Resilience:
That ineffable quality that allows some people to be knocked down by life and come back at least as strong as before. Rather than letting difficulties or failure overcome them and drain their resolve, they find a way to rise.
Resilience Road Sign
They say that adversity is a fact of life. A rabbi once wrote a book about “bad things happening to good people.” It would go on to become one of those best-sellers that people turn to when the floors of their lives disappear beneath them.
According to a well-known psychology publication, resilience is that quality that some people possess. They have some kind of inner resolve and strength that helps them climb out from the wreckage of caused by events that turn their lives upside-down.
Then, there are those who are forced to come to terms with one of life’s truisms: causes have effects. I won’t go into all the elements of why the current pandemic was long overdue other than to say that we’re collectively experiencing the effects caused by living as one of the most narcissistic, self-centered cultures that’s ever inhabited the planet. Continue reading →
I came home from work on Wednesday. My guitar lesson was cancelled for the third successive week. Not to be deterred, I wrote “Stuck in a Nightmare” in the span of about 45 minutes. A few edits and I had a playable song be the evening.
The song touches on our current belief that staying at home and “sheltering in place” will somehow deliver a magic result. Somehow, we’ll avoid harm and in a few weeks (months?? years??) all will be well and we can go back to our lives of buying junk we don’t need.
The fear-fogging line is one I had to laugh about. Other than my sister, I’m the only other person that I know who has appropriated this excellent phrase that captures what the media does best.
I wrote a paean to Rachel Maddow late in 2019, but she’s become one of the biggest fear-foggers out there. As a result, I’ve stopped watching her show.
For me, who knows better than anyone (other than my wife), some things are beyond our control. In fact, Choice Theory is something I now understand and try to frame how I view the world. Yet, I see the disavowal of something that’s clear—we can only control ourselves. The other stuff we need to let go.
I’m still trying to find a way to up my fidelity on these home recordings. At some point, I’ll figure all this out. Maybe then, we’ll be released from “house arrest” and be allowed to go back to bars, clubs, and other venues and actually play real, live music again.
Feelings. They’ll deceive you every time. Yet people project them like projectile sneezes. Can we please enact some social distancing to this kind of BS?
As Radiohead sings, “just ‘cos you feel it, doesn’t mean it’s there.”
Daily, we are inundated with these projections. The morning news is pregnant with stories, all designed to touch our feelings, but almost never does it appeal to our intellects—our capacity to think. “Stupid news” I call it.
Coronavirus-related news seems to be tracking in a narrative rut. The talking head says, “there are now _______ confirmed coronavirus virus cases in ________.” Fill in the number and fill in the state. They’re all the same.
If we asked better questions, would we have better answers? I think so (regardless of what you feel).
Epidemiology is a bit like baseball. Knowing that a ball player has gotten 134 hits isn’t that informative. What is informative is knowing that those 134 hits were made during 335 at-bats, which translates into a batting average of .400. But we can only know the batting average if we know the player’s total number of at bats and hits. It’s the same thing for the coronavirus: We need to know the number of all tests in in each age group and each locale, as well as the number of positive ones.
Merely reciting the number of cases in a state, a nation, or the world, along with deaths, is a litany that lacks any real context. It does elicit fear and even hysteria. Perhaps that’s what’s pushing the uniformity of the current narrative, I do not know. It’s maddening to me, someone who, as a writer, truly believes that words do matter.
On Facebook, someone posted some absolute balderdash, equating what people are feeling societally as “grief.” Unless you’ve truly gone through the depths of despair and hopelessness that grief and loss visits on you when you lose the dearest person in your life, someone you loved more than your own life, then you can’t talk about grief with authority. And if you can’t then shut the fuck up! In fact, if you’ve ever experienced the kind of grief that my wife and I have been living through for 3+ years, you’d have never posted such bunkum. It’s hurtful, triggering, and it makes me like you even less—and I don’t like humans much at all.
Yet, despite my never-ending disdain for humanity, I’m cursed with empathy for them. What the fuck! Caring about others, even when you don’t particularly like them is akin to a curse.
The only place I find solace and relief is when I have my guitar in hand. Who knows when even that won’t suffice, as we’re forced to endure the equivalent of house arrest forced on us by a bunch of so-called experts who are rarely ever right. But we trust them. And the sheeple enable it.
Note: I actually stole the title of today’s blog post from this book, one I just learned about and plan to read.
These are uncertain times. During upheaval, decision-making can be affected. Formerly easy choices become more difficult: for some, paralysis sets in. Of course, if the height of choice difficulty for you is deciding what over-priced, foodie establishment to eat at, you are in luck—you won’t have to contend with that dilemma today (or for the near future).
Doubts about what may happen tomorrow can lead to hearkening back to the familiar—those places where we’ve found answers or solace in the past. Insecurity causes dissonance and discomfort. Fear in turn forces us back to places of familiarity.
The internet can be a source of trusted information. It’s also a breeding ground for the dubious and even fallacious.
I’ve been a blogger since 2003. Over that period, I developed go-to sites. These were written by fellow blogging travelers I developed trust in. When lost without answers, I could go back to them by default. I also incorporated ideas and ideologies from them.
Many of these sites are now shuttered. If still online, it’s been months (or even years) since they’ve been updated with a new post. Disappointing for sure, I simply moved on. Meanwhile, I’ve stayed with it, even following the floor of my life opening-up. I’ve shared with readers from a place that at times felt like freefall. Persisting in the face of dissonance, upheaval, and even tragedy is what resilience looks like, especially if you fancy yourself a writer. Continue reading →
I started this song back at the tail-end of 2019. I had two verses that kind of captured some of what I was feeling heading into the holidays, which always suck without Mark.
Not sure where the spaceship theme came from other than sometimes, I wish I could get into a spaceship and find another planet to live on.
Jump in a spaceship and fly away
Then, the song sat there.
I initially developed the chord progression and riff after working on Neil Young’s “Cinnamon Girl,” which is played in Double Drop D tuning. The tuning lends itself to some stuff I’d been listening to from a guy that had been based in Boston and now for some reason I think he may live in Maine, Cole Kinsler. He records as Space Mountain and I bought his “Togetherness” cassette that came out in 2019. Perhaps if he ever heard my stuff like this one, he’d demur.
Verse three came to me yesterday when I started playing the song again. It seemed like a better way to deal with my angst about all that’s been going on re: the Coronavirus.
It has no chorus.
Spaceship Blues
Verse I
Life it sucks and then you die
Storm clouds in a darkened sky
Fucking morons are all around
All I wanna’ do is leave this town and roam
Verse II
Idiots tell you just to smile
Don’t have a clue, ain’t walked one mile
In land that’s filled with shit
Jump in a spaceship and be done with it and fly
Verse III
Coronavirus its shut us down
Like sheep we’re led around
Trust the experts they’re rarely right
Load up that spacecraft with supplies and leave today
A week ago, the world seemed fine (or normal) for most people. The day here in Southern Maine was warm for early March. The winter of 2019-20 hadn’t been a particularly harsh one, as Maine winters go. There was a sense common in northern regions that signal spring and that place-based “rebirth” that many of us hearken to and anticipate during the dark days December and January.
For people living on the other side of grief and loss, the past three years have been a journey of darkness, sadness, and pain. But to remain here in this life, there must come a time when you get back to “living life.
For me, having lost a son in January, 2017, so much of the past three years have been lived inside-out. By that I mean, grief for me turned me inward. I lost my usual gregariousness and the ability to feel joy. I didn’t want to be around people. I was becoming a misanthrope.
Late last summer, after conversations with my better half, the mother of my son, we made a decision for me to leave the house where I’ve been barely existing as a freelancer and take a job outside. Not some evening tutoring gig or part-time sub teacher stint, either. No, applying for and being hired by a firm that provides healthcare to Mainers and patients just across the border in New Hampshire.
This new role placed me in a new contact center just shy of being open for a year. The woman who interviewed me and subsequently hired me was the sister of someone I graduated from high school with. Continue reading →
Fear is a powerful emotion. The threat of harm, pain, or even death is a motivator like few others.
Those in power know how to stoke fear. So does the media. That doesn’t mean that fear has no purpose, or that fear isn’t valid.
To live in our time of technological ascendancy, the temptation to believe that all things can be fixed with just a little more tech is a default temptation. “It can’t happen here,” or “now,” or “we’ve evolved beyond that” are all common refrains that technology has empowered.
The facemask as daily wear.
On New Year’s Eve Day, we first learned about several flu-like cases in Wuhan, the capital city in the nation’s Hubei province. The city has a population of 11 million. People were being quarantined and Chinese authorities were trying to parse the source of the outbreak.
One week later, investigations ruled out that this was bird flu, a type of seasonal flu outbreak, or even SARS and MERS. The number of suspected cases had grown to 60 people, with seven Chinese citizens in critical condition. Health officials hadn’t confirmed human-to-human transmission. Continue reading →
A week ago, Neil Young penned a scathing letter to Trump and posted it on his website, the Neil Young Archives. As a new American citizen, Mr. Young had a few things he wanted to “get off his chest” about his president, Donald Trump. Apparently Trump’s been playing “Rockin’ in the Free World” at his rallies.
Young, never one to mince words or fail to say what he feels like saying, obviously can’t stand the president. I know the feeling.
I haven’t written any songs since the summer and early fall. I’ve been playing a ton of guitar, though.
I had most of the verses written when I headed to my weekly guitar lesson a week ago, Thursday. My guitar teacher helped me re-arrange a few of these and gave me a couple of ideas about chords for the chorus.
Last Sunday, I had the song that I wanted.
Today, I’ve spent most of the day down in the “wood shed,” working on songs, including the new one. Here’s a live video of the song, with just two muffs.
Because I don’t have a PA and the vocals are probably muffled, I’ll post lyrics below the video if anyone’s interested.
National Disgrace (Jim Baumer)
Lyrics
Verse I
You’re a national disgrace/A fucking public shame
Trashing all your rivals/Can’t ever shoulder blame
Verse II
Talk about corruption/Should be your middle name
Bait and switch the shell game/It’s how you set your frame
Chorus
Deny global warming/Call it just a hoax
You’re a pox on the planet/Tides are rising at the coasts
Greatness offered suckers/No lightning in that jar
History will show us/Exactly who you are
Verse III
Tiny hands and fingers/Grabbing all you can
All your daddy’s money/Won’t float another sham
Verse IV
Some see through illusion/Your divisive world of hate
Over Christmas and afterwards, I read a couple of really interesting books. I’ve found myself coming back to them often to re-read passages.
Both the books, Heather Havrilesky’s What If This Were Enough? and Kurt Andersen’s book, Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire, keep delivering returns on reading time invested in each. What both drive home is that this period of time in America isn’t necessarily unique—at least in Andersen’s narrative—about how America’s need to indulge in fantasy and thinking untethered from science and intellectual rigor dates back to our founding and prior to that. 500 years, really (which is part of the book’s subtitle).
Havrilesky’s book is essay-driven, and while similar in terms of demanding something from readers like Andersen’s does, focuses more on the personal—as in, in a world where excess is the norm—how do we find that place of “happiness” that’s not plugged directly into the capitalist mindset of “things” and “devices.” Both offer more than enough to mull over and I’m sure I will be for months to come.
Then, there’s the constant reminder during my part-time work life of a society that’s been conditioned to constantly bleat the equivalent of “gimme, gimme, gimme,” in the context of healthcare and wellness. It’s all enough to throw one into an existential crisis. Continue reading →
After last week’s debacle in Iowa, where nearly a week later, we still don’t know if the results are in fact valid, the chattering classes are asking, “why Iowa?” and even, “why New Hampshire?”
The horse race to November’s presidential election has begun in earnest. And as it’s been done now since 1920, presidential wannabes, political insiders, and self-appointed front-runners are forced to trudge through the cold and chill of a New England winter writ large. Running the gauntlet of retail politics is still being done in the age of Twitter—as it should be—in a very white state that doesn’t always mirror the rest of America. But to New Hampshire they all come.
During past campaigns, both my wife and I have traveled to Maine-based events together or on our own. I’ve seen Democrats like the Clintons, John Kerry, John Edwards, and Dennis Kucinich in-person. When I was a Republican, I attended events for George Bush. There’s something about seeing candidates in live settings that surpasses merely seeing them pixelated on a television screen.
On Saturday, we decided to make the 35-minute drive from Southern Maine and cross the border into neighboring New Hampshire to hear a long-shot candidate, Tulsi Gabbard. She was hosting a town hall in Rochester, at the Elks Lodge.
Why Gabbard? Both of us have been intrigued by her commercials running on the Portland station where we consume our morning news and get our weather from. Like other candidates I’ve supported: Kucinich, Ralph Nader, and in 2016, Jill Stein, Gabbard projects something different than the typical business-as-usual politics common during DNC-influenced dog-and-pony shows passed off as debates. Continue reading →
