R.I.P. John TwoPonies

We saw the ambulances alongside Rte. 8 at around 11 p.m. Friday. At first, we thought it was an accident but it turned out the ambulances and a sheriff’s deputy’s car were at a driveway.

On Saturday morning, Bernie Coveney brought the news. John TwoPonies died at his home Friday night of an apparent heart attack.

A musician and songwriter who wandered from Texas to the West Coast to Nashville to Virginia, settling in Floyd County. According to his web site, he performed at local gigs and FloydFest and was working on a CD with bassist Chris Luster and Jeremy Herman (guitar and mandolin).

I only met John once, during his short-lived partnership with local computer techniciain Frank D’Amico. He came by the studio to talk about his plans for developing web sites and I chided him for trying to steal some of my current clients.  He grinned and admitted that he had tried but said "I couldn’t get anywhere. They sure are loyal to you."

His friends are loyal to him. John has gone through some hard times in recent years. His son was horribly burned  when a pan of hot grease overturned and doused him and friends rallied around John with a benefit concert. He repaid that kindness by performing at a benefit to help victims of Hurricane Katrina.

On Saturday, the talk at the "indoor yard sale" at the old Lazzardo’s space and at Cafe del Sol ranged from shock to sadness to hopes that he has gone on to a better place.

February 24, 20082 CommentsRead More

Dumb is as dumb does

Author Susan Jacoby scores strong points about the dumbing down of America in a recent Op Ed in The Washington Post:

Dumbness, to paraphrase the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has been steadily defined downward for several decades, by a combination of heretofore irresistible forces. These include the triumph of video culture over print culture (and by video, I mean every form of digital media, as well as older electronic ones); a disjunction between Americans’ rising level of formal education and their shaky grasp of basic geography, science and history; and the fusion of anti-rationalism with anti-intellectualism.

First and foremost among the vectors of the new anti-intellectualism is video. The decline of book, newspaper and magazine reading is by now an old story. The drop-off is most pronounced among the young, but it continues to accelerate and afflict Americans of all ages and education levels.

Reading has declined not only among the poorly educated, according to a report last year by the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1982, 82 percent of college graduates read novels or poems for pleasure; two decades later, only 67 percent did. And more than 40 percent of Americans under 44 did not read a single book — fiction or nonfiction — over the course of a year. The proportion of 17-year-olds who read nothing (unless required to do so for school) more than doubled between 1984 and 2004. This time period, of course, encompasses the rise of personal computers, Web surfing and video games.

As one who has written for a living for more than four decades, the fact that more and more do not read anything hurts.

Jacoby continues:

The shrinking public attention span fostered by video is closely tied to the second important anti-intellectual force in American culture: the erosion of general knowledge.

People accustomed to hearing their president explain complicated policy choices by snapping "I’m the decider" may find it almost impossible to imagine the pains that Franklin D. Roosevelt took, in the grim months after Pearl Harbor, to explain why U.S. armed forces were suffering one defeat after another in the Pacific. In February 1942, Roosevelt urged Americans to spread out a map during his radio "fireside chat" so that they might better understand the geography of battle. In stores throughout the country, maps sold out; about 80 percent of American adults tuned in to hear the president. FDR had told his speechwriters that he was certain that if Americans understood the immensity of the distances over which supplies had to travel to the armed forces, "they can take any kind of bad news right on the chin."

This is a portrait not only of a different presidency and president but also of a different country and citizenry, one that lacked access to satellite-enhanced Google maps but was far more receptive to learning and complexity than today’s public. According to a 2006 survey by National Geographic-Roper, nearly half of Americans between ages 18 and 24 do not think it necessary to know the location of other countries in which important news is being made. More than a third consider it "not at all important" to know a foreign language, and only 14 percent consider it "very important."

That leads us to the third and final factor behind the new American dumbness: not lack of knowledge per se but arrogance about that lack of knowledge. The problem is not just the things we do not know (consider the one in five American adults who, according to the National Science Foundation, thinks the sun revolves around the Earth); it’s the alarming number of Americans who have smugly concluded that they do not need to know such things in the first place. Call this anti-rationalism — a syndrome that is particularly dangerous to our public institutions and discourse. Not knowing a foreign language or the location of an important country is a manifestation of ignorance; denying that such knowledge matters is pure anti-rationalism. The toxic brew of anti-rationalism and ignorance hurts discussions of U.S. public policy on topics from health care to taxation.

Amen Susan. Amen.

February 20, 20081 CommentRead More

DOA

For all practical purposes, my right arm is a useless appendage. It hangs lifeless at my side, either numb from shoulder to fingertips or paralyzed with pain that starts at the shoulder and radiates down to the hand.

The shot of cortisone, injected with so much hope last Thursday, failed to work. Neither do heat wraps or pain-centric bandages.

My doctor’s office is closed today for the President’s Day holiday so it will be Tuesday before they can take another look at what last week was diagnosed as tendinitis, arthritis and rotator cuff problems.

I type this with one hand and wonder if I can shoot photos left-handed. To the best of my knowledge, no camera maker manufactures a left-handed SLR.

This is going to be a long week.

February 18, 20085 CommentsRead More

An arm and a leg

The pain started in she right arm a couple of weeks ago — a dull, throbbing ache that would at times shoot down from the shoulder to my elbow.

Figured it was muscle strain. Spent the day before lugging a 400mm lens and camera around the Parkway. It would go away.  It didn’t. Got progressively worse and, by Thursday of this week, I could hardly move the arm. Pain my right leg as well.

Called the doctor. Come in, they said. Right away.

They ran a battery of tests and at the hospital in Galax.

Conclusion: Tendinitis in the arm along with tennis elbow and arthritis. Short-term solution: a shot of steroids in the arm, a brace on the elbow along with heat wrap therapy and a lot of Ibuprofen.

Long-term solution: Surgery. Rotator cuff surgery on the right shoulder, more surgery on hip and ankles.

If I were a horse Amy would have shot me a long time ago.

February 14, 20082 CommentsRead More