding with legal options that could result in Macaroon being removed from office. Maybe. They may get this settled legally, though it will leave a very shaky, fragile, and brittle Fifth Republic. It could also end up much messier and with the start of the Sixth Republic.

In regards Durov and Telegram, there is reason to believe some elements of the U.S. government may be involved behind the scenes. A short and simplistic take: Durov would not play along with France and it’s intelligence agencies, or at least not to the level they wanted. Didn’t take a lot of suggestion or pushing for France to decide to step things up, especially as a precursor for their (France and EU) upcoming war with Elon and X. Besides, if Elon sees Durov go down, their take is it might make him more agreeable to their demands. I think they are flat flippin wrong on that, but it fits. This also ties into efforts by various elements of the U.S. to use France and the EU to censor content they don’t like on their behalf (legalities/plausible deniability). BTW, if you think Telegram is secure, and completely adversarial to Vladimir and Company, think again. If I find a link to a good analysis I saw a couple of weeks ago, will add it. User beware.

Now to Turkey. If you missed it, a anti-American “youth” group (didn’t look like kids to me) attacked and/or tried to kidnap one or more American troops on liberty in Turkey. Five Marines showed up and things did not go to plan. For all that the group is not a part of Edrogan’s party officially, you can bet this was not some spontaneous act. If it had been, the response of the local authorities would have been very different. However, I tend towards the “unofficially approved” camp as it ties in too neatly with Dedrogan’s plans. Note that he has now formally and openly applied to be a part of BRICS. Interesting timing, no?

It also puts NATO and the U.S. in a bit of a tight spot. Really hard to be a member of NATO and of BRICS, sort of like trying to be a member of NATO and the old Warsaw Pact at the same time. Add to it that both have also been counting on Turkey keeping warships out of the Black Sea and controlling traffic in a “neutral” manner (which benefits Ukraine), and that we have counted on our base(s) there for strategic positioning… Plus, there has long been a matter of some materials and such at Incirlik that make things even more touchy. The fact that we’ve had (this year alone) some opportunities to deal with those issues and failed to do so doesn’t surprise me. My thoughts on current military leadership, uniformed and civilian, isn’t high. Cough. Dealing with such now will be fraught.

Meantime, my thought to start is: cancel all port calls, resupply contracts, repair contracts, and stop all joint activities with the Turkish navy. Move port calls and contracts to Greece maybe. As for stopping joint training, well, things are tense, we need to be ready and elsewhere for now, maybe later, no hard feelings, etc., etc., etc. (/Yul Brenner Voice). Oh, and have the Wasp depart ASAP if that is not already underway. Again, given our current leadership I don’t expect much of anything to be done, and if it starts to go sideways expect them to handle things about as well as they did Afghanistan.

Quick note. I have removed Kamil Galeev from the Intel list. While his work on the history of Russia and the philosophical and other underpinnings of modern Russia and what is going on there now are brilliant, I just read some of his work in regards Israel and I can’t condone, support, or ignore. Condemn is in there though. I hadn’t been reading him in a while as I was focused elsewhere, and regret I didn’t catch it sooner.

Also, there’s something weird (weirder than usual) going on in Moscow. Hard to tell what is going on, but it appears some power shifts are underway. Maybe more on this later.

Finally, keep an eye here. When people tell you who they are, believe them. When campaigns call for censoring speech, limiting speech, and corporate media goes all in for that and rights as privileges (and that the Constitution is a danger to our Democracy) pay attention. They are not misspeaking.

Well, not quite final. Remember to keep an eye on Nicaragua still. There remain some odd patterns in the data there. Can’t put a finger on it, but something is going on.

More soon.

Getting hit by lightning is not fun! If you would like to help me in my recovery efforts, which include moving once we have medical issues cleared up, feel free to hit the fundraiser at A New Life on GiveSendGo, use the options in the Tip Jar in the upper right, or drop me a line to discuss other methods. There is also the Amazon Wish List in the Bard’s Jar. It is thanks to your gifts and prayers that I am still going. Thank you.

Flood Delay

Had planned to do a different post today, following up on some previous promises. However, at around 0500 I discovered that the basement where I live had flooded. Worse, the bathroom I really needed to reach was on the other side of the flood (floor slopes down to the center from each end of the house).

Thankfully, I found my waterproof safety boots and made it across. Then, went and got the landlord up. We had a good storm last night (I slept through it) and the emergency pump either didn’t work (my bet) or couldn’t keep up. Going to try to get the landlord to check the pump, will see what happens.

As of right now, the basement is pumped out courtesy of the landlord and a shop vac. Took him a little bit to get it done. I just mopped with an insane amount of bleach in the bucket just in case it wasn’t all storm water. Also, just took my censer out into that area to deal with some of the odor and a few other things (bless this house).

Despite all, did get the bread baked and the muffins cooked too. Have cleaned that up, and am now contemplating doing as little as possible until time for choir practice. I may get back to the planned post, but no promises.

Be good, be safe, and be prepared.

Sourdough English Muffins

Today wasn’t only my baking and cleaning day, it turned into a major cooking day. Got as much done as I could for reasons I might get into later, and wish I could have done more.

One thing I did get done was to cook up a batch of sourdough English muffins. I’ve been asked for the recipe, so decided to share it here too.

Ailbe’s Sourdough English Muffins

Hardware: Cast iron skillet, lid, large bowl, tea towel, pastry/cutting board, cutter, scraper.

Ingredients:

360 grams all purpose flour
5 grams sea salt (I use half smoked, half pink)
20 grams maple syrup
240 grams warm distilled water
100 grams (plus) sourdough discard or starter

The day before you want to cook them, combine all the ingredients in a large bowl and mix by hand. If using active starter, use 100 grams. If, like me, you use your “discard” for this, I will go anywhere from half again to double the amount. Scrape down the bowl if needed, and cover with a tea towel/thin dish towel. Let sit in a safe place overnight. NOTE: I will mix the batter anywhere from noon onwards, and put it on a shelf in my room to keep the cats and others out of it.

The next morning, put a cast iron skillet on low heat with a lid. Use your scraper to get the dough out of the bowl and onto a well-floured work surface/board. I do a few fold-and-press until the dough firms up just a bit and forms a rectangle. I then work it out (can be rolled out) to about a quarter inch thick (may be a bit higher, the dough will tell you where it needs to be) and cut into disks. My high-tech cutter is a pint glass which I’ve found to be the perfect size for a proper muffin.

Place the muffins into the skillet (I do four at a time) and cover with the lid, and cook for four minutes each side. Place on a plate to cool, stacking as you go. This recipe will do a dozen muffins, sometimes a bit more depending on how generous I was with the discard/starter.

Two key things: use a cast iron skillet (it does matter) and get the heat right. Too high and you will burn the muffins. Two low and they will not cook through. I’ve done them enough times now that I know where to set the knob to get good marks and cooking. Plan to experiment on your first batch, and give the pan plenty of time to come to temp before starting.

Enjoy!

Why The Emphasis On LTS Of Knowledge?

I’ve talked a bit recently on the need to preserve knowledge, and in particular a lot of “obsolete” knowledge — or at least forms of knowledge. In fact, I’ve talked about saving printed tables, guides, formulas, and more. Things easily found today on the Internet. Between that big article and some other posts where I talk about such, the question “Why?” has come up.

The answer comes in two parts. The two parts can be summed up in the words “Ooops” and “Bootstrapping.”

“Ooops” covers a range of possibilities, all of which exist because the system that is our modern world is a fairly fragile thing. People who have worked not just in, but with the systems that make up the System, understand that. Those who gleefully call for changing the system (political, technical, economic, etc.) in a radical fashion have done either only extremely rarely. In point of fact as several people have recently pointed out, they have no equity in the system as well as no experience with maintenance of the system (or anything else). They have no skull sweat, no real sweat, and no other type of real investment in any of the systems. It’s the reason they think that any current system (think Republic, power production, transportation, etc.) can easily be taken down and replaced — often by something new and unproven.

Most systems that make up the larger System are not only delicate, however, they are fragile and/or brittle. Take the electrical grid (Please!) for but one example. It is a jury-rigged system that includes equipment and control systems that were produced in multiple different decades (two different centuries even) that have to work together. Right now, it does so (sorta, mostly, sometimes). Or, look at data and communications, which depend on a limited number of undersea cables far more than they do on satellites. Or modern grocery stores, that depend on just-in-time deliveries from a network of warehouses that also depend on just-in-time deliveries made by transportation fleet that is heavily dependent on both data (communications) and computers, which depend on the grid and on a transportation infrastructure that is crumbling in far too many areas. Not just roadways and railroads, but look at the travesty that is the U.S. Merchant Marine, U.S. shipbuilding, and surface transport in general.

I could go on, and may one day lay out more of the fault trees, but this is enough to give you a basic feel for how fragile things are. If anything happens to the power, the data, the computers, the communications go down. Something happens to the undersea cables, your data transmission capabilities could go drastically down. Your data and coms go down, so goes your just-in-time logistics system. Which means that you are talking about three days of food in most stores, and with panics and such, you could be talking as little as three hours before it is gone.

Now, there are many things that can cause that “Ooops.” A terrorist attack on military and other infrastructure could do the trick. Combine that with more general terrorist attacks, and you have something that several orders of magnitude worse. If you follow space weather, you should already know about that odd spot on that great big fusion reaction in the sky, our star Sol — aka the sun. It is odd, and has even done a few things it shouldn’t. It’s also why the aurora have been seen so far south this year. I’ve talked a time or two before about Carrington Events, and if you are not familiar with them you might want to dig in on that topic. Yep, war, pestilence, or another bad software update (you might remember that update that temporarily bricked about a billion workstations not that long ago), or a host of other factors. Heck, world-wide political upheaval can not just set the stage (look here, Brazil, France, etc.); but, could do the trick quite nicely on it’s own. Any disaster (remember, there are inconveniences, emergencies, and then disasters) that goes on for a sufficient period of time can do the trick.

In one of his series, John Ringo had an “Ooops” that took the planet from a Golden Age to something close to medieval in just a few seconds. Think he presented it by showing a young girl who for her (16th?) birthday was digitized so that she could exist as a cloud of nanites, and she did so, for a very short time before the system crashed/was crashed and the cloud that had been a young girl full of joy fell scattered to the Earth. It really doesn’t take much to have the “Ooops.” In fact, if you take out just one system that makes up our current System, you get that “Ooops.” Energy, transport, data, etc. if you lose one, you are extremely likely to lose them all.

Ooops.

Which is why people who plan for disasters (at least those who know what they are doing) have as a contingency plan the concept of bootstrapping. In the event of an “Ooops” we can’t maintain our current technology, much less manufacture replacements. For a pretty good discussion on this, you might check out the late Eric Flint’s 1632 series from Baen Books. In it, he and a group of other good authors deal with this concept even as they create an alternate history. Good books, and also not a bad series to have around if there is an “Ooops.”

A short version, since you can literally write a series of books on the topic, is that if something takes out the current System, you are pretty much going to be having to drop back to 1800s steam tech for a lot of things. Without power, you are not running advanced manufacturing (3-D, CNC, chip fab, etc.) if you have it at your location. Even if you can get or keep some power on, you still can’t run it long given modern logistics. Even then, you could not make the machines to make the current levels of machines without the current base. Long story, but you are going to be dropping back several generations of machines and tooling just to hang on, and begin the slow process of rebuilding a tech base. You are also going to have a big knowledge gap since a lot of critical information (and skills) are likely to be lost in the “Ooops.”

So, again, people who know what they are doing plan to bootstrap and to do what they can to prevent having to drop back too far. One way to do that is to have on paper or other archival form as much basic data as possible. Everything from Trig tables to on to chemical formulas for products from the early 1900s (or later if possible). You want and need your engineering and physics calculations and tables. You need your metalurgical tables. Heck, you need your meteorological tables and histories even. You need your chemistry tables, formulas, periodic charts, and more. All in forms that will last and can be accessed without the need for power or modern systems.

Also, the more sites that have such information, the better. Dispersal ensures survivability, both of the data and quite possibly humanity. It provides resiliency that is essential to create a new System in the face of disaster. Keep in mind that it literally took thousands of years to collect and codify that data to start with. Having it on hand and widely dispersed cuts down on your recovery time. It is the difference between having to drop back to a pre-industrial society or to a point just before the greatest technological boom in human history. Keep in mind that we went from powered flight to landing on the moon in less than a hundred years. Because we had the data, the skills, and could (would and did) develop the materials and systems required.

We have that data and more now, just as we have computational power in our pocket via that smart phone that was considered fiction even unto the 1960s or later. Remember that for a period of time, given how fast computer tech moved, the most power computer on the Shuttle was the calculator in the pilot’s flight suit.

Which also reminds me, include medical data with the items to be stored. Even old (say 2000) text books that are now outdated have information that, again, was only a dream even in the 1960s. It’s a good idea to be able to bootstrap more than manufacturing.

Which is the other key to a dispersed effort. Trade. One of the most important, and valuable, trade items in the face of disaster has always been knowledge. In a disaster, it would not be surprising to see medical data being traded for geological data that might also be traded for materials or construction data…

Store as much as you can in as many forms as you can, if you have a means to print any data that is not already printed. In a real disaster, print is always going to be king.

Finally, thanks for the great comments in the post linked above! Your comments always rock and my regular readers are a fantastic bunch. Thank you!

Still having some fun, but hope to get back to regular posting.

And The Good News Is…

I am alive and hope to be posting again soon. It is also that I now have confirmation on one of the things that triggered the flare a couple of weeks ago. That is also the bad news. This weekend was interesting, but I avoided another flare. Still bouncing back, but back soon I hope. Great comments on the last post, thank you all!

Thank You

Thanks to some people hitting the tip jar, I do indeed have a new pair of Red Wings. Next on the list is a new pair of sneakers, some clothing, and a wire rack storage unit.

Now, me being me, I went and got the new shoes Wednesday afternoon. Managed to get in about three miles of walking with them, as I started the break-in process. Yesterday I got in six or more miles of walking in them. Ouch. Between that and pushing my little grocery cart around all day (shopping day), I was moving like I was 90 by dinner time.

Hope to get a more substantive post up later, but today is baking day. As I work the bread, I’m also doing laundry, some other cleaning, and pretending to clean my room. In addition to bread, cooked up a batch of English muffins. Not only some for me to eat, but am trading them for rides since I have no car.

The young man who bought my car still hasn’t transferred the title, so got to send him a certified letter yesterday. Hoping that this gets taken care of quickly, as it not being transferred raises legal liability issues. Joy.

More later as getting the post done between stretch-and-folds. I still do everything by hand, and I get pretty good results if I say so myself. Even better, several people at Church have been letting me know they think it’s good.

LTS: Preserving Comfort

Today is trying to get away from me, so before it does I wanted to get up at least a short post. Yesterday, I talked about preserving knowledge in the face of disaster. Today, I want to talk about preserving some of the comforts of civilization, comforts that can have a profound effect on health and well being.

If you have read John Ringo’s Black Tide Rising series, you probably already have an idea of what I’m talking about. Which is personal hygiene products.

I’ve done some of the ‘live (for a short period of time) like a colonial settler’ and primitive camping and such. Heck, I even thought about trying out for Naked and Afraid even though that’s way out of my league. The fact is, we don’t appreciate the comforts we have and would be horrified at living at a level of a century ago (hint, that’s the 1920s, not the 1820s). When disaster strikes, I want to survive in comfort and style for as long as I can.

Little fact is that as hygiene improves, so does lifespan. So does quality of life, as with cleanliness can come a lowered chance of illness, infected wounds, and the other joys of primitive (and even fairly modern) life.

So, here’s a tip. In addition to keeping supplies of toilet paper, feminine hygiene products, soap, hand soap, and even laundry soap and sanitizer around to get you through the inconveniences (short term) and emergencies (mid-term), stock away enough for a true disaster.

You really are not going to appreciate toilet paper until it is gone. Field expedients blow, and I still remember being warned back in the early 1970s about finding wax paper, a form of sand paper, and tissue wrapping paper being put into public toilets in a certain European country. That was when I learned how to core a TP roll and pack at least one roll (and carry several small packs of tissues) for travel and boy howdy am I glad I did so. You still find interesting ‘substitutes’ or nothing at all in various places around the world.

Feminine hygiene products are another you almost can’t have enough of in a disaster. It’s amazing though how many tampons and pads you can fit inside bags inside a 5-gallon bucket. Also, tuck away a few “starter” kits that are available for young ladies just hitting puberty.

Same holds true for bath soap, hand soaps, and shampoo. Fact is, you can store a years worth (at least at my rate of usage) easily and work through the stock as you live life. Also consider keeping some specialty soaps (surgical, etc.) on hand. I ended up with a couple of nice bottles of the generic surgical soap (generic hibi) courtesy of the shoulder replacements and have them on hand just in case.

All of this is not necessarily a huge cost, and it has a huge return on several levels. Just a quick thought to share before things get crazy again.

Preserving Knowledge

Today is going to touch on how to preserve books and such, and part is going to touch on what to save. Now, this is advanced preparation and is designed not for inconveniences or emergencies, but full-up disasters. Just keep in mind that it is duration that counts, and that it doesn’t matter if the cause is natural, natural stupidity, or politics (which I do count as different from natural stupidity).

A while back, I did several posts on long-term storage (LTS) and talked a bit about the need to tuck away books and such just in case. Let’s start with book preservation.

For the books that are truly important, allow me to suggest individually bagging in food-grade mylar storage bags, and sealing after getting out as much air as possible and with an oxygen absorber inside. Getting out the air will inhibit the operation of the absorber, but it also helps with packing the individual bags into other containters. If things are tight, omit the absorber and press on. My suggestion is to put the individually-bagged books into a larger mylar storage bag, such that you can drop two or three such bags into a five gallon bag, and then into a 5-gallon bucket with mylar liner as discussed in the LTS section. Oh, this is also where you should have copies of important legal documents and such.

Again, again, and again, it is all about layers and levels of containment. The more the better, as the last thing you want is a single failure to take out your efforts.

Now, that’s expensive, time consuming, and not necessarily going to be something everyone can do. While less secure in the long term, you can also simply place a 5-gallon mylar bag inside a 5-gallon food-grade bucket with mylar liner, load as much inside as you can fit (including oxygen absorbers), seal the good mylar bag, tie off the liner, then seal the bucket. That gives you three levels of containment, which can work even for a disaster.

Now, some quick thoughts on what to save. These are some personal suggestions, and I hope they give you some food for thought.

In terms of literature, I’m going to want to save books and series that I have enjoyed. Personally, I’m not inclined to save the ‘great works of literature’ which in many cases I don’t consider that good, great, or literature. That’s a discussion for another day, but how we treat literature in school is an abomination. While I would tuck away a tome with Shakespeare’s works, I’m more inclined to tuck away the works of David Weber and others. I would very much want to tuck away John Ringo’s Black Tide Rising series as it focuses on dealing with a true disaster in very practical terms, as does Eric Flint’s 1632 series (which is excellent in terms of gearing down to build back up). And you can bet Lewis and Tolkien will be in there too.

Now, for a disaster, I would also recommend two levels of reference books. The first would be things like the Foxfire series that detail how things were done in the past (and up to the present day) including home remedies and more. There are a number of good books that contain old recipes and formulas for everything from toothpaste to food preservation. These are all very good and practical things to have, and I suspect one could write a book or two on the options. In a disaster, having access to the old ways may be a very good thing.

However, the second level is one that is often ignored. These are the old reference books that contain calculations, tables of data, and the steps to derive information for everything from engineering to basic production. These are the old reference books that detail drugs and usages (PDR, etc.). These are the books no longer being printed (or if printed rarely bought) because the information is all on the internet. Yes, it is now. There are multiple causes of disaster that can take out the internet, temporarily or permanently. A lot of these types of books are being thrown away or given away by libraries of all types. You can find them for pennies in second-hand stores and even garage sales. In a disaster, they may well be worth their weight in plutonium. If you get the chance, tuck them away.

Finally, I do recommend tucking away religious books, particularly Christian and Jewish books. Why? Look at the news. If that doesn’t tell you why, ya need help. If you think the war on Christianity, and the rampant antisemitism, are just going to magically go away in a year or two, I think you are dreaming. I actually expect to see the war on Christianity and Jews get much worse. My thought on that is to tuck away as many copies of bibles, prayer books, reference books, etc. in multiple containers and multiple locations as possible. I would also work to make them hard to detect as well, just in case. It may sound paranoid, but I’m not sure we are being paranoid enough on this score. I’d far rather have such things tucked away at need, than to find we need them and not have them.

Just a few quick thoughts this morning, and I really should do a post on libraries and another on literature (even though Larry Correia and others have been doing a good job on same). Also, more thoughts on what to store for a disaster are coming. More soon.

Dealing With Dying

No, everything is okay here, but it is an important topic. I’ve been blessed to have had access to an amazing Hospice organization for both my parents. Having their help and support made a very difficult time much easier, including on levels I didn’t fully appreciate at the time.

There is a new blog/substack out from a Hospice nurse called Life During Death. Please allow me to commend it, and the discussions therein to you. There is already a lot of hard-learned and much needed food for thought there. Yes, the topic is one that can make many shudder or want to turn away, but it is important. Don’t turn away, and use it to have some conversations that are needed with family and friends. Much better that way.

Monday Musical Madness

While I have several posts I want to get to this week, Monday is an odd day for posting because of my guitar lessons. Before I forget, thank you to everyone who has helped with those efforts! It truly is a neat and fun way to explore if I can learn new skills after the lightning strike. I’ve had six lessons so far, and I’m not totally horrible and having a lot of fun with it.

The lessons are every Monday morning, barring days where there is lightning or heavy rain. I’ve sprayed commercial waterproofing on the case to beat the band (ba-da-boom), but still don’t want to expose it to the wet if I can help it. If there is lightning around, well, I’m not going out. Heck, I don’t even like to go near a window. 🙂 It is almost exactly 1.75 miles to the lesson, but have found a (mostly) nice route to get there and back. I’m actually using my bus-compliant rolling grocery cart to hold the guitar for the walk. If the weather is iffy, I can take one bus downtown, switch to another, and get fairly close to where I’m going. For now, the walk does me good and gets the week off to a good start.

While the jury is still out on my ability to learn a new skill, my instructor has made it fun to try. He knows about the lightning strike and the issues, so in terms of memorizing he tends to come at it a bit sideways. He warned me today there was some rote memorization coming up, but he’s also found a way to make part of it practicing notes and techniques, which may help with getting some of it into long-term memory.

Rather than rote scales and drills (which made piano and other instrument lessons such a joy when I was a child), he’s got me doing “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” “Wipeout,” “Tom Dooley,” and “The Star Spangled Banner” to work on everything from techniques to scales. We are working on chords as well, and I’ve got the feeling that the chords are going to be combined soon into some well known music just because he is sneaky like that. Within those songs and such, I’m learning a lot and practicing transitions until my fingers can’t take it any more. When I do practice “rote” things, he has found ways to make it interesting, and even a challenge. Boring it is not.

If I didn’t mention it before, my landlord has donated a music stand to the effort. I need to get a guitar stand, and want to get a swivel-top stool for practice as the wooden chair in my room slopes funny and makes it fun to hold the guitar properly. Nothing too expensive, but not in the regular budget. Been looking for used on both, but no joy so far. A couple of big-box music stores have gone out of business here, but they mostly shipped things out to other stores rather than putting a decent price on them. Oh, not sure I ever showed you all a photo of the guitar you helped me get.

It is an Alvarez, and it was one of many owned by my barber, who actually has encouraged me to take up guitar for a number of years. He got into playing as a way to help his arthritis, and he really got into it — and into collecting guitars. I bought it from him, and my lessons are taught by a buddy of his in the barber shop while it is closed. I’m apparently one of several who come in on Monday’s when it’s closed. The buddy is a professional musician who, at 70 or 70+, is still playing at a number of venues around town. I suspect he’s forgotten more about playing guitars than I may ever learn. He makes it look so easy…

He’s also already dangled a couple of other guitars in front of me. One is a nicer acoustic, and one is an electric. On the latter, I was a bit surprised as there is a (vintage?) Stratocaster in baby/robin-egg blue but he says the other one is the better guitar and the better buy. Basically, if I keep going and get good, I might get a good price on either (or both). Good incentive as while I do have a good guitar, I’ve also learned to appreciate even better ones. If I can learn this new skill, it would be a good reward.

The only issue with the lessons is that with the time to get there, when the lesson is scheduled, and then the walk back, it does make posting on Monday’s a little bit of a challenge. Especially as I am usually having to deal with calls, follow-ups, and other delights on most Mondays. It’s not that I’m forgetting you, it’s just a busy if fun (the guitar part at least) time.

More soon!