Show Me Your Bona Fides

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Small acts to remain sane in a world of madness, with mad men trying to burn it all down.

  • Music
  • Healthy food (for me and my house, it’s plant-based: thank you!!)
  • Books
  • Poetry

I could have left poetry off my list and had a perfectly-bulleted trifecta. That wouldn’t have done justice to James Tate and his strange book, The Ghost Soldiers.

Poetry as a means of remaining sane.

I use “strange” in a laudatory manner. This is unlike most of the poetry I’ve ever read. While not a connoisseur of this element of literature, I’ve read more poetry over the last year than the previous 50+ years of being a reader. Poets are also a different animal than the other writers I fill my reading for pleasure time with. Continue reading →

Hamburgers Aren’t Health Food

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At our house, we don’t serve fast food to our friends. So why should the White House? But these days, all bets are off that you’ll get anything more than a slight upgrade from a McDonald’s Happy Meal when you show up as the guests of honor, like college football players who just won a national title.

Football is a tough sport to play. Regardless of how you feel about the controlled brutality of the game, to attain excellence requires grit, hard work, and perseverance. Even then, there’s no guarantee you’ll “run the table” like the 2018-19 Clemson Tigers football team just did.

I’m sure Clemson’s coach Dabo Swinney had high expectations for his team prior to their first practice this summer. But to finish 15-0, capping one of the greatest seasons in NCAA football history by winning the College Football National Championship when they beat Alabama 44-16, was the stuff of dreams.

So, honoring a team like that would seem to call for something better (and more healthy) than hamburgers from McDonald’s, Burger King, and Wendy’s. Oh, I forgot the “many, many French fries,” too. Of course, for a president who has had a longtime affinity for the Golden Arches, as well as Pizza Hut, and KFC fare, it shouldn’t come as a surprise. Donald Trump’s actions have long ago moved beyond incredulity.

All the president’s favorite foods. (NY Times video)

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Building On Your Foundation

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I had a gig that I loved. Of all the various “straight” jobs I’ve had, I felt that this one was as close to being perfect as I’d ever find. I felt uniquely qualified to carry it out. Then, a governor was elected, a man with an angry spirit much like Mr. Trump’s. He knew nothing about workforce training and because he was stupid (but thought he knew more than anyone else), he cut the budget for training in Maine. He continued his assault on the state’s training infrastructure for eight years.

Once I found out the job I enjoyed and was good at was going away, I figured it was time to craft my personal brand. That’s how the JBE originated in 2012.

I considered a host of various templates and ways to message what I wanted to say. I made sure I included a blog as part of the new WordPress site I built and plugged into the world wide web. Ultimately, I settled on the idea of “reinvention” because in 2004 and 2005 that’s what’d I was doing—reinventing my way of doing things. By 2012, I’d gotten pretty good at it. Writing was an essential skill I utilized then and still do.

I read Alvin Toffler in high school and I came back to the noted futurist during my period of retooling. It was Toffler who “gave me” the tagline of “learn, unlearn, and relearn” as a means of understanding what learning was in the context of creating something brand new—again, that idea of reinvention.

Besides Toffler, there were others. I became a fan of the likes of Seth Godin, Daniel Pink, and of course, I was already a fan of Mark Baumer, perhaps my biggest cheerleader relative to the need to embrace new ideas and doing it with gusto and with a certain kind of fearlessness. Continue reading →

Listen, The Snow Is Falling*

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For an artist to craft something so evocative that when you hear it, read it, see it, you immediately know what their performance/piece/painting/picture represents is remarkable and a gift that they bring to us via their art.

Galaxie 500 were a band with a devoted following during the late 1980s/early 1990s within indie music’s insular community. This three-piece played what I’d call “slowcore” and had an obvious affinity for The Velvet Underground.

The band released three studio albums between 1987 and 1991 when they split apart: Dean Wareham off to Luna and Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang forming Damon & Naomi, focusing on dream pop splendor. Both post-Galaxie acts have remained active and viable since the three members went their separate ways.

Back of Galaxie 500’s “This Is Our Music” record jacket (Rough Trade, 1990)

When I’m home on Thursdays, I like to stream WFMU’s “This Is the Modern World With Trouble” program. Her station profile describe what she plays as “a viking ship appears on the horizon, a likeness of Loretta Lynn carved into its bow. Rare birds flock together to sing Francoise Hardy as soul hits. A sunset of blips and bleeps fills the air.” Continue reading →

Liar, Liar

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As a child, I was taught that lying is wrong. Of course, many of my elders have invalidated what they said by their actions. However, truth-telling was central during my formative stages. No matter that the former adults in my life have suddenly reneged on everything moral and holy: I remain convinced that duplicity is bad: bad for relationships, bad for organizations, and certainly, bad when you are the president of the United States.

Donald Trump lies incessantly. The Washington Post, one of a host of newspapers that the president includes in his pantheon of “fake news” in a universe framed by obfuscation, compiled this list of “whoppers” told by the president as of the first of June. Anyone with a hold on reality knows that the number has certainly grown substantially over the past seven months.

The lying president.

Last night, I missed his address, which was another opportunity for the president to spread more misinformation about his so-called wall. It’s a shame that the networks allow him to get away with what is the equivalent of Cold War era propaganda. They did go to new lengths to mitigate what they knew would be “political theater.” Continue reading →

Food Follies

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Christmas was better this year than I have any reason to think it should have been. December and January will never be celebratory months for the obvious reason that my son was killed in January, his birthday is the week prior to Christmas, and it’s hard to be “happy for the holidays” when such a significant person in your life is stolen away.

I’ve been a fan of Maine’s alt-weeklies dating back to my teenage years when finding a copy of Sweet Potato was always a priority when journeying to Lewiston (or Portland) so I could read the latest Jim Sullivan feature, something that along with slinging fastballs by mystified high school opponents, signified a rite of passage for me. My own formative attempts to “do journalism” graced the pages of a former Portland monthly, the late, great Portland Pigeon, back in the mid-aughts, right around the time my first book hit the streets.

If anyone pays attention to these kinds of things, the state of Portland’s alternative press ain’t what it used to be. It was actually still pretty damn solid as late as 2014 and possibly a little after that. Then, two jackasses from Massachusetts knew better: they decided that our local alternative journalism landscape needed more competition—totally unaware that the city’s limited number of businesses weren’t likely to be able to keep two weeklies afloat—not to mention that there aren’t enough eyeballs to warrant spreading out their advertising dollars between competitors. What had been a really solid weekly, the Portland Phoenix, has never been the same, since. I was reminded of this debacle yet again when I grabbed their year-end “best of” issue at Shaw’s in Freeport. I don’t know why, because it’s been months since I last bothered to pull an issue off the rack, the few times I’ve been able to find it in my travels.

How not to write about food. (Portland Phoenix)

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End or Beginning? (2018 Recap)

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Shit!! I made it through another year!! Barely, on fumes, with my low fuel warning light flashing on my figurative dashboard. But, I’m here at the end of another romp through the Gregorian 12-step.

I’m edging closer to pulling up alongside yet another sad anniversary of losing my only son, maybe the best person I’ve ever known or ever will know. I don’t expect to meet anyone like him again and that’s something impossible to ignore.

Riding shotgun on a two-member team that’s managed to make it through the worst of stretches a life can parcel out, I’ve also weathered abandonment, lies, and the usual failings that humans are genetically predisposed to deliver. Fuck it, though! There’s something celebratory in all this darkness and mourning. At least approaching it in the spirit of the age-old wisdom that co-worker Wilma Delay dispensed back in my Westville Correctional Center days: she told me, “Baumer, sometimes you gotta’ laugh to keep from crying.” I sometimes wonder what became of ole’ Wilma. She always made more work for me with her predisposition to never moving off her sit-stool and more-often-than-not assigning herself the task of setting up the evening’s prisoner’s meds, which meant she had to do little else. Her co-workers picked up the slack. But I believe her heart was in the right place.

I remain flummoxed by the speed that grief allows a grieving person to spiral downward. One minute, you are coping with the shitty stick you’ve been handed and the next, you are contemplating a painless way to end it all. I’m not messing with you. It’s that fucked-up at times. I don’t anticipate it will ever get too much better than that in all honesty.

But again, here we are—another new year goading us into resolutions and pronouncements, sent out into the great unknown. What’s one to do, save for going along, with some remote hope of getting along.

Wrapping up 2018, here are the things and people that helped bring the year to a tolerable close:

  • Books and writers
  • Music
  • A new understanding of family
  • A few true/blue friends
  • Better physical health and the return of some measure of fitness
  • A sense that despite all of the brokenness and tears, Mark’s parents are doing the best we can be doing in terms of honoring his memory.

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The Last Day of the Year

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2018 is drawing its last labored breaths. Some are reflecting back on the year’s past “highlights.” I will do something similar tomorrow (I hope) with my own year-end wrap.

This morning, in preparation for the evening’s “Auld Lang Syne,” I got out early hoping to beat the grocery cart zombies that will surely clog our local superette later in the day. Getting there a few minutes after 8:00 delivered zombie-free shopping aisles, fresh stock in the produce section, and a well-stocked beer and wine supply. By 8:20, I was at my car, ready for my next daily task: this one related to fitness, which today would be a a brisk walk around town.

I beat the grocery cart zombies!

Thanks to my good friend, Paul, I’ve grown fond of walking at Bowdoin College, like him. I’m now improvising my own treks around the historic campus where Civil War heroes once strolled. Paul and I are regular walking buddies and his own routines that he’s shared with me out and about at Brunswick’s historic campus now inform my own solitary rambles. Continue reading →

Three Minus One for Christmas (Mourning) Mix

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It’s hard to celebrate and feel joy when you’ve lost someone. Because of that, Christmas is an especially hard season for us.

Compounding the sadness of grief and loss for those mourning a loved one’s death during this time of the year is that there is a veneer of cheer and happiness all around. I’m not sure if this a cultural manifestation unique to American holidays seasons like this one, or something else. I’ll let you do the intellectual heft on that. All I know personally is that it’s sometimes too much. This Christmas is a bit better than last year, which was nearly unbearable. Friends and family have made overtures and we’ve been able to be part of this year’s holiday in a way that would have been impossible in 2017.

Back in the 1990s, when I was doing my radio shows on WBOR, 91.1 FM, Brunswick, Maine (a station ID, btw, for the FCC), I loved putting together playlists. Figuring out how to “stack” music and create a mood for three hours (or during those holiday break “marathons” that I’d sign-up for, sometimes lasting six hours or longer) was something I worked hard at. I also loved making mix tapes back then, also. It’s not that long ago, but to explain mix tapes and queuing records to youngsters fixated on the latest passive video game experience is an exercise in futility. I know, I’ve tried.

Fortunately for people like me, who still love radio where disc jockeys get to program their own music, there are still places to find throwbacks to an all-but-disappeared era of over-the-air music. I’ve been grooving on Christmas music that isn’t the usual over-played crap that all the commercial stations have been playing since Thanksgiving. My favorite stop for the past week has been a longtime favorite of mine, WFMU. Whether it’s been rocked-up versions of old holiday standards, or some really weird holiday-themed music (like Culturecide), or big band versions of all the old-time “hits” from the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s (think Spike Jones and the Maguire Sisters), good ‘ole ‘FMU has supplied variety and a diverse selection.

Parading santas to lighten the mood. (courtesy of Zzzzzzero Hour with Bill Mac on WFMU/Dec. 24, 2018)

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Going Back To the Classic Editor (in WordPress)

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In lieu of a Christmas blog post celebrating the “magic of the holidays,” I’m offering something practical for all you blogging types out there. I know our numbers continue to contract. I’ll be back after Christmas with fresh content.

Occasionally, WordPress requires that you download updates. Since 2012 when I launched this site, I’ve been faithfully executing these “upgrades.” I fear that one day, I’ll download one and the site will simply disappear. So far, so good, though.

The other day, however, when I updated to WordPress 5.01, I ended up with the WP Block Editor as my editing tool for posting. May I simply be blunt? It sucked!! If that’s happened, or if it happens at some point, I hope this video is as helpful to you as it was to me.

By following these simple instructions, I now have the WP Classic Editor set as my default. It’s what I’ve been using for the past six years and it’s way more functional than the latest editor, which again, sucks!

Merry blogging!