BillLindau

Jack the Viking

posted by Bill Lindau @ 4:18 PM 0 comments

Or, the story of Little Chrissakes

One way to make people laugh: Lose your temper
From The Post, Troy, N.C., April 2005
By Bill Lindau
I wish I had five dollars for every time I cussed out somebody more than he/she deserves and felt silly for my outburst an hour or so later. You may feel good right after you do it, after such a buildup of frustrations, but when you cool off you start thinking you might have made a fool of yourself.
I think about all of us can use a little help keeping our cool at some time or another. I think the two best ways are to find a level-headed, diplomatic way to tell the offending person what’s made out so mad, and find a way to laugh at it sooner or later. Don’t just stew about it too long or blow up at the slightest provocation.
I’ve learned the hard way what can happen when you let your temper get the better of you. You can get fired, drive your friends away, and the businesses and services you depend on will take their own sweet time getting around to you, because they’d rather not deal with you.
It can also take its toll on your health. Research reported in a Washington Post feature indicates the release of stress hormones from anger and other negative emotions can have such detrimental effects as suppressing the immune system and restricting blood vessels. This includes hormones such as adrenalin and cortical, the ones that gear up the body in a “fight or flight” situation. In my own case, sometimes when I get het up over something, I’ll start having an asthma attack. I’ve never had an asthma attack from a good mood.
And, as I said before, you can make a fool of yourself.
It’s amazing how that kind of karma can work against you. Sometimes it can bite you in the tuchus at that very moment.
Here are some instances I can think of, including one in which somebody put on the proverbial brakes in the nick of time:
Shortly after I finished high school, I had a little party on the basement of my parents’ house. The gas heater hung from the ceiling, low enough to be at forehead level, with the grid in the living room where it generated heat. During this little get-together, “Linda” got mad at her boyfriend. The argument escalated to the point where Linda stood up and started walking out. As she was walking, she turned around to give “Alan” another salvo of abuse. Not looking where she was going, she hit her head on the metal corner of the heater.
Not that I took pleasure in anybody getting hurt on the family property, but I think it‘s the worst sort of manners to fight with your companion in another person‘s house. The thing to do when you have an argument brewing is to go get away from everybody before you have it out. Linda’s accident with the heater corner didn’t cause any serious injury, but it taught her a lesson about popping off like that.
In another instance, a young man was acting macho with his car one Saturday evening. “Davey” whipped it into a nightclub parking lot. The 20-year-old car hit a bump in the pavement at such a high speed that it knocked something loose in the chassis.
The 1956 Chevrolet station wagon sputtered to a halt, and you could hear something on the underside of the car scraping along the pavement. “Davey” looked under it, went into the bar and got a mechanically inclined friend to help him out.
The damage was so bad they‘d have to call a certified mechanic, and in those pre-AAA days there was none to be found at that time of night.
Davey and his friend pushed the car into a lot across the street, and Davey pitched the biggest public temper tantrum you ever heard in your life. He beat on the hood, the top and the windows as he screamed curses at the top of his lungs, and at one point got out a tire tool and beat on the car with that, until he broke the front window. This commotion got the crowd out of the night club, and about 20 people stood around gawking at this bit of street theatre. Some people were laughing at it. Everybody knew what caused it and nobody bothered to help him. The nightclub didn’t have live entertainment, but Davey sure provided some that night.
This happened more than 30 years ago, but the people who witnessed it still laugh about it.
Confucius had a saying, “If you plot revenge, you must first dig two graves.“ A friend of mine heard pharmacist Joe Graedon say that on a segment of the National Public Radio program “The People’s Pharmacy”. A friend of mine heard this show, which dealt with the ill effects of long-term resentment.
Unfortunately, “Chandler” had an unresolved issue of his own. He had lost a job several years ago, and although he later found another job and even liked it better, he still stewed sometimes over the way his former supervisor treated him.
Around the anniversary of his departure from that company, Chandler went out for a jog early one weekend morning. He was about a block from his old plant when he finished jogging. At that moment, he felt a call of nature and decided to answer it -- in the company’s parking lot. There was nobody working in the plant at the time, and so he figured it wouldn’t be doing that much harm.
As he walked to the plant, Chandler changed his mind about this particular act, but he had to go so badly that the lot was the only secluded place he could go. He started across an adjacent parking lot to carry out what he had originally planned.
This adjacent lot was being resurfaced -- and it had a portable toilet for the work crew.
Chandler dashed into it and did his stuff, sparing his old employer’s property, without carrying out an act of vengeance that he would have certainly felt silly about later.
“I don’t believe that happened,“ Chandler said. “It’s like, Somebody Up There put that portable toilet in my path, like it was a way of telling me to back off and put it behind me.“
“I hated that boss for years. I kept my mouth shut at the time he was letting me go, knowing he was prepared to call the police if I lost it. I wanted to bad to go in there and chew him to the bone after that,“ He added.
“It’s been a week since that time I stopped myself from doing my business in the plant parking lot -- or I think more accurately, Somebody Up There stopped me,“ Chandler said. “But you know what? I don’t have the anger spells I used to have after I got fired. I‘m not going to go over there and say, ‘Let‘s be buddies again,’ but I‘ve just quit stewing over it and having all these fantasies of throwing Molotov cocktails and siccing rabid Rottweilers on the manager. Thoughts like that have just stopped burrowing into my head.“
I had planned to include among these anecdotes an encounter between a friend of mine and his rather vindictive neighbor, in which the neighbor got his come-uppance. Before I started this column, however, my friend “Ross” asked me not to put down the details, and so I‘m respecting his wishes.
“I don’t want him thinking he can still push my buttons,“ Ross said. “I have bigger things to deal with than this dumb feud. The difference between him and a gnat buzzing around your head is, you can’t use an insect repellent on his species. It’d be nice if you could. End of subject, man.“
One last little tale: Writing this column brought back a childhood memory.
When I was 12 or 13 I used to catch bees and fireflies inside jars, poking holes in the lids so they could breathe. I let them go after awhile and even put things in the jars that I thought they could eat.
One bumblebee I caught didn’t exactly appreciate my hospitality, so he (she?) started buzzing up a storm. It was a hot July day and my parents and I were sitting around in the dining room. The jar with the bumblebee sat on one of the cabinets, with the unwitting tenant carrying on. Well, after awhile, that buzzing got on my father’s nerves so badly, he cried out, “Oh, for (Pete‘s) sake!”
Suddenly the room fell silent. The bumblebee had shut up at the exact moment of Dad’s outburst.
Mom and I almost fell on the floor with laughter. It was as if this five-foot-seven ogre had scared the wits out of my little friend. At that moment Mom and I gave the bumblebee a name: “Little Petessakes.“ (NOTE by the author: My father really said, “Oh, for Christ’s sake!” and the bumblebee was christened -- pardon the pun -- Little Chrissakes. I took the liberty of euphemizing my father’s exclamation for the sake of publication).
Then I went outside with the jar and set Little Chrissakes (the insect’s real name) free.
---
Contact reporter Bill Lindau at blindau52@yahoo.com or (910) 582-6610.

posted by Bill Lindau @ 3:48 PM 0 comments

Coaches behaving badly

Coaches behaving badly

Submitted but unpublished
By Bill Lindau
Special to The Pilot
Everybody loves it when two ballclubs hammer it out on a playing field. It doesn't do anybody any good when two people involved in the game butt heads off the field.
Recently a coach at a game I was covering refused to comment to me after the game. His team had just won by a huge shutout and if I were that coach, I'd be shouting my joy from the rooftops.
But immediately after the game, when the opposing players and coaches shook hands, I said, "Good game, coach," to Coach E------. He responded by giving me a dead-fish stare, and veered away from me.
I attempted to ask several of Coach E-----'s players about the game. E------ whistled at them to get into the post-game huddle. The game took place on his home field, so they weren't in any hurry to catch a bus.
At that point, I decided that while a comment from the winning coach would've been nice, I didn't have time to try him again, only to have him snub me again. Anyway, I already had the essential details of the game, including the post-game comments from the other coach, the coach on my beat, so I decided I might as well head back to my office.
I don't know what I did, if anything, to make E----- mad at me, but it wasn't due to anything that happened at this particular game. E----- had been boycotting me for more than a year and a half. And he has never told me the reason why.
All I know is, one spring I was covering a baseball game he was coaching. I had just met him several months ago, when he was coaching another sport, and we got along pretty well. I thought we were even going to be friends. Well, close to the end of that game I got inside E-----'s team's dugout.
He promptly asked me to leave.
As soon as the game was over, I started to go over the stats with the youth who had the scorebook. I heard somebody call out, "Don't let him see that scorebook." Then Coach E----- told the statistician to come over to the side of the field where he was going to talk to the team.
I waited for 15 minutes while E----- talked to the team. Then a police officer who'd been staffing the game approached me and said, "The coach said to tell you he's going to be talking to his players a long time. He'll talk to you Monday."
Now here's the rat I smelled: The game took place on Easter weekend. The schools were closed that Monday. Coach E----- had just moved into the county and his home number wasn't in the phone book yet.
The other rat: Just as I was getting into my car, Coach E------ let his players go.
That's when I realized the coach was snubbing me. I wrote up the game that night with all the information I had and wrote a note to my editor telling what happened.
I called Coach E-----'s school. No answer. So he wasn't planning to come in and work on his own. Tuesday: Not there. The school was closed all week. I tried to reach him when the school reopened. "He's not here," the receptionist says every time I call for him and she has me give my name.
That does it. I spend the rest of the season getting the stats from the other team, keeping my own stats or lifting them from a regional metropolitan daily, putting a makeshift report in my own words. I'd get the story one way or another.
E----- is a good coach. He is into his second year coaching the football team, but it is amazing he should treat me this way, for so long, and not have the guts to tell me what I allegedly did to him. I saw a few rookie mistakes on my part in the reports on his ball games, but I have remained on friendly terms with other coaches after much, much, much worse things than that.
It's really sad that an educated person in his late 40s should carry on like a pouty child.
My job didn't suffer that badly, however. My editor was starting to get me out of sports, and doing more front-page news.
What's more, that wasn't the first time a coach has given me the silent treatment.
Coach D----, from another town, guided his football team to five state championships. During one of these seasons, D---- got sore at the newspaper for which I was writing. He later said it wasn't anything I did that made him so mad, it was something that didn't have anything to do with sports.
I became quite an expert at keeping statistics. I also learned how to keep stats and take photos in a pouring rain. And how to keep your notebooks and pen and ink dry.
The next week, my managing editor wrote a column about the incident, and about the time he himself ended up in the doghouse. I have chosen not to mention names in this commentary. It made Coach D---- even madder. "The paper is trying to turn the entire community against me," D---- said later. He said neither he nor his assistant coaches would not talk to me, and I would have to keep my own stats.
And I did.
He left after that year, but came back and won two more state championships. But a few years later, D---- got sore at the newspaper for something involving academics. It didn't last long; both the principal and the athletic director told him to cease and desist.
He ceased and desisted. His football season ended when his opponents in the state playoffs eliminated D----'s team. D---- quit the following summer. That was the last anybody saw of him.
Coaches who won't cooperate with newspaper are only shooting themselves in the foot. It doesn't accomplish anything to treat the press like dirt. It doesn't help the college prospects on the coach's team, the game coverage is poorer, and besides, the fans knew about the boycott and thought D---- had gone too far.
You may think the newspapers are too liberal for your taste, but you can't really get anywhere with these antics. Coaches who do this kind of bush league stuff are only hurting themselves.

posted by Bill Lindau @ 6:47 PM 0 comments

Unprinted column on Jane Fonda

Here, there & everywhere
Jane Fonda said she was sorry: Now let’s let it go
Written for, but never published by, The Post, Troy, N.C., April 2005. The editor at the time felt local military veterans would boycott the newspaper if it appeared in print.
By Bill Lindau
“Vietnam vets are not Fonda Jane.”
-- Popular bumper sticker
World War II soldiers had Tokyo Rose. Vietnam war veterans had Hanoi Jane. Even though it’s been more than 30 years since she exchanged a word with an enemy soldier, a lot of veterans of the Vietnam era still hate Jane Fonda for getting chummy with the North Vietnamese and sitting in one of their anti-aircraft guns.
Even though she has not said a word against any of our fighting men, sold guns to the North Koreans or tried to assassinate the president. Even though a lot of Vietnam vets have children who are now older than they were when they shot it out with Charlie.
Now Jane Fonda has just said she was sorry for what she did in Vietnam, and those veterans are going up against much bigger problems than this 67-year-old grandmother could ever create. I say, forgive and forget, people.
Jane Fonda has been on her best behavior since those years, coming back into the spotlight with both an autobiography and a movie co-starring Jennifer Lopez called “Monster in Law,” the first movie she has made in 15 years. And all that aside, Fonda even admitted on national television that sitting in that gun was the biggest mistake of her life.
“It was a betrayal,” she told Leslie Stahl on “Sixty Minutes”. “I will go to my grave regretting that. It was like I was thumbing my nose at the military and at the country that gave me privilege.”
She did not apologize for any films she wound up in over there, or for her broadcasts on Radio Hanoi. She said she had met with American prisoners of war and the North Vietnamese took footage of that and twisted around for the purposes of their propaganda. She also said on the April 3 segment of “Sixty Minutes” that she wasn’t trying to get the American soldiers to stop fighting. “I was asking them to consider it.”
Fonda’s involvement with the peace movement took her to various military bases, including Fort Bragg in 1970 (Man, I hated I missed her; I was a junior at Pinecrest High School that year). She and other activists got arrested at Fort Bragg, Fort Hood and Fort Meade for passing out antiwar leaflets.
Fonda also said she’d hate it if a movie star today went over to Iraq and became as friendly with the insurgents shooting at our troops as she had with the North Vietnamese.
“But that was different (from Vietnam),” she said. “We’ve been saying to Richard Nixon, ‘Stop this’ for eight years…. The majority of Americans and congress opposed the war.”
The lingering resentment she has received from a lot of Vietnam vets “makes me sad. I think that it’s ill-placed anger.”
I know Fonda had a bit of an ulterior motive. She was promoting her autobiography, “Jane Fonda: My Life So Far” (Random House, New York). She goes into a lot of candid detail about her stormy relationships with her late father, movie star Henry Fonda, and her three husbands, including media mogul Ted Turner. She also gives some lurid accounts of her sexual activity with her first husband, French director Roger Vadim.
She has made a lot of good movies, including “Cat Ballou,” “Barefoot in the Park,” “On Golden Pond” (the only film she ever made with her famous dad) and “9 to 5”. I never saw a film with her that I didn’t liked. I even liked “Barbarella,” which she said she hated making for a long time. “I couldn’t look at it for a long time because it was politically incorrect,” she said. “Now I look back and laughed.”
People scoffed at her for dissing American capitalism along with her fellow Hollywood lefties, yet marrying one of the richest men in the country and making a fortune on her workout videos. But she has put her money to good use as well, working with pregnant teens and helping girls and boys address destructive gender stereotypes. She hounded the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention in 1995, and in 2002 she opened the Jane Fonda Center for Adolescent Reproductive Health at the Emory University School of Medicine.
I have listened to Vietnam vets and other right-wingers diss Jane Fonda for years, calling her a Communist or a traitor as well as “Hanoi Jane” and swearing they’d never watch any of her movies again. Two U.S. congressmen accused her of treason, and the House Internal Security Council issued her a supoena, then withdrew it.
“I find it interesting that the government and news reporters knew that Americans before me had gone to North Vietnam and had spoken on Radio Hanoi,” she writes in her autobiography. “This was the first time, however, that the issue of treason was being raised.”
But the federal government never discovered a thing she did in Vietnam that they could prosecute her for. Some right-wingers have since accused her of a lot of things.
After her much publicized marriage and divorce from Ted Turner, Fonda dropped out of the spotlight. For awhile. Then in the 2004 presidential campaign, President Bush’s supporters were using her association with former Navy swift boat officer John Kerry against him.
She wasn’t even active in this past campaign, and right-wingers were using her as a weapon against the Democrats. I mean, nobody had heard a peep out of her in years. Somebody even asked me in August 2004 if she was still alive.
I’m not defending what she did in Vietnam. I was very much against that war, too, but I thought what she did with those anti-aircraft guns was in poor taste. Even her friends in Hollywood shied away from her after that.
But that happened more than 30 years ago. She was 35 years old, still young enough to commit acts of youthful folly, which about all of us have been guilty of, in one form or another.
I was coming of age during those years, and just as angry at the Military Industrial Complex as Fonda and Abbie Hoffman put together. I never hobnobbed with Viet Cong colonels or threw Molotov cocktails at college ROTC buildings, but I did do something once in my political extremism that was pretty tactless.
I was a freshman at East Carolina when a handful of politicians came to campus to talk to the students. Though I forgot his name, I listened to one of the candidates, who was running for the state legislature. A student asked him if he would to legalize marijuana if he were elected. He said it was a dangerous drug and he wasn’t planning to do it; he was even planning to get tougher on drugs.
I responded with a raspberry.
Several people standing near me backed away from me as if I were suffering from intestinal gas.
I instantly regretted what I did. It wasn’t the same as what Jane Fonda was supposed to have done, but it was rude and in extremely poor taste. I’ve never done that to any political candidate since then, not even the ones I don’t like.
I have nothing against the Vietnam vets. I was lucky enough not to get drafted, but I appreciate what these men and women went through for the rest of us who stayed at home and crabbed about everything. Some of them came home awfully messed up, in their heads as well as their bodies. They lost a lot of friends over there, and so did the rest of us.
Since that terrible period in our nation’s history, veterans of Vietnam and the wars before and since have been struggling to receive the compensation they deserved as a result of their sacrifices. They’re not just asking it for themselves, but for their spouses and children. Now they have a bigger opponent than one 35-year-old woman could ever be; the federal government is looking at programs to cut all the way across the board, and that includes a lot of benefits for military veterans.
I say, forgive and forget when it comes to Jane Fonda. She’s done a lot of good things in that outweigh all the nonsense she was up to in Vietnam. She has never really lifted a finger against any American fighting man in her life. Thirty years is too long to carry a grudge. Let it go, ladies and gentlemen.

posted by Bill Lindau @ 9:49 PM 0 comments

photos from Leon Russell concert

One of these photos shows me with Richie Havens. Havens performed in the same place, Sept. 14, 2005. I was auditing a course in voice at Sandhills Community College, Southern Pines. I brought my textbook to the concert in hopes Havens would autograph it. He did. Not only that, he was the friendliest celebrity I've met to date. He posed for photos and signed autographs until the last fan was gone.

posted by Bill Lindau @ 9:16 PM 0 comments

Leon Russell concert, Aug. 4, 2005, Southern Pines, N.C.

Rock 'n' roll's 'session man'
Leon Russell plays to full house
A photo I took after the concert also appears. The producers only frowned on photos taken during the concert. Guitarist Jason "Curly" Speegle, far right, of Leon Russell's backup band, celebrates after the concert with friends "Bluebird", second from left, her daughter "Bluebird Charms", third from left and another member of the touring group (far left), Thursday evening, Aug. 4, 2005, at the Sunrise Theater in Southern Pines, N.C. Directly after the 90-minute concert, Leon Russell went straight to the tour bus and signed autographs from inside the vehicle, parked in front of the theater. -- Bill Lindau

A review
By Bill Lindau
SOUTHERN PINES, N.C. -- Leon Russell, the 63-year-old singer-songwriter and keyboardist known as the main session man of rock 'n' roll and "pop music's most anonymous big shot" came to a tiny renovated cinema in downtown Southern Pines and played to a packed house Thursday evening, Aug. 4, 2005.
All 350 seats in the Sunrise Theater were sold out nearly a week before the author of such pop hits as "A Song for You", and "Delta Lady" and "Superstar" came to town. Since the 1960s, he has written a great deal of songs for other people. He performed on keyboard and vocals for 90 minutes, he stayed on stage the whole time, without taking a break. The late Ray Charles covered "A Song for You"; "Delta Lady" was Joe Cocker's signature song; and the 1970s pop duo The Carpenters recorded "Superstar".
Clad in a white straw cowboy hat and a short-sleeved print shirt, the white-haired, long-bearded, ruddy-faced native of native of the southwestern United States performed these hits many other hits, including ones he wrote and songs by other, such as Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, and the Who. Russell has written and arranged songs for artists in other genres, including jazz and swing (Frank Sinatra), rhythm and blues (George Benson, Ray Charles, and others) and country (Willie Nelson, who teamed up with him for a 1979 concert in Greensboro).
An area production company, Name Productions, based in Southern Pines, was responsible for booking Russell.
"His booking is a coup for the Sunrise and for the Sandhills," wrote Brent Hackney in a Southern Pines arts magazine, Pine Straw", in its July 2005 issue.
Russell sang in his trademark Texas drawl, the red hair of his younger years turned all white. Without the hat, Russell looked like a fairy-tale wizard, with his long, white beard and long hair. In fact, as soon as Russell appeared, one emotionally overwhelmed person in the audience cried out, "He really does look like Gandalf!"
(Gandalf is the good wizard of J.R.R. Tolkien's popular "Lord of the Rings" fantasy trilogy.)
Among the other numbers were "Rolling in my Sweet Baby's Arms," Rolling Stones hits "Jumpin' Jack Flash" "Paint it Black" and "Wild Horses) (all written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards); as well as "Sixteen Tons" (Tennessee Ernie Ford), "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" (Bob Dylan), "Let the Good Times Roll," (Sam Cooke), "Georgia" (another one sung by Ray Charles), "Youngblood," "Papa was a Rolling Stone," "Kansas City," "Great Balls of Fire" (Jerry Lee Lewis) and even "My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean."
A guitar solo by backup musician Jason "Curly" Speegle during the Mick Jagger-Keith Richards hit "Wild Horses" drew deafening roars of applause.
Russell's troupe of backup musicians also featured one of his two daughters, Tina Rose, on tambourine and vocals. She nearly stole the show from Dear Old Dad when she sang one of her own songs a capella (Italian, "without accompaniment") and drew a standing ovation.
His other daughter, Sugaree Noel, could not attend. The other performers in the concert were Jackie Wessel on base and Grant Whitman on drums.
Some people had expected the band to play longer and were stunned when they left the stage and learned it was not an intermission. The theater staff said Russell and the band made it clear that they were only to perform for 90 minutes, instead of two to three hours, the average time of most pop-music concerts.
Tickets, sold in advance at several area merchants, cost $35 for general admission and $45 for reserved seating. Since many big-name concert tickets charge much higher for even the cheapest seats, many concertgoers Thursday regarded that as a bargain, even playing for 90 minutes. For example, tickets to a Rolling Stones concert often start at $65, according to one regular concertgoer.
While many in the audience conceded that what they paid for 90 minutes was a decent ticket price, the concert had one flaw. Due to the acoustics, the audience found Russell's lyrics hard to understand. One of them said that for those who had not heard the songs before, it would have been a drag. But most of them appeared to shrug it off, waving their arms, holding up burning cigaret lighters and doing some head-banging and dancing.
The average age of the audience was 45 years old. This included many people who had listened to Russell's works since they were teenagers in the 1960s.
Bill Russell, a native of Montgomery County now living in Southern Pines, was one of the concertgoers. A friend teased him about his last name and his own looks, a white Santa Claus beard.
"With his big white beard and that last name, he could be your brother," the friend said to Bill Russell.
"Actually, he's my uncle," Bill Russell quipped back.
Another concert goer, also named Bill, told about a desperate hunt for tickets in Southern Pines during the last 10 days before the show. Two of the merchants who were selling tickets were also sold out. But a customer of the second outlet, a night club in downtown Southern Pines, telephoned a neighboring outlet and asked them to hold some tickets for Bill.
"Anything for a fellow rock fan," said the nightclub patron, whom Bill had never met before.
Bill dashed across the tracks to the other business, where the proprietor was waiting for him with the tickets.
"Then I heard just before they came on (at the concert): The tickets were sold out the next day," Bill said after the concert.
This reporter received a souvenir from one of the persons following Russell's tour. A woman who called herself Bluebird," who came with her teenage daughter, "Bluebird Charms," gave me a small lapel pin with the design of a bluebird, just before the concert, as I met them while I was waiting in line.
Russell played the first of three back-to-back-to-back concerts in the Carolinas. Later that week he was scheduled to perform in York and Long Creek, both in South Carolina.
Russell was also booked for concerts on Aug. 18 and 19, in Blowing Rock and Charlotte, respectively, following two gigs in Minnesota and one in Winnipeg, Canada. His Aug. 19 show in Charlotte was in the Neighborhood Theatre.

posted by Bill Lindau @ 9:15 PM 0 comments

Oops! Look who showed up on the blogger's family tree!

posted by Bill Lindau @ 9:04 PM 1 comments

Legalizing medical marijuana

Here, There & Everywhere with Bill
Anti-hippie bias vs. patient interests:
Why not legalize medical marijuana?
Originally this was a column written for, but never printed by, The Post, Troy, N.C.
By Bill Lindau
Cannabis doesn’t do any damage to the liver or lead to any kind of chemical dependency. Physicians and other scientists have credited it with effective treatment of glaucoma, relieving nausea, improving appetite and certain other afflictions such as multiple sclerosis. We have so many drugs that are perfectly legal with a doctor’s prescriptions but with much more dangerous side effects.
So why do so many lawmakers and other people not want to legalize marijuana for medical uses?
I can’t think of a single valid explanation except that Congress and the state legislatures have turned this into a political issue. So many right-wingers don’t see marijuana is not a potentially useful source of medicine, but as a symbol of the now-vilified hippies. Amazing what they blame the old 1960s counterculture for now that they don’t have communism to kick around any more: Everything from people wearing warmup suits to church to the spread of AIDS and international terrorism.
Thankfully, 10 states have gone beyond all that and, indeed, made marijuana legal with a doctor’s prescription.
So many people who are so against it would have us believe there’ll have people smoking reefer on the streets and buying it in stores if marijuana were legal. Or even if marijuana were only legal with a doctor’s prescription, any pothead who wanted it could just tell his family physician he has a pain somewhere and the doc will just write out a prescription and say, “Here, get yourself an oh-zee, dude.“
Puh-leeze! Give our nation’s healers more credit than that.
First of all, this is not about “reefer” or “pot”, but cannabis. Reefer and pot is what you use for fun. Medically recommended marijuana is something you take strictly for health reasons. I have read testimonials from patients of all political persuasions. A few of them voted for Reagan and both Bushes and wouldn’t be caught dead toking on a doobie at a party. Yet they say smoking marijuana has really been a good treatment for their afflictions and they hate the idea of the state turning these law-abiding people into criminals.
Talk-show host Montel Williams is one of those patients; he says he smokes marijuana because he suffers from multiple sclerosis.
“Someone suggested that smoking marijuana before going to bed might help me sleep,” he wrote in a recent article that showed up on the Internet. “Skeptical but desperate, I tried it. Three puffs and within minutes, the excruciating pain in my legs subsided. I had my first restful sleep in months.”
“When you see me on TV, you can't see the mind-numbing pain searing through my legs like hot pokers,” Williams said. “The strongest painkillers available -- Percocet, Vicodin, OxyContin and even morphine -- brought me no relief. I couldn't sleep, my legs kicked involuntarily in bed and the pain was so bad I found myself crying in the middle of the night. All these heavy-duty narcotics made me nearly incoherent, turning me into a zombie. And all are highly addictive.”
Before he tried smoking marijuana to alleviate his excruciating pain, “I spiraled deeper into a black hole of depression. It was so bad that I twice attempted to end my life,” Williams further writes.
This brings up one area: the term “addiction”. People who talk about drug abuse need to get their terminology straight before uttering this word.
Addiction refers to a physical dependency, a chemical dependency, not just a psychological dependency. Alcohol, opium and its derivatives such as heroin and morphine, are truly addictive. So are certain sedatives and tranquilizers. But while you can become psychologically dependent on marijuana when you use it recreationally, you don’t have a physical dependence. You’re not truly addicted. You just like it too much. Find something else to do that turns you on just as much, and you can quit smoking it without going through intensive therapy. Alcoholics, heroin addicts and others with physical dependence on certain substances need much more than will power to cure themselves.
The medicinal use of marijuana with a physician’s prescription is now legal in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont and Washington state. In all of these states, recreational use of pot (using it just to get high) is still illegal, and even people who have prescriptions can still get busted if the police find a lot of it in their homes. On the other hand, states where medically prescribed cannabis is still illegal can choose not to prosecute people they see are using it medically, recent reports say.
Here is what a 1999 report from the Institute of Medicine said about medical marijuana. This report appears on a Web site titled www.drugwarfacts.org.:
In "Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base," Janet E. Joy, Stanley J. Watson, Jr., and John A Benson, Jr., of Division of Neuroscience and Behavioral Research, Institute of Medicine of Washington, DC (National Academy Press, 1999) state: "The accumulated data indicate a potential therapeutic value for cannabinoid drugs, particularly for symptoms such as pain relief, control of nausea and vomiting, and appetite stimulation."
The Web site further says: “The Institute of Medicine's 1999 report on medical marijuana examined the question whether the medical use of marijuana would lead to an increase of marijuana use in the general population and concluded that, ‘At this point there are no convincing data to support this concern. The existing data are consistent with the idea that this would not be a problem if the medical use of marijuana were as closely regulated as other medications with abuse potential." The report also noted that, "this question is beyond the issues normally considered for medical uses of drugs, and should not be a factor in evaluating the therapeutic potential of marijuana or cannabinoids.’”
Legally prescribed cannabis can not only make patients feel better, but it can also be good for a state’s economy. Oregon seems to have found that out; a recent report says that state has enjoyed a hefty surplus since it legalized medical marijuana six years ago. “Now, there are more than ten-thousand-400 registered patients who have produced a surplus of one-point-one (m) million dollars,” The Associated Press reported.
Now the Oregon state legislature is debating a question we wish North Carolina would be faced with: What to do with all that money.
Here’s another thing I have a huge problem with: Seeing so many potentially abusable drugs plugged on TV.
People who blame hippies and rock stars for glamorizing drugs ought to pay a bit more attention to their own boob tubes. You have people not getting to sleep because they’re so worried about everything, or somebody walking around with his/her head between the shoulders. Then they pop a single pill in their mouths and presto: No more fretting about the kids, the bills and the job and you’re playing with a computerized Luna moth in slumber land, you’re having a good laugh over lunch, playing touch football in the park and walking on the beach with your dog or your sweetie. Better than a circus magician, eh?
But wait: Before the commercial’s out, the announcer tells you about all sorts of side effects, such as nausea, loss of appetite, a warning against driving or drinking booze while taking this medication and the possibility of physical dependency.
Oh, that’s just great, especially with medicines for psychiatric purposes. Start popping those happy pills and you’ve got a whole other batch of things to worry about. It might even keep you awake at night.
Then, notice these other news reports in the mix: Somebody with a prescription for Zoloft commits suicide. Viagra has not only been linked to blindness. Plus, Viagra and other male-potency drugs have been available on Medicaid to sex offenders. This last item has all the logic of giving free bullets to a Mafia hit man. (Or maybe that’s another way of punishing convicted sex offenders -- making them blind).
People have known about the abuse of legally prescribed drugs for years. The Rolling Stones’ classic hit “Mother’s Little Helper” is about that every thing. Still, the pharmacies are full of FDA-approved substances that, while they can do some good, can also do some really horrible things.
Now somebody explain to me what makes cannabis any worse than some of these drugs?
As I said before, legalizing recreational pot smoking has nothing to do with this issue. The state could impose penalties on people caught possessing cannabis without a medical prescription, just as it does for people caught with Valium (diazepam), barbiturates or other legally prescribed drugs. Substance abuse counselors could still point out the alleged drawbacks of recreational use of marijuana (as well as medical marijuana when it’s improperly used) (such as it can make you paranoid, lazy, mess up your lungs and just plain dry up your bank account). I’m all for that.
But as Montel Williams, a New York resident, says, “It does society no good to treat patients like me - simply trying to live well and be productive citizens in the face of terrible illness - as criminals. And threatening sick people with jail does not make New York a better place.”
New York, by the way, might be answering his prayers. He says the state legislature is considering legalizing cannabis. Identical bills in the State Senate and Assembly have been debated, and they have the approval of Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morganthau. It also has support from such health organizations as the American Public Health Association, American Nurses Association, the Medical Society of the State of New York and the New York State Association of County Health Officials.
“I am still alive and living a productive, fruitful life because of medical marijuana,” Williams says. “I'm not alone.”

posted by Bill Lindau @ 9:00 PM 1 comments

About the Cream reunion tour

Cream reunion tour: Back in the sunshine of our love
By Bill Lindau
Of all the British rock groups that flourished in the 1960s, Cream is the only one I know whose original members are still alive. Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker are all in their 60s, and they’re a little slower than they were almost 40 years ago, but the reviewers said they were really jamming’ this month in London, when they started their reunion tour.
After a rough beginning in 2005, I can honestly say this is the best news I’ve heard all year. I loved Cream when I a young teenager and I’m happy for them now, that they have gotten back together after 37 years and sound just as good as ever.
My only gripe: We don’t have any information about when and where they are playing in the States. Looked it up on the Internet, and I either haven’t found the proper links or their production managers are keeping it to themselves.
They were nowhere near as good as the Beatles -- as far as I’m concerned, nobody is -- but in the two years this trio played together, they gave the Who and the Rolling Stones a run for their money: Clapton with his strings of gold, Bruce with his awesome bass and Baker with his butt-kicking drums. They brought their own style to the rock scene, with their own form of blues with a bit of psychedelic sound thrown in. They played together from 1966 to 1968, cutting three studio albums and a concert album for their last gig together, “Goodbye Cream” in the fall of 1968.
I heard back in January they were getting back together for a reunion tour, and I felt like singing in the streets, specifically their hits, “White Room,” “Sunshine of your Love,” “Badge” and “Spoonful”. But they have remained in my memory for the past few years, when I hear someone doing a few of their songs.
The 2003 film “Cold Mountain” featured one of their old hits. Those who saw it may remember a scene toward the end when Jack White and two other actors were playing some music around a campfire during a cold winter night. One of the songs was an old Cream hit, “Sitting on Top of the World”. It was originally a delta blues song, and I found the idea of a white Southerner singing it during the Civil War a little hard to believe, but I almost had a cow. I thought that was fabulous all the same.
Every once in awhile you can also hear some of the blues songs Cream covered on radio station WFAE (90.7 FM), a public-radio station in Charlotte. It airs from 9 p.m. to midnight Saturdays. “Born under a Bad Sign”, “Crossroads,” a Willie Dixon song called “Spoonful” and one by Muddy Waters called “Rollin’ and Tumblin’” are among the ones I’ve heard on it.
The first week of this month, Cream played four days at Royal Albert Hall in London, to sellout crowds that included both 50somethings and their kids who weren’t even born when the highly touted supergroup broke up after two years. But Clapton, Bruce and Baker on drums “ripped” through 18 of their famous songs in just over two hours on opening night, Monday, May 2. The concert ended with Clapton crying with joy before a packed house. A CNN report said they were “much changed but very much revered.“
This was the very same place they gave their last concert in the fall of 1968. This incredibly talented threesome could have been more successful than the Who or the Rolling Stones, but they reportedly fought so much they only lasted two years.
But in those two years, they were as popular as ever.
Does anybody who reads this still have their albums: “Fresh Cream,” “Disraeli Gears” and “Wheels of Fire”? “Goodbye Cream” was the fourth one they did together. An “greatest hits” collection called “Heavy Cream” came out in 1972. That’s the only one of their LPs I still have.
Clapton, the baby of this rock family at 60, has had the most successful career. After Cream broke up he and Baker joined Steve Winwood of Traffic and Rick Grech in a group called Blind Faith. They only put together one album, but it was really good.
I was surprised Baker was still alive; he was just as famous for his drug problems as for his marathon drum solos. But even though he indeed battled with a heroin addiction for years, Baker, now 65, seemed to have done all right for himself. A recent report said he went on to build a modern recording studio in Nigeria, the first one in West Africa. He also became an olive farmer in Tuscany and ran a club in Denver. He and Bruce once formed a rock trio in 1994, the year after all three of them as Cream were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
I saw Jack Bruce in concert once, when he, Leslie West and West’s former drummer with Mountain named Corky Laing played at East Carolina University. He faded from the spotlight, but continued to play music, experimenting with jazz and fusion and playing in rock bands from time to time, including the one I mentioned above.
“Clapton was still in his teens when he showed himself to be a guitar wizard with the Yardbirds and then legendary John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers,” the CNN report said.
“It was Baker who first approached Clapton about forming a group. It was Clapton who suggested Bruce as the third member -- an idea that didn't go down well with Baker, who had fallen out with the Scotsman when they were both members of the Graham Bond Organisation, a British rhythm and blues band. Despite the animosity between the two -- something that would take on violent overtones and self-destructive behavior in years ahead -- Baker and Bruce agreed to work together again.
“Gone on Monday (May 2) was the acrimony, along with the extended improvisations and half-hour solos.
“Somewhere in the vacuum of career transitions and personal crisis, Clapton and company appear to have become a group, perhaps really for the first time. Mature, paced and professional, and begging the question: How good would these guy have been in the early days if not for drugs, alcohol and egos?”
Tickets for the London concerts went on sale Jan. 31 and they were quickly gone. I wonder if Cream will play in the Carolinas and if so, how much tickets will cost. I’m sad to say they’ll probably be a luxury most of us old working stiffs can’t afford. But even so, two CD sets have just come out that sound as if they’re worth a listen. “I Feel Free -- Ultimate Cream” is a two-CD set with both studio and live performances by Cream. A “Special Edition -- Limited Deluxe” three-CD box set includes BBC sessions and interviews with Clapton.
My recently deceased friend Andy Faircloth is probably howling with delight, wherever he is now. He was one of the biggest Cream fans you ever met.
Cream and their songs brought back a lot of memories. I lost track of how many parties I went to with them playing “Sunshine of your Love” on eight-track tapes. If I wind up in a rest home about 20 years from now, I hope somebody has a collection of Cream, Beatles and Barbra Streisand albums that are still in good shape.
I may spend my days in a “White Room”, but I’d really be "Sitting On Top of the World"!

posted by Bill Lindau @ 8:57 PM 0 comments

Star Wars, Cinderella Man movie reviews

Hollywood’s latest: 2 short reviews
‘Cinderella Man’ packs a punch;
‘Star Wars’ is drama at its finest
By Bill Lindau
We’ve just read a report that movie ticket sales are down all over, due to higher costs, number of quality flicks and more people waiting for them to come out on DVD. Shame on the movie going public for losing faith: I’ve just seen two flicks that nobody should pass up.
Naturally, the latest “Star Wars” movie is going to be a popular thing, but while Ron Howard’s biopic of a depression-era boxing champ won’t exactly deliver a knockout punch against George Lucas’s space opera, “Cinderella Man” has run a close second and deserves a place in the “must-see” category.
I’ve seen them both within two weeks, saving money by going to the early bird or matinee specials and eating at home, so I won’t get hungry for any overprice popcorn or sodas. I’m not a real die-hard Star Wars fan and I blow hot and cold when it comes to sports movies, but I assure you, you are sooooo going to get your money’s worth with these two.
‘Cinderella Man’
This movie has a lot of boxing matches, but it’s a lot more than any formula jock opera. It’s about struggling through hard times, keeping your family together and making a success of yourself. This is the story of an American hero in a showdown between good and evil.
“Gladiator” and “A Beautiful Mind” star Russell Crowe teams up with “Opie” again to play another dude who takes people out for a living: Irish-American prizefighter Jimmy Braddock (1905-1974). The beautiful but pouty-faced Renee Zellweger plays Braddock’s devoted wife Mae.
One of Braddock’s grandchildren, Rosemarie DeWitt, has a supporting role as their neighbor Sara Wilson. Paul Giamatti could very well win a Best Supporting Actor Oscar as Braddock’s nerdy but loyal manager, Joe Gould. Zellweger and Crowe do good jobs (though Zellweger whines just a little too much), but the bug-eyed Giamatti steals the show from both of them.
I never got so emotionally involved in a boxing match -- real or celluloid -- in my life as much as I did the showdown between Braddock and heavyweight champion Max Baer (Craig Bierko). I’m not going to spoil the ending by telling who wins (at least, not for those who haven’t read up on these men’s boxing careers), but it’s a real showdown between good and evil. People in the audience actually cheered when Braddock lands a punch against the sadistic, trash-talking Baer (I was one of those people). You also want to jump into the screen and hold Renee Zellweger’s hand as she and their three kids listen to Jim’s fight on the radio and poor Renee’s ready to jump out of her skin.
The movie focuses just as much on life during the Depression. Braddock had to quit boxing in the late 1920s, and the Depression put him in the rest of the country behind the eight-ball. The film has Braddock working on the docks and living on public assistance before Gould talks him into putting on the gloves again. One scene shows what a good guy Braddock is when he gives his relief money back to the public-assistance office after his career takes off. The film gives him further role-model qualities it pans to a scantily clad cocktail waitress who’s giving Braddock the eye when he‘s dining out with his wife. Braddock doesn’t even glance at her.
I pulled for one of the Jewish guys Braddock fights (Art Lasky), but I put aside the fact that Baer was also Jewish when Braddock takes him on. I have one problem as far as that goes: The character of Baer in this film is too evil to be credible, baiting Braddock in a restaurant and making lewd comments about his wife. Baer in real life was acquitted of manslaughter in the death of an opponent during one of his fights; the movie claims Baer killed two men in the ring. Incidentally, people who watched “The Beverly Hillbillies” remember Baer as the real Jethro’s father (Max Jr. played the lovable dimwit). I can’t help wondering what the retired actor thinks of this film; I doubt he’s very pleased.
If you’ll read up on the real James Braddock, you’ll find the movie doesn’t stray too far from the truth by putting such a white hat on him. He later served in World War II, became a successful businessman and helped build one of New York City’s latest bridges. He and Mae stayed together until the day he died, late in 1974.
All things considered, this film is even better than all the “Rocky” movies put together. “Cinderella Man” could put most other boxing flicks out in the first round.
‘Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith’
I felt sorry for Darth Vader when I thought he was breathing so hard because he had asthma. But respiratory ailments weren’t the only thing that turned him into the evilest man in the galaxy. This sixth and supposedly film in the “Star Wars” series tries to sum up how it all happened.
I loved the very first three “Star Wars” films, but I skipped the last two after hearing such horrible reviews about them, and I’d pretty much written them all off. I figured “SW6: Revenge of the Sith” was just more kid stuff.
But a trip to Southern Pines with the $4 Early Bird price in my hand convinced me otherwise.
This film has plenty of special effects, light-saber duels and weird-looking androids, but it clearly has the elements of a Shakespearean tragedy. That’s how the film works for me, showing how a handsome young Jedi Knight with a beautiful wife turns into such a tyrant and a murderer, and infest an entire empire with his evil. “The Godfather” series had similar elements of classic tragedy, with Michael Corleone seduced by his own dark side, a la 20th-Century organized crime.
Often, when we talk about an acquaintance who has become a total jerk, somebody says, “Oh, I remember him when he was a really decent guy.“ This is what you can say about Anakin Skywalker before he turned into Darth Vader. This latest movie shows how Anakin turned into such a fallen angel: The bad advice, and the deals with the devil he made with a friend who turned out to be an enemy of the empire in disguise; the frustration he felt when the members of the Jedi knights’ council would not make him a Master because he was too young; the possibility of his pregnant wife (Padme, played by Natalie Portman) dying in childbirth.
You can’t say much for the dialogue, but the battle scenes are impeccable. Ewan McGregor does a good job as a younger Obi-Wan Kenobi (Anakin’s friend and mentor). With his neat beard and well-barbered haircut, Obi-Wan comes across as a butt-kicking UNC professor. Get a load of the computer-generated dinosaur he puts a saddle on and rides; that lizard-horse thing is a howler.
A few scenes look like something the screenwriters might have stolen from “Lord of the Rings”. You’d think all the human beings were made out of steel and plastic, the way they get knocked across rooms and over cliffs and you don’t even see a bruise on the ones who survive.
The end of the movie answers a lot of questions, but it creates a big one: What happened to Jimmy Smits’s character between the two “Star Wars” trilogies. He has a good supporting role as a sympathetic Empire senator, and he ends up as a key element involving the entire series. That’s all I’m going to say about him, before I not spoil the ending.
Those are about the only few gripes I have about this one. Overall, I give it a real thumbs up. Seeing “old friends” like Yoda and the android comedy team of R2D2 and C-3PO makes it like old home week.
Later I thought about what would have happened if Darth Vader had lived long enough to see Princess Leia get married.
What a father-in-law for Han Solo! I’d especially have felt sorry for Calista Flockhart.

posted by Bill Lindau @ 8:52 PM 0 comments

Manya Dunn

W. Middle instructor:
Nothing in the world like teaching and singing
From The Post, Troy, N.C., August 2005
By Bill Lindau
When she was in school, Manya Dunn thought for awhile of singing professionally.
“My teachers wanted me to follow it, to go to New York,“ she said.
Instead, she let them down -- by deciding to go into teaching. She figured her calling was to show others the way to the footlights.
And so here she is, beginning her latest year as West Middle School’s one and only music teacher. Dunn graduated from Wingate College and has been in the Montgomery County Schools for the past 25 years.
As far as she is concerned, that is where she wants to be.
Teaching and singing have been Dunn’s two main ambitions since she was a young girl. And she has turned those dreams into reality.
At West Middle School, Dunn teaches general music and chorus. She has at least two other jobs: Teaching at Trinity Music Academy, and serving for the past two years as choir director of the First Baptist Church in Troy.
Dunn is also involved in Trinity’s big productions, such as the Messiah. She is also a member of the Order of the Confederate Rose. Her Southern heritage is something else dear to her heart; all eight of her great-great-grandfathers fought in the Civil War. She once sang in Raleigh on Flag Day (Confederate, that is). She has sung at Memorials and dedications.
Dunn has loved to sing all her life, and she has made a livelihood turning youngsters on to the joys of music, how it really beats smoking dope any day of the week.
“Singing was an escape for me,” Dunn says of her childhood. “I’d sing a song about a faraway place and imagine I was in that place.”
She added that teaching was another of her ambitions as a little girl.
Instead, she decided teachers wanted her to go to New York to pursue a career as a professional musician.
She had the distinction of attending Wingate when that school had its first-year music program.
“We were the guinea pigs, so to speak, getting into a new curriculum there.”
She has also worn two hats at West Middle School alone, teaching dramatics; her classes have put on some musicals. This year, however, the music program will work on competitive performing. She says the school’s principal, Mike Penninger, wants her to enter her students in competition.
She says this is the first time she has been able to groom students for performing competitively.
In the past years, her classes have performed “The Sound of Music,” “Oliver,” “Cinderella” and “A Christmas Carol.”
Last year, they did “The King and I” by cutting the work down to one hour for the middle schools.
“We had some fun,” Dunn said. “I hope to do it again in the future.”
Dunn hopes this year she and Bernadette Montes at East Middle School can get their classes together and put together a countywide performance.
“We did that once or twice at Trinity, with all the elementary and middle schools,” she said. “Bring the county together and do some performances.”
This academic year, her schedule consists of nine groups of students, including a home base and eight classes, averaging 30 students per class in the schedule. The sixth-graders meet for nine weeks, and some seventh- and eighth-graders will meet for nine weeks as well. All the students have the option of going another nine weeks, and she has an “honors chorus” that meets year-round.
Dunn mentioned a few former students that have become successful in the field of music. John Willoughby is one. He now sings with the Charlotte Opera Company, Dunn says. He went to Trinity Music Academy and even taught some students as an alumnus. Stacy Johnson of Troy has competed in the “Gimme the Mike--Charlotte.”

posted by Bill Lindau @ 8:49 PM 0 comments

Bernadette Montes photo

posted by Bill Lindau @ 8:37 PM 0 comments

Bernadette Montes

Bernadette Montes
East Middle teacher’s career bursting
with educational, artistic achievements
From The Post, Troy, N.C., August 2005
By Bill Lindau
Whoever said those who can’t do, teach, never met Bernadette Montes. This music, dance, dramatics and art teacher at East Montgomery Middle School has done plenty of doing as well as teaching.
This Renaissance woman from the Philippines showed her colleagues in the Montgomery County Schools exactly what she could do last month, when she sang at the Monday, Aug. 23 Convocation at West Montgomery High. She performed a Filipino love song titled “Habil So Iyo” and the theme from the movie “Titanic”, titled “My Heart will Go On.”
Montes did not know she was going to get impressed into service for the Convocation, which this year included entertainment by members of the faculty and staff.
“I was on holiday in the Philippines when I got my notice,” she said. Her husband and three daughters still live in their native country.
Montes has performed and taught all over the world. Her educational track record had included heading up the Department of Expressive Arts at Madang Teachers College, the biggest teachers’ institution in New Guinea. Montes, who has just begun her third academic year at East Middle School under the Visiting International Faculty program, once got the chance to sing for Pope John Paul II. The late pontiff had come to St. Scholastica’s College in Manila, a convent school operated by German Benedictine nuns, when she was teaching in Papua, New Guinea. That school also happens to be her alma mater.
“I started training when I was 10 years old,” Montes said. “When I went on concerts around the world I got offers to stay every place I went. I was also in Australia for awhile.”
Montes had been teaching in England, at Thornton College, when she learned about the position at East Middle School. She learned about it on the Internet, on the VIF Web site.
“I had Ms. Lampros (Sandy) interview me on the phone. I was in England. She asked, ‘Can you come next week?’”
Montes had to finish out her contract with Thornton College. A week after it closed, she came to Biscoe.
In addition to teaching in the public schools, Montes gives private lessons, mainly in vocals and piano. She also sings in the Our Lady of the Americas choir.
Among the students of her private lessons are Eden Holt, an 8-year-old girl who sang during the East Montgomery spring concert, and whom Montes is thinking about getting to do a concert of her own; Jillian Bissette, who will soon sing with the Greensboro All-State Youth Choir (“I trained her and she went to the audition -- she was selected and she sang all over the state,” Montes says); Destiny Jordan, who after three months under Montes’s tutelage played Beethoven’s “Fuer Elise” on piano and passed an audition for Triad Idol; Nikki Hunsucker, who “has a good voice…She trains with me” and Paris Dumas, 10, who plays piano and has already performed in a concert.
Among Montes’ recent achievements as a public-school instructor was her participation in a week’s workshop for the North Carolina Conference for the Advancement of Teachers (NCCAT). Only 24 North Carolina teachers were selected to this program for the January session. The theme for that session was “Young, Black and Male in America”.
For this project, Montes did research on black history and American black culture. When she came back to East Middle, she had her students do performances of rap music.
Lampros has called her and Angel Castro, the other VIF instructor on the East Middle School faculty, “two magnificent ones,” and said Montes was “phenomenal” and “unbelievably amazing.”
Montes hopes the Powers That Be will take those comments and other aspects of her life into consideration when this new academic year, 2005-06, expires. This is her last academic year with the VIF. She says unless she can land a position with the county schools, she will have to leave the States.
As much as she misses her husband and children, she does not want to say goodbye to her life in Biscoe, N.C., U.S.A.
One asset Montes feels she has brought to the school system is her resourcefulness, a trait she grew up with in a part of the world that doesn’t have as great a budget for its schools. “We don’t have as many materials as we have here,” she says.
For her art classes in the Pacific area, she and her students would take the bark from the branches of trees and use it for a medium. Also, “like if I needed paint, I’d get the students to collect clay and mix it with powdered paint. For black, we used charcoal. We use different trees and leaves to get the colours, and we’d use anato seeds.”
“I had to study ethnomusicology to learn traditional music and dance.”
She once came up with an exhibit of tie-dyed materials. She did the same thing for her music classes, making materials from nature, including bamboo.
“I tried to get them to make use of resources,” Montes says. “They can produce instruments from bamboo. I got them to do their national anthem with their instruments, which were mostly percussion.”
Students in New Guinea and other Asian and Pacific nations are just as geographically and ethnically diverse as in the United States. The students from the different provinces of New Guinea “just want to learn their own music. They hare very patriotic,” she says.
“You will be able to recognize them by the different provinces by the face paint and body paint, and by different dances and music,” Montes says.
At East Middle School, Montes teaches not only music and art appreciation; she also teaches students how to play instruments and paint. You wonder how she manages to do so much.
She did not have it any easier closer to home. “For graduation in New Guinea, I had them do Western music,“ she says.
“It was hard to convince them to sing music that’s different from what they sing all their life.
“I gave recordings to their parents. We recorded the performances and then gave them copies.
“At the end of each semester, I made sure they gave a production of music, dance and drama. They would do their own dances and songs and introduce drama. I would have some do an interpretation.”
She said her students in New Guinea spoke 80 different dialects. Her class included Australians and Americans as well.
At East Middle, she has classes of nine weeks apiece. Classical music is her main thing. She starts off her lessons in classical music with symbols, rhythm, then percussion for rhythms. She teaches the value of the notes, and uses graphic notations that they can understand. Her lessons might consists of a box of four squares, with a pair of different notes (quarter, eight, half, whole etc.) in different squares. The students would turn the squares around and come up with different rhythms.
After awhile, when the students got into some complicated rhythms, she would break the class into groups of four or five, and they would start composing rhythms. Later they would get into composing melodies as they formed rhythm ensemble. “I slowly get them into playing,” Montes said.
“Ms. Lampros was very impressed.”
It has not been all fun and games, but sometimes she has seen some unexpected but pleasant results.
“There are some of them (students) who are really difficult,” Montes said. “The children who don’t like music I deal with in a special way.”
Montes, however, has also had some kids who didn’t like music at all to end up getting into it.
“Their parents are astounded, knowing how much their kids didn’t like music.”
She tries to leave her students with something they can remember, recording their performances so that each has a record of what he or she has done.
Her classroom features pictures of different instruments. She says she lets the students hear the sound of different instruments, and when they recognize the sound, they point to the instruments.
Among her other accomplishments were participation and membership in the Opera Workshop of the Philippines; in the Bayanihan Cu Hiwal Dance Troupe, as a singer-dancer in an organization devoted to folk dances and Philippine music; performing on TV, in the St. Jessica’s Church parish choir in England; in St. Mary’s Cathedral choir in Newcastle, England and in the Elmhurst School for Dance and Performing Arts, the first ballet school of England.
Montes has earned praise from students and parents to the school superintendent, Dr. Lindsey Suggs.
This is the sort of thing that makes her feel right at home in the states, along with the pleasure of being a part of the enrichment of so many young lives.

posted by Bill Lindau @ 8:29 PM 0 comments

Book reviews

Book reviews: ‘The Killing Club,’ latest George Carlin work
‘Marcie Walsh’s’ whodunit a real page-turner; Carlin tickles the funnybone again
From The Post of Troy, N.C., March 2005
By Bill Lindau
“The Killing Club,” by Michael Malone (Hyperion, New York). Based on a story by Josh Griffith. Fiction. 278 pages. $19.95.
The dust jacket of this mystery novel lists another author, Marcie Walsh. She’s actually the fictional author. Malone, a longtime North Carolina mystery writer and TV scriptwriter, did the actual writing. Marcie Walsh is a character played by Kathy Brier on the popular ABC soap opera “One Life to Live,” and this book that she “wrote” plays a large part in a murder mystery on the TV program.
Malone puts his famous easygoing style to work again in this latest whodunit. His other mystery novels include “Uncivil Seasons,” “Handling Sin” and “The Last Noel”. His characters are believable, the dialogue amazingly realistic, thanks to all his years as OLTL’s head writer. He has received an Emmy award for his work on this soap, and has received Edgar and O. Henry awards for his mystery novels.
In Malone’s latest work, Jamie Ferrara, a police detective in the small town of Gloria, New Jersey, narrates the action. Ten years ago in high school, Jamie and other so-called outcasts formed a group called The Killing Club. In this group, the often picked-on kids make up creative ways to kill their tormentors. They all recorded these pretend murders in a Death Book. The group broke up after one of the members apparently committed suicide.
Years later, one of the so-called misfits in this group, Ben Tyvola, has been murdered. Jamie’s fiancé, Rod, who is also her superior in the police department, is about to write off his death as a freak household accident; he tripped over a wire going to the basement and fell downstairs, then the house caught fire. Jamie, however, can’t help believing it’s foul play. The way Tyvola died bears too much resemblance to one of the murders their old high-school group dreamed up and put down in the Death Book.
Other characters that used to belong to The Killing Club show up for Ben’s funeral. After that, another of them is murdered, followed by several more, all killed in one way or another that they had come up with for the Death Book.
Most of Jamie’s friends and family believe there’s no connection between The Killing Club and the murders, which all look like ordinary accidents, such as a car crash or a bow hunting accident. But she finds too many clues, and unearths too much dirty laundry, to know somebody really is knocking off the old Killing Club members.
I’m not a big whodunit aficionado; too many murder mysteries are formulaic. I’ve only read one Agatha Christie novel in my life, because many people called her the queen of formula fiction. That’s not Malone’s style; he gives as much life to his characters as he attempts to give plausibility to his plots.
I only have one gripe: This book has too many characters. You have to keep a box score to tell them all apart. You have Jamie, Rod, Pudge, Garth and his sister, Connie the Catholic Priest, Jamie’s ex-cop father, her druggie rock-’n’-roller kid brother, Jamie’s deceased sister’s adolescent son and his yuppie scum father Barclay and his father’s second wife and snob mother. And I haven’t even mentioned everybody.
For a page-turner, you can’t beat this book, however. Just make a list of all the characters so you can tell who’s who and you’ve got a good, red-blooded American whodunit. Kudos to Michael Malone for his latest book.
***
Also new in area libraries
“When will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?” by George Carlin (Hyperion, New York, 2004). Humor. 295 pages. $23.95.
George Carlin has been a comic superstar for most of my adult life. I think of him as the Irish Lenny Bruce. His humor is just as irreverent, shoot-from-the-hip-py. There isn’t a thing in American life that he doesn’t make fun of, including religion, popular culture and especially contemporary expressions. He pokes fun at the political correctness and yuppification of society.
For example, he bewails the time when suddenly people stopped saying “toilet paper” and calling it “bathroom tissue.” “I wasn’t consulted on this. I didn’t get a postcard, I didn’t get an e-mail, no one bothered to call. It just happened,” he says. Loafers became slip-ons, sweatpants and sweatshirts became active wear, store clerks became product specialists and sales counselors and every employee from a janitor to a fast-food worker became an associate.
Here are a few other Carlinisms this book includes:
* “Ultimately, a goldfish can kill a gorilla. However, it does require a substantial element of surprise.”
* “The pyramids are not really old. They were built in 1943 as a joke by drunken Italian soldiers on leave in Egypt at the time.”
* “In the future:….Men will learn to control the weather with a large hammer….All the knowledge in the world will be contained on a single, tiny silicon chip which someone will misplace” and
* “Children’s Hospital in New York is quite an amazing place. On a recent visit, I saw two seven-year-olds performing a kidney transplant.”
You can never be too thin, or too rich. Or have too much comic relief. That’s not what George Carlin said. That’s what Bill Lindau said. Check out this man’s latest book if you want something that I guarantee will chase off the Blue Meanies.
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Contact Bill Lindau at blindau52@yahoo.com.

posted by Bill Lindau @ 8:26 PM 0 comments

Model Railroads

Store becoming famous for its vast model railroads
From The Post of Troy, August 2005
By Bill Lindau
ALBEMARLE, N.C. -- Even though fewer Americans than ever travel by railroads in their lives, very few can take their eyes off a model train in action. Jim Brown has used the upstairs room of his music store for that form of entertainment -- free.
J.W. Lowder, the “chief engineer” of the model train layout, can run to as many as 10 to 15 model trains chugging over Lionel, HO Gauge and other tracks on four to five different levels in the top floor of Albemarle Music Store. On Fridays, Saturday mornings and for special groups, both kids and kids at heart can visit the train room, and the only time you pay for anything is when you cave in and buy one of the train sets, model airplanes, race cars, ships and military vehicles. Kid-sized, pedal-operated autos are among the other items; one of these medal cars has the design of a World War I-1920s-era roadster.
The train room is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Fridays, 9 a.m. to noon on Saturdays and by appointment at other times. The Albemarle Music Store is located on Main Street in downtown Albemarle. A statewide magazine and at least one TV station have produced features on the train room.
Brown’s father opened Albemarle Music Store in 1925, and Brown himself took it over in 1951. He began collecting model trains.
“Jim just collected these trains over the years,” Lowder said. “And every time one would go bad, he’d throw it in a box. And I said, ‘Why don’t I fix one or two of them up?”
And so the train room was created.
“We got all the trains that Jim has collected over the years and we restored them,” Lowder said, mentioning a recent development. “We got a new transformer and put a new track down and we sold every one.”
The train sets on sale start from around $100 and up. Engines, cars, pieces of track and other accessories can be sold separately. Their designs range from the first trains of the 1830s to today’s Amtrak trains. Replicas of the Polar Express, Crescent Limited, Southern Express, Santa Fe and the Pennsylvania and Ohio trains are among the most popular models, Brown and Lowder say. The various cars and engines range from an inch to three feet long. One of the layouts has a trolley, and one of the cars has a psychedelic theme, featuring the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine.
People of all ages have played with toy trains as long as they have traveled on real “iron horses”, Brown said. Rock star Neil Young is one of the more famous model railroad junkies. The Canadian recording artist loved them so much he once bought out the Lionel electric train company, Brown says. Young later sold the age-old business, which is known for its three-rail track.
Some of the trains on the layout have seen plenty of action. Sometimes the trains would run so long the plastic bodies of the cars melted, Lowder said. But he tries his best to keep them all repaired.
“I’ve glued (one of them) together so many times I don’t see how it even runs,” Lowder says.
There are two large tables in the center of the room, each with a transformer and controls for each set of tracks on one end. Two areas along the walls also have trains running. The “engineer” can operate the different railroads from one spot, viewing the trains on closed-circuit TVs overhead.
It may be easy for someone to get too close to the tracks and “derail” a train, but Lowder says he never has any collisions with trains unless small children fool with the trains, putting them on different tracks. He keeps the area supervised.
One of the other items, a flying model of a P-51 Mustang fighter plane from World War II, hangs overhead in one corner. With an estimated five-foot-long wingspan, the famous American aircraft hangs at an angle as if it were strafing a Panzer tank convoy. The store’s display of military aircraft is another big eye-catcher. One of the other flying models is a Messerschmitt BF-109, a German World War II fighter aircraft; this specific model has the design of the aircraft flown by Adolf Galland, with a yellow nose and emblem of an S on a medieval shield of the aircraft.
Galland (1913-1995), a veteran of the Battle of Britain, uttered one of the most famous quotes of World War II. When the British Spitfires were proving more than a match for the thousands of German bombers over England, Field Marshal Hermann Goering asked his Luftwaffe generals what he could do for them defeat the Royal Air Force.
“Get me some Spitfires,” Galland answered sarcastically.
The Albemarle store also features at least one flying model of the camouflaged Supermarine Spitfire, among others.
With the train room receiving its share of media attention, Lowder hopes the train room can attain status as a historic tourist attraction. He says he and Brown have been talking to Wade McSwain of the Stanly County Citizens and Visitors Bureau about acquiring that classification.
In the meantime, Brown, Lowder and company just sit back and watch all the faces light up as they watch the trains chug across the mini-countryside.
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Contact reporter Bill Lindau at blindau52@yahoo.com.

posted by Bill Lindau @ 8:23 PM 0 comments

Star-Biscoe Elem. crowding problems

Star-Biscoe Elementary
Second-smallest public school way over capacity
From The Post, Nov. 1, 2005
By Bill Lindau
Donna Kennedy couldn’t have spelled it out any more plainly when she said, “We have no free space anywhere.”
She’s talking about the room for students at Star-Biscoe Elementary School, where she is principal.
Of the nine public schools in Montgomery County, Star-Biscoe is “bursting at the seams” with students in kindergarten through fifth grade.
Her school, located inside the southern Star town limits, is the second smallest school in the county, with a capacity for 444 children in its permanent facilities.
But it’s also the most overcrowded, with an enrollment of 564 students listed in the spring of 2005.
The current enrollment figures aren’t that high, at 544 at the beginning of the fall 2005 term, but it’s still 100 more students than the school was built for. The spring enrollment showed a population at 120 beyond capacity. Its neighbors at Candor Elementary School ran a distant second, at 85 over capacity as of the spring 2005. Star-Biscoe experienced an increase to 564 from 490, from 2004 to 2005. A report on the facility problems at Candor Elementary appeared in one of late September’s editions.
An assessment of all the county schools’ facilities was released before the most recent enrollments were tallied. Kennedy looked over these statistics, compiled by SFL&A Architects, P.A. (“Successfully Fusing Life & Architecture”) along with a population study by Independent Opinion Research & Communications Inc., a demographics firm based in Wrightsville Beach. Both studies indicated that the population of the eastern half of Montgomery County is growing tremendously, especially in its population of Hispanics and of affluent people from the big cities, attracted by the apparent rural tranquility of Montgomery County. With that increased population comes more children. Those children enroll in schools that were constructed long before the beginning of this population spurt.
Susan K. Bullock, president of IOR&C Inc., offered some birth-rate projections for Star-Biscoe Kindergarten. In 2003 it was 43 percent whites, 21 percent for Hispanics and 12 percent for African-Americans; in 2005, the known rate is 50 percent for whites, 4 percent for African-Americans and 35 percent for Hispanics. The projected birth rates are 106 percent in 2007, 119 percent in 2008, 135 percent in 2009 and 154 percent in 154. The projected birth rate for 2010 includes an 86 percent rate for Hispanics.
These projections for the years 2006 through 2010 are based on existing students and projected birth rates in the respective ethnic communities, Bullock said.
“If the birth patters holds, as has been the case over the past several years, the Star-Biscoe Elementary school will look as follows: 2006 enrollment 527; 2007 enrollment 577; 2008 enrollment 583; 2009 enrollment 637; and in 2010 enrollment 704,” the study reads.
The study further projects a population of 1,117 students in 2013 at Star-Biscoe, “at which time this area will need two schools to meet the growing population without taking account for any overcrowding at this point in 2005,” the study says.
The assessment by SFL&A Architects includes a number of observations for each school, including Star-Biscoe.
“It appears to be sadly accurate,” Kennedy said last week after reading the assessment. She says while this term’s enrollment figures may be less than Spring 2005, she adds that the population usually increases during the academic year.
In each classroom, “we have as many as 23 to 24 children in them and that’s difficult for individual attention,” Kennedy says.
The school has grown in its kindergarten classes, Kennedy says, with a Spring 2005 enrollment of 22 students per class in four kindergarten classes in the permanent facilities. This fall, the school has added two mobile units, giving it a total of eight. One of them is being used for kindergarten.
“This is the first time we’ve had five kindergarten units,” Kennedy said.
“We’ve had to close off our stage area and use it for reading groups and a little teacher work area,” Kennedy says.
The first grade has four teaching stations, but according to the SFL&A study, one of these classrooms is not large enough to support a full class.
Lunch period would be a mess without different cycles of 30 minutes apiece. The entire lunch period runs from 10:40 a.m. to 1:20 p.m.
“We can work through lunch because we start so early and finish so late,” Kennedy said. “If we had a large lunchroom we could do it all at once.”
“Star-Biscoe Elementary has simply outgrown itself,” Kennedy says.
“The statistics show that at minimum, if the conservative estimate of 10 percent population growth annually is sustained in the Latino population in the Candor, Star, Biscoe areas and the continued rapid girth rate of 25 percent increase per year continues, you will need to plan immediately for two new elementary schools to keep pace with what you now have, regardless of other requirements for class reduction,” Bullock states.
Both the Wrightsville Beach group and SFL&A presented their findings at a September meeting with the Montgomery County Schools administration, the Board of Education and the County Commissioners.
Kennedy expressed faith in the administration and the county commissioners that they will do what they can to alleviate the schools’ progress.
“The school board has been very supportive, coming out here,” Kennedy says. “I think the school board’s on top of this….I‘m thankful for the administration for providing us with that fifth kindergarten.“
“I’m in favor of anything that would (increase) the maximum capacity,” she added. “I’d like to see K-to-2 or 3-to-5,” she added, referring to possibly splitting the elementary schools into three grades apiece.
Here are some other observations by SFL&A Architects in their facilities assessment of Star-Biscoe Elementary School:
* Additional classroom space is definitely needed
* Of the six mobile units at the school as of Spring 2005, four that house students do not have toilets. The two pre-kindergarten units are located between the two entry drives and parking at the front of the school
* Some reading groups are in partitioned areas within other functions such as the cafeteria, gymnasium and media center. The reading groups should bet between 10 and 15 students, and some are up to 24 students, according to the study
* Administration offices need additional space. There is a workstation in the office lobby and the workroom is on the stage at the cafeteria
* The art and music building has old radiators in its classrooms
* The area for EC pullout/resource is small; there is no private testing area; and
* Additional parking is needed.

posted by Bill Lindau @ 8:08 PM 0 comments

Daniel's flowers 

posted by Bill Lindau @ 12:29 AM 0 comments

Daniel 2 

posted by Bill Lindau @ 12:28 AM 0 comments

Chernobyl 

posted by Bill Lindau @ 12:26 AM 0 comments

Daniel sztyber 

posted by Bill Lindau @ 12:23 AM 0 comments

BLACKIEEEE!!!!!! 

posted by Bill Lindau @ 12:16 AM 0 comments

column on new artists

Here, There & Everywhere
Giving budding artists a chance
“They knew he had never been on the TV/so they passed his music by.”
-- Joni Mitchell, “For Free”
By Bill Lindau
A fairly young writer had just published his second novel. He came to the local library for a book signing last month, and though the local media had announced the signing, nobody showed up.
Well, I take that back. Three librarians and an off-duty reporter met him. Two members of his audience bought copies of his book, so it wasn’t a total waste of time for him. We didn’t buy his book because we felt sorry for him; it really is a good read.
Both the books looked like really good reads, but only a handful of people came to check him out.
This shows just how tough it is for somebody few people have ever heard of to break into the literary or artistic world.
Many people in Montgomery County complain of how people in Greensboro, Raleigh and Winston-Salem think they’re all a bunch of yahoos. Well, I have covered this county for a year and a half, and I know that’s not so. We have a lot of well-read, artistic and really hip people who deserve to be respected and recognized; I have had the pleasure to meet many of them, and become friends with quite a few. At least two grocery stores in this county even sell Rolling Stone (a real tip of the hat! That magazine is much, much, much harder to find where I come from, I hate to say).
Kelly Swanson, a comic writer and storyteller from High Point, did better this spring, drawing about 20 people to Montgomery County Public Library for the signing of her new book, “Aunt Vyrnetta and Other Stories from Cedar Grove.” But conditions were cooler and this other writer came along at a time of year where everybody loves to be outside. That’s what we figured, when we sat around talking with Jonathan Farlow before he went home. The library staff decided he could try again in cooler conditions.
The author did not wear his disappointment on his sleeve, but it was pretty clear what he was feeling.
The irony of it is, the Montgomery County Public Library has such a great children’s summer reading series. About 200 to 300 children in various summer day programs attend the weekly events, which have included plays and animal exhibits, and children score a certain number of points and earn prizes for every book read.
Unfortunately, an attempt at an adult activity program seemed to go belly-up. The library had a poll this spring about what sort of activities you’d enjoy -- a reading program, free movies each week, etc. They didn’t get a whole lot of response.
As I said, the children’s summer reading programs, “Dragons, Dreams and Daring Deeds!” is splendid. I have enjoyed sitting in on them myself. I even got to participate once, holding a 12-foot Burmese python for children to pet. Now I may not be a fearless big-game hunter, but even though I’d never held a snake before, this prehistoric monster was actually a gentle giant and I wasn’t really that frightened. Half the people I tell about it think I’ve snapped my twig, however!
But I’m getting off track. The point is, it is a shame that we couldn’t seem to find a literary program for adults to match the one for children. I’m not knocking the other activities that go on, but if we want our children to read more books and magazines instead of watching a bunch of junk on commercial TV, we adults have to practice what we preach, to lead by example.
I couldn’t imagine life without a modern novel or a bio of a movie or rock star. No two ways about it. I remember the days when my friends and I would talk about the latest novel by Leon Uris, James Clavell and Phillip Roth all night long. But now, with books becoming more expensive and more people deriving their information and entertainment from electronic sources rather than printed one, I wonder sometimes if it’s a dying art form. Two years ago last month I went into mourning when Leon Uris (author of “Exodus,” “Trinity,” “Topaz” and other novels of international and political intrigue) died. But in all this time I have had conversations about him with maybe five people. And that really stinks.
It is also sad when an up- and coming young artist fails to draw the public attention he or she deserves. A friend of mine, recently imbued with such a joie de vivre, a lighthearted look on life, that he is bursting to share his take on life with the public, has yet to find anybody who will let him present his material. He tried talking to one of the libraries about it, assuring the librarian that you can tell it in front of holy men and small children, but the librarian said there was too much of a chance that, with him being relatively a complete unknown, nobody could come.
This instance with the summer book signing showed just what she said could happen. This aspiring stand-up comic could end up in the same boat, coming in with his shtick, which consists of funny animal impressions and funny stories of his adolescence in then- sparsely populated Moore County, only to face a meeting room full of empty chairs.
I am also sore at one of the local towns for discontinuing a longtime karaoke contest for one of his holiday street festivals. I knew another person who had just overcome his bashfulness and decided to try his hand (so to speak) at singing. He even had a few songs in mind, including “Volare”, the Beatles’ love song “Here, There and Everywhere” and an old hit by Eric Burdon and the Animals, “When I was Young.”
I have listened to a number of talks by Bill Medlin of the Yadkin Pee Dee Lakes Project on cultural tourism as an asset this economically strapped area can attract, and helping new, untested artists show people what they can do could be one of them. You hear of people dying with the music still in them. Well, that doesn’t have to happen with so many of them.
One thing I think would be cool would be to encourage street musicians and artists to do their thing in the Montgomery County municipalities. You see them in the larger areas, especially in Chapel Hill: somebody strumming a guitar or tooting on a saxophone with a cigar box on the ground. They don’t try to bum money off anybody, just sing or play their instruments, and passersby who like it enough can throw their spare change into the musician’s cigar box; if they aren’t interested, he/she won’t pester them. Street artists might ask for a bit more money to paint your portrait, but they’ll let you approach them first. At home I have a charcoal portrait of my sister, from her trip to Spain, where a sidewalk artist in Madrid did the portrait.
I have asked one of the town clerks if the town had a policy on sidewalk artists. She said there are ordinances against exhibit that obstruct traffic or draw crowds large enough to obstruct traffic. She said there are also ordinances against impeding access to public buildings and commercial entrances. You have to apply for permits with the police for such activities. On the other hand, she said she wasn’t sure when it came to street performers, such as one or two individuals with one or two passersby at a time stopping to hear them do their thing. She did suggest the individuals should tell the police what they want to do.
The street artists I’ve seen do not stand squarely in the sidewalk, but more at the corner of buildings, away from the entrance. That way, they do not impede anybody, and the owners of the stores they play in front of don’t seem to have a problem with that.
Now towns such as the size of Troy or Biscoe won’t draw as many street performers as Chapel Hill or Greensboro. But I think if you think you can play music, paint or tell jokes, then you ought to up and do them without having to deal with a bunch of skeptical bureaucrats. Finding a place on the town square or the main street just might be the place to get your shtick off the ground.
It would be nice to know that in Montgomery County, you can trot out your stuff with the public if you feel like it. It won’t cost the taxpayers anything, and if you flop, you’re the only one that comes out the loser. At least somebody gave you the chance. Bombing is better than people not giving a hoot about what you want to show the world.
“It’s a hard world to get a break in,” The Animals sang in their 1965 hit “It’s My Life.” Let’s make it a little easier for some prospective MTV or movie star. They all started out as complete unknowns, too, before somebody took enough of a risk to give them a break. Think about it, folks!
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Contact reporter Bill Lindau at blindau52@yahoo.com or (910) 582-6610.

posted by Bill Lindau @ 11:59 PM 0 comments

laidbackophobia

Join the fight against LBP (laidbackphobia)
By Bill Lindau
Laidbackphobia, (n. also called LBP.): Abnormal fear or loathing of any person who is relaxed, free of worries, spontaneous or quirky, or of any object typifying such characteristics. Not to be confused with old fogeyitis or emotional outbursts in stressful situations. Specifically applies to reactions to objects, actions or attitudes that cause no harm to the individual afflicted with LBP.
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The psychiatric syndrome known as LBP (laidbackphobia) has afflicted Americans in all walks of life. It affects all races, all ethnic groups, all ages and socioeconomic levels. It has been known as a workplace affliction, often exhibited by high-strung personnel in middle-management position, but it also afflicts persons outside the workplace, such as a worrisome adult visiting an aging parent, or a parent with high expectations for a child (the so-called stage mom).
Those on the lower rungs of the proverbial corporate ladder may be more laid back if they like where they are and have no burning desire for advancement. It’s the overly ambitious employees who are constantly struggling for advancement that are more often the high-risk cases for LBP.
Here is a prime case of a LBP sufferer:
“Gavin” once printed out a mug shot of the actor Lisa Kudrow, who played neo-flower child Phoebe on the 1994-2004 hit TV sitcom “Friends”. He taped the photo to the little “easel” where he posts press releases. Even though Gavin had no contact with the public, and the CEO said there was no need to keep his desk overly spiffy, an assistant to Gavin’s department head went to his desk and tore off the photograph of the actor when he was not there. Gavin printed out another photo of Lisa Kudrow, and a day later, it disappeared, too. One of Gavin’s co-workers agreed with him that “Leslie,“ the assistant head, was the prime suspect because he was the only one in the office who was really that mean.
“If it were a Playboy centerfold, I could understand why Leslie would take it down,” Gavin said. “I wouldn’t have even thought of putting up something like that. All it was was a stinking mug shot, Clyde. Phoebe even had her shoulders covered. I mean, what was the POINT, man?”
Another symptom of LBP that Leslie reportedly had:
Leslie once expressed his dislike of several things: Two of the most popular sitcoms of the time, cats and the Chihuahua in the old Taco Bell commercials. While it may be normal to dislike one or two of these items, to dislike all of them could indicate the presence of LBP.
LBP sufferers have a very limited sense of humor, at best. They often dislike cats because of the reputation of domesticated felines as the most laid-back members of the animal kingdom, because these animals do their own thing, come when summoned only when they bloody well please and do their thing wherever and whenever they want.
Old people and high-level executives aren’t necessarily the worst sufferer (Leslie was 49 when he savaged poor Phoebe), and not everyone in management suffers from LBP. The grandparents I remember meeting were about the most laid-back people I ever knew; so were my parents. I have also had several editors who were pretty laid back, too. They had done their jobs too long to worry about common problems in the newspaper world, such as angry public figures and unreachable subjects. It’s not that they condoned laziness; they all took their deadlines seriously and there’d be the devil to pay if you didn’t get your stories to them on time or if you didn’t get your facts straight. But once they finished the task at hand and felt they could relax, they really knew how to kick back and have fun. These old masters/mistresses commonly shrug off setbacks that a recent journalism-school graduate might think is the end of his career.
There’s a difference between normally getting upset over poor job performance and LBP. An individual afflicted with LBP may give somebody a hard time when there’s no pressure at all to meet any deadlines; the LBP afflictee may begrudge the other person his or her ability to remain cool, calm and collected under pressure, or to take everything in life a lot easier. The LBP sufferer may justify his anger towards a harmlessly laid-back person by calling him “lazy”, “inconsistent”, “disorganized,” “childish”, “silly” or “weird”.
Here’s another incident involving an LBP sufferer:
While her car was undergoing major repairs, Casey rented a vehicle that was much newer than her own. It felt so good to tool about in such a peppy machine that she drove all the way to her older sister’s workplace, half an hour’s drive away in the next county.
Susie was on a break when Casey got there, but when Casey showed up and told Susie she had taken the afternoon off and felt like doing something, Susie put her hands on her hips, cocked her head and said, “What’d you come up here for?”
Susie knew Casey had not planned this move too far in advance. She just felt doing something on a lark. Susie was eight years older than Casey, graduating from college when Casey was in eighth grade, and it had taken Susie years to see Baby Sister as nothing much more than an irresponsible, disorganized kid.
“It was just something I felt like doing,“ Casey said. “It was a nice day and I had a car that was fun to drive and I had nothing else to do. I love my sister to death, but she’s pragmatic as you can get, and I’m the exact opposite. I’ve been acting on the spur of the moment a lot in my lifetime -- not on everything -- and even though I’m 40 years old I still do it. I don’t see anything wrong with that. But not old Susie. As far as she’s concerned, you have to have a reason for every single thing you do or you’re flirting with disaster. I’ve turned out all right.“
Casey seems to have a lot more friends than Susie.
“What do you want to do that for?”
That seems to be a common response by an LBP sufferer.
The subject of LBP reminds me of a conversation I got into at a nightspot. It around the Holiday Season of 1989, after the news of the collapse of the Soviet Union. I mentioned something I had heard about a group of people on the West Coast -- I think it was Seattle -- who put together a giant Christmas card to send to Russia. The card was 25 feet high.
One man at the bar gave the exact response I mentioned above: “What did they do that for?”
“Ain’t nothin’ over there but a buncha communists! That’s so stupid!” the same man said.
What do you know! Ebenezer Scrooge is alive and well in the Sandhills, and he’s back to his old self. He was just a little off on the subject of world affairs. I mean, that was the end of the Cold War. Plus, even under communism, the Russians really weren’t that big a threat to begin with.
End of America’s laid-back era?
LBP has reached epidemic proportions, starting in the 1950s. The counterculture of the 1960s first became aware of it in their parents and the baby-boomer hippies managed to keep it at bay for awhile, showing the world the joys of being laid back and doing your own thing. In the 1970s we listened to James Taylor, Jimmy Buffett, the Eagles and the soft rock of Carole King and Carly Simon.
But then Ronald Reagan became president, followed by the yuppies, the Bushies and the Red State-ers as America took a hard-right turn.
Laid back became a symbol of liberal lassitude, flower-childlike naiveté, especially in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. That was not the end of it when it came to America’s loss of its laid-backness. Dubya took office in 2000, companies started doing away with casual Fridays and many of the public schools began making their students wear uniforms (look in your own back yard, Montgomery County!). You can’t even wear blue jeans to school anymore, in some places. Isn’t that about the most un-American thing you ever heard?
Treatment for LBP
Although nobody has spelled out their condition before, LBP sufferers are about the most demonized people on earth, especially when those in management position or other positions of authority. But like the fictional Christmas heavies Ebenezer Scrooge and the Grinch, LBP sufferers are for the most part just unhappy people, taking out their stress and their frustrations out on others, wishing they could be laid-back and cool like the people they condemn.
Instead of condemning LBP sufferers the way people in the 19th century used to condemn alcoholics, we should treat their problem as a disease, not a social shortcoming. Remember: both Scrooge and the Grinch ended up changing their attitudes for the best.
I think it would be good to start a foundation, a support group for LBP sufferers. Organizations in the various cities and towns could hold bake sales and put on golf tournaments, 5-K foot races and charity auctions to benefit their causes, with the funds going to fight psychiatric research for LBP, or free clinics and seminars by health professionals for workplaces and families.
Here‘s an idea for a poster and a pamphlet cover: Phoebe Buffay spreading out her arms with a self-satisfied grin in a scene from “Friends”.
The best thing you can do for an LBP sufferer you know is to reach out to that person, show him/her he’s not really a bad person, encourage him to tell you what’s eating him. Maybe that’s all that person really needed, was a healthy number of friends and other sympathetic people.
Here are some other therapeutic things you can do with LPB sufferers:
* Rent movies with people overcoming sadness and an assortment of bad attitudes. Besides “A Christmas Carol” and “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” “Chocolat” (2001, starring Juliette Binoche, Johnny Depp and Judi Dench) and “The Secret Garden” (1992, starring Maggie Smith) are two other examples
* The old British sitcom “Butterflies”, starring Wendy Craig as a quirky woman with a good but boring husband (Geoffrey Palmer) is another good program for an LBP sufferer to watch. It may be possible to obtain this program on DVD; consult any PBS station for more information
* Let them listen to Beatles songs or their favorite comedian, or take them to a comedy club
* Get them to read “Be Here Now,” by Hollis Alpert into Baba Ram Dass, the works of Kahlil Gibran or the novels of Hermann Hesse
* Speak to their supervisors about giving them a break
* Take them on a walk through a park or an arboretum
* Write your senators and Congressmen and tell them to push for a mandatory six-week vacation period for employees, like the French have
* Let them play with your dog or cat
* Get them to ease up on the caffeine
* Talk them into doing something that wasn’t on their minds five minutes ago, such as taking a trip to the beach
* Have them remember the next silly idea that pops into their heads and tell it to a total stranger, such as a bank teller or a convenience store clerk; or
* Have them sing arias on the street when they hear some good news.
The 10th Commandment says, “Thou shalt not cover thy neighbor’s wife, or his house, or his oxen, or his ass, or anything else that is thy neighbor’s.” That commandment should have included “thy neighbor’s laid-back take on life.”
If you’re a religious person, you can pray for the severe cases of LBP.
Pray that an angel will whack them on their heads with a wand and holler, “Chill, People!”
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Contact reporter Bill Lindau at blindau52@yahoo.com or (910) 582-6610.

posted by Bill Lindau @ 11:51 PM 0 comments