Night Song, North Carolina

Seventy two degrees.
An air conditioning unit kicks off and I can finally hear the night calls clearly.
Insects I can't see and can't identify.
The night song is truly an orchestrated cacophany.
It takes real concentration to separate the individual songs.

Various forms of crickets sing:
One group in rapid, high-pitched chirps: 1-2-3-4 1-2-3-4
Others sing one long trilly sustain without pause
While another crickety thing sings a glassy trill at the beginning of each measure: 1-x-x-x 1-x-x-x

Something bigger, percussive, like castinets, or a muted snare: ta-ta-ta-ta - 3-4 ta-ta-ta-ta - 3-4
Answered quickly by the same critter in call & response fashion: 1-2 ta-ta-ta-ta 1-2 ta-ta-ta-ta

Together, they play continuously:

ta-ta-ta-ta ta-ta-ta-ta
ta-ta-ta-ta ta-ta-ta-ta
cr- cr- cr- cr cr- cr- cr- cr- cr- cr- cr- cr cr- cr- cr- cr
rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

And so many more parts, layer upon layer.
No conductor, no stage, no footlights burn
And yet this orchestra plays nightly
Wherever it is summer, wherever it is warm
No reservations needed
And yet, the appreciative audience so often a crowd of one?

Greensboro North Carolina @ 12:30 AM

After a very, very long day, I've gone outside with a drink, a kindle, and a bag of Utz chips. Rather than tackle the bigger issue of trying to understand women, when my brain is swiss-cheezed from 10 hours behind the wheel, I'm going to lose myself in some sci-fi, with a tequila chaser.

Aaaargh!

Thoughts while parked at Chapel Pond

I think this is the first time I've every really parked at Chapel Pond.

People come and go as I sit here parked, astride my bike, and pass me by. They are probably thinking I am, like them, just another visitor to God's beautifully endowed Adirondack Park; unaware that I live here and am, if I say so myself, somewhat of a minor local celebrity. I guess I can live with that, though I've never liked being "part of the crowd."

It is so funny to see all these people disembark from their vehicles and strap on all their "going to the Adirodacks" accouterments from places like LL Bean and Eddie Bauer. Heaven forbid they don't look the part, tackling the wild frontier!

Chapel Pond at 8AM

Chapel Pond,
Through the branches of black spruce;
The far shore alight in new day's sun,
Reflected in still waters,
Like hand-blown glass.

At last the sun
Clears the ridge behind me
And the foreground lights up like a stage;
Yet deep shade beneath the spruce canopy provides drama still.

•~¤~¤~¤~¤~¤~¤~•

The cliffs that tower over the road
Across from Chapel Pond
Are impressive in this light.
Like rough and rugged slag and steel,
All shades of grey,
Cedar and spruce clinging tenaciously
In its cracks and crags.

The sun warms quickly now
And the sky clears to one solid, majestic shade of brilliant blue,
Unadorned by mist and cloud,
Paled only near the white-hot sun.

And so the day begins!

•~¤~¤~¤~¤~¤~¤~•

The sun rises
And everything changes.
We are renewed by each new day.
We are the same
And we are different.
A better person: for this I pray.

Cascade Lakes, Near Pitch-off, 7AM, August 14, 2009

Golden sunlight blasts sideways
Into a rising, fading mist.
Green mountainsides strangely yellow in the dawning light.
A few cheery birds sing
Hidden nearby in a forest of trees.

Close, and sudden, a loon cries out
And dives as I turn to see,
Leaving me alone,
Astride my bike,
Enjoying a warming breeze.

Night, in a Frontier Town

The clocks in town all chime nine,
Ringing through fog rising off the river
And enveloping upper Broadway.

Sunset once again painted the west
In shades of salmon and creamsicle,
But now there is just a starless, darkening sky.

A lone planet pierces through the mist;
A gaurdian of the cosmos.

The chimes fade,
And the streets of Saranac Lake are left
With the muted sounds
Of voices, traffic, and music:
Still a frontier town, in 2009.

Clouds

Clouds
Salmon pink at sunset.
A mist rises
Over a still bog.
Crickets chirp
But nothing moves;
Not the clouds,
Not the mist.
Funny how
Nothing moving
Moves us so.

The Complete Whompers YouTube Playlist

Click Side Arrows to scroll through playlist.

The Whompers on Facebook

The Whompers on Facebook

Glitch Unplugged on Jamendo

I've added portions of my CD "Glitch Unplugged" to the Jamendo website, a site were Creative Commons licensed songs can be downloaded for free. Commercial use requires the purchase of rights, but there is a lot of great music in a wide range of genres on that site.

Life, Entropy & Eco-Economics

Life is like eco-economics, where what you take from the system has to be balanced by what you give in to it; balanced or exceeded to create that anti-entropic surge which characterizes all creative life.

(In "Red Mars" by Kim Stanley Robinson)

Travelin' & Music

Can a fellow still hit the road with a guitar and a song and make any sort of living?
Or, do you suppose you'd need to be self-sufficient and just call it an adventure or vacation?

I look around, and wonder,
Where would you play? Where would you stay?
Even here in our little vacationville, Saranac Lake,
relatively musician-friendly . . .

Sources for Free Music

Check out my delicious feed for bookmarks - http://delicious.com/CedarEden

Here are two of the latest - GREAT sources for free & legal music (mp3)

Amazon.com: Free - Songs: MP3 Downloads - hard to believe but Amazon.com MP3 has tons of good music available for free

Free and legal music downloads - Jamendo - oodles of great stuff, lots of different genres

Some COOL Windows Stuff

Watch Star Wars Episode IV in Your Command Prompt for Free

Open a Windows Command Prompt
Go to Start > Run. In the Run box, type “cmd” ( without the quotes ) and hit OK to open the command prompt windows.
Within command prompt, type “telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl” ( without the quotes ) and hit ENTER.

** For MAC users, go to Terminal and type “telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl” (without the quotes).
** Try Windows Power Toy >> Open Command Promt Here << style="font-weight: bold;">Hidden Windows XP Stuff

Useless countdown clock - c:/windows/clock.avi

Nice Ambience Windows Music - C:\windows\System 32\oobe\images\title.wma