tracks in the dust

Archive for the tag “tracks in the dust”

23 May 2014

The High Speed of Information

The speed in which we get our information today has changed our lives forever. I was watching a movie from the late 70’s or early 80’s with my twenty year old daughter the other night, it was a thriller. There was a murderer on the loose and one of his victims got away. Unfortunately they were in a cabin out in the woods and the murderer had ‘cut the phone line”. My daughter laughed and wondered why they wouldn’t just use their smartphone. Was there no reception?

I had to remind her that there were no cell phones back then ( way back in the day). She really had to wonder how people dealt with that back then. What happened in the old days? I told her that the cell phone ( and the Internet) has changed the way history is made and our lifestyles in more ways than she would every realize, since she grew up with both for most of her life.

We are so accustomed to instant feedback, instant information, instant responses and access to communicating with just about anyone anywhere. Libraries, long distance calls and having to wait for answers are a thing of the past for the most part.

Maybe that’s why everyone is so much less patient it seems these days. Every thing is “now”… and quick. In lines at the store scanning our groceries, paying by plastic card with swipe, packing 2 things to each plastic bag and driving the cart to the car asap.

Even texts can’t wait? A friend of mine texted me the other day, and when I didn’t respond quick enough the follow-up text was ” are you okay?” Nice enough to ask but really.. I was just busy. Maybe that is the ultimate issue with driving and texting. Everyone is looking for an immediate answer? I always thought it was the advantage of text vs. voice calls. No hurry, just texting…. but that doesn’t seem to always apply.

So the idea that the answer could be “wait I will have to think about it” may seem a bit put-offish. But that may have been the good thing about what was “the good old days”- the pause for thought before answering . Seems like those immediate answers could provide immediate satisfaction, but can also mean immediate damage.

Pause here for some thought on the matter. 🙂

So the bad guys in the movies these days? … gotta watch out. The world will know you are coming in one tweet, text and post on the Internet.

Posted in Before and After Things Change and tagged Cell phone, Change, choices, Instant Gratification, Internet, landlines, Life, old movies, Science and Technology, smartphones, Texting, tracks in the dust

16 May 2014

Reconnecting with Old Friends

There is something great about reconnecting with old friends. It helps to remind you of where you were. Even though you can’t go back in time and relive those days, it is nice to ground yourself once in a while. Good for the soul.

Wishing you can go back will be pretty hollow, but looking at that notch in time is a good way to evaluate your place in time- in the “now”.

There is certainly some remembrances of things you desire to forget. Those awkward times when life deals the blows that land bruises, loss of loved ones and painful experiences.

There are also things you wish you could put in a highlight reel, those things you were proud of – the accomplishments of goals and desires you have had over the years.

Then there are those very special remembrances with those genuine friends and family that if you could “bottle” the feelings of comfort and joy, you would open that bottle frequently and drink that in.

But change is going to happen. And some of your closest friends now may be just part of the future memories you may embrace.

Have you had those times when you’ d hope it would never end, but looking back later, it may have been the best thing? Disconnecting from people who ultimately create a negative influence can be hard to do. We may not even recognize that we are deep in the influence of friends who mean the best, but end up keeping things from happening in our lives.

So it is good to reconnect with old friends isn’t it?

Great for remembering who you were, the fabric of what you are now, and where things came to get you to today…. because still in the end there is “no day but today”.

Friends ( by Elton John and Bernie Taupin)

I hope the day will be a lighter highway
For friends are found on every road
Can you ever think of any better way
For the lost and weary travelers to go

Making friends for the world to see
Let the people know you got what you need
With a friend at hand you will see the light
If your friends are there then everything’s all right

It seems to me a crime that we should age
These fragile times should never slip us by
A time you never can or shall erase
As friends together watch their childhood fly

Posted in Learning Lessons Along the Journey Of Life, Life's Sound Track (Music) and tagged Change, Changes, cherish, choices, Friends, life is precious, Memories, Reality Check, reconnecting, Remembering the past, Self-Awareness, Slow Down, Today, tracks in the dust, Who Are You, Yesterday

15 May 2014

1 Comment

Driving Under The Influence of Stupidity

Okay I am not really complaining, but maybe sort of. When I was a kid in order to get my drivers license it was required that I take a “defensive driving” course. It taught me how to be sure to anticipate the people and things that could come up as possible threats or obstacles as you drive.

I can’t help noticing that these days people seem to be driving “offensively” more than on the defense. I see people making last minute decisions to cut into lanes, people who make turns from lanes that are supposed to be for thru traffic. They seem to be doing it intentionally. Maybe they are unaware ( that would actually be scarier).

Any way you look at it, the idea that people can just make those decisions without care for those around them makes me wonder how many times a day they are being avoided. Maybe its the generation that grew up on video games. All the way back to “rad racer” and ever since, it seems like simulated road maneuvers and even road rage are centered around those kind of games. I’ve played them myself. They are fun, but not reality.

My dad taught me that if you miss an exit on the highway or a turn on the street, you find the next exit or turn and make a correction. Just the other day I saw someone move from a lane 4 lanes away to get to their exit at the very last minute. I was glad I was far enough behind to miss any possible swerving as we were going 70 mph at the time. Did that person have any idea that they could have caused an accident, or even the loss of human life? Not entirely sure.

Okay- so easy to complain I guess. Just want to be sure that my kids learn the “defense” because the offense seems to be the majority these days. It probably has always been that way, but it seems more obvious to me than I can recall in my decades of driving.

Do you see it that way where you live?

Posted in Learning Lessons Along the Journey Of Life and tagged Advice, Bad Driving, Car Safety, choices, Defensive Driving, Observations, Road Rage, Slow Down, tracks in the dust

09 May 2014

Making History Disappear

When I was younger I was fortunate to have been taught the value of history. Its perspectives, its meaning, the reasons that things happened in the past and the way things got to where they are now. It is all part of the value of understanding history.

It’s great in our modern times that we have so many ways to learn about history. History channels on TV, history websites, documentary movies and books written about some of the most influential people and times in Earth’s past.

But also it seems today that we are more eager than ever to erase parts of history. By distorting it in those same places that supply it, and even more so by erasing its reference in the culture we live in. It is a delicate balance for sure. Our racial and political prejudices make for what seems valid reasons to just eradicate any current reference to those things deemed unacceptable now. As they may have seemed right in the past, today they may seem very biased, cruel or insensitive to how things are in the “now.”

But we are in the times of the “information age” where information is readily available at the push of a button. We have to be careful to understand that just because we have an abundance of information – doesn’t mean we have an abundance of “knowledge”. Erasing the past entirely for the sake of the future would be most difficult, but erasing the memories of what those things are in the past can be very easy. In the course of that effort, the generations ahead will be unaware of what brought them to that point.

So my advice to my kids?

Understand history and respect it. My father and my wife’s father both fought in World War 2. They are remembered by their children, but as my kids grow up and they have children they will have a different perspective. Even the veterans of the Vietnam era will only be a fact in the history data that will exist on the Internet or in books or movies. It may only seem like another fiction book or story to some of them

When history gets erased, it will open up the opportunity for it to be repeated. With no lessons learned, generations ahead will not understand the perspectives on which we got to where we are… they will go in and blindly misunderstand the reasons for things.

Erasing history and the references to things around is can be labeled as “progress” or “the correct thing to do” – and that is always going to happen. But it has accelerated because we live in the age where an abundance of information and opinion is shared with everyone. So everyone’s opinion is supposed to count, but with regard to history- the basis for formulating those opinions are lost in history (or the lack of its understanding).

Posted in Doing Things That Will Change Your Life and tagged choices, Future, History, Information Age, Looking Back, Memories, Past, Reality Check, Repeating History, tracks in the dust, Who Are You

01 May 2014

Music: The Next 15 Favorite Albums of All Time

Okay, Loved the comments and additions. Maybe there are some others out there that have a list of favorite albums. Not talking songs, but complete albums.

On vinyl, on CD or just digital if you have to – but what are your 10 …or 20?

My last MUSIC post was my top 10 → Music: Favorite Albums of All Time

Here is my other 15… you have an opinion- chime in….

11 Chicago Transit Authority: In high school, I was in a rock band that had a horn section. This was as good as anything we knew for white boys and with a horn section. And we played a lot of it when we gigged. We were entranced with the Introduction song- and The Beginning. Just art in a great way. The band was never that good again after the first albums. BTW: Check out Terry Kath’s guitar, it is very good.

12 Bob Marley: Rastaman Vibration Nothing was ever, ever, ever the same after I heard this album. Nothing. This was epiphany for a part of music that became the rhythm of life, then the rhythm of a nation, then a rhythm of a movement which has never died. I still stop to listen to this album. I stop. I smile. Gave 2 of my kids a copy of the Legend CD. I think from time to time they listen to it, and feel what it says. I bought every other album he and the Wailers had. Exodus– okay that could be in the list.

13 Rolling Stones Sticky Fingers: It would be too hard to pick one, but I picked one that has so many memories for me that I can’t shake it. From the actual zipper on the Warhol cover- to the magic of Keith’s guitar on “Can’t You Hear Me Knockin” or Mick’s voice on “Wild Horses”. I know, I know- Exile on Main Street. Let It Bleed could be there too- this just captured it for me.

14 Police: Synchronicity: For me, it just captured everything that was that “time”. Music was getting more sophisticated and more stupid at the same time. This was proof that intelligent music could be made, with songs that had musicians playing that knew what made a song a solid song end-to-end. I was pleased to have seen them at the beginning and then again many years later during their reunion.

15 Led Zeppelin II: For me –I had listened to Led Zep 1, I loved it and wondered what would be next. I bought LZ2 right around the same time that I had to buy my Blind Faith album for the second time (because some guy had puked on my first copy at one of my parties). LZ 2 was so tight – so dynamic- blues, rock, Robert’s voice, Jimmy’s guitar and a drum line that was one of Bonham’s best. Just my fave. I know LZ fanatics would probably argue. But this was the most influential for me in my musical career and as a “rock” album.

16 The Doors – their first album. This album just screwed me out of listening to the Beatles for a while. It was just that different; I was listening to After Bathing At Baxter’s from Jefferson Airplane at the time. I caught “The End” on an FM radio station while was taking a break from it … I ran out and got the album. I didn’t think that it would do what it did to me. LA Woman was like that too, this was just first.

17 Copeland: Beneath the Medicine Tree: Okay one from this last decade (2004 I think). Not classic rock. This is a VERY personal choice. Only no one else will care than me. There is a set of songs that are so perfect that I can’t believe that they are from some emo band from Florida. But they are so good. There is a song: “Sing with your head up, with your eyes closed, not because you love the song, because you love to sing. “ Or “Paula Sparks”. Aaron Marsh is the band leader- the guitar riffs are wonderful. It is pop to some extent, just well constructed. Took a break, but they have a new album coming out in October. Been together for 25 years? Wow.

18 Joni Mitchell: Hejira – I could have put Court and Spark, or Blue… but I think this choice was just because of the time of my life, the way the songs sowed together in a jazz, blues, folk sort of way. It just worked for me at the time, and her voice is one of a kind. Nothing like it –nothing since. And her standing on the ice in Madison Wi on the cover. (my home state) Its all good. I just listened to it again the other day.

19 Sly Stone: Everyday People– the funk that lead me to Tower of Power, Prince and so much more. As a friend of mine said at the time “unlock the rock box and expand your head to new things” or something like that… over 60% of my high school was black, and I had so much of this music and the other stuff it spawned- G Clinton, Funkadelics, all of the Philadelphia sounds that went above the hit factory of what I knew to be Motown. It was party music, it was dance music, it was soul music, and it was date music. It just fit.

20 Santana Abraxsas: I was listening to a lot of jazz at the time, there was this radio station in San Francisco that was syndicated and played through a Chicago station on the weekends. It played a lot of really good jazz. Then somewhere in the middle, it played some of the songs from Abraxsas. Damn. I had the first album, but somehow this trumped that. Back in the day of this music renaissance, a lot of bands had 2nd albums that evolved from their first ones- I think that is what made them long term classics, it wasn’t about the one hit album- it was a body of work.

21 Frank Zappa: One Size Fits All: I had owned several Frank Zappa albums before I heard this one for the first time. This great DJ and I were sitting listening to “Florentine Pogen” in the college radio studio late one night on his shift. I was the station manager and did on-air stuff, but he was just into this stuff. Everything I had heard had been great. This was outstanding. I can still play the guy loud and get a certain state of mind that you can’t get with most other artist. A fantastic guitar player, self-taught, incredible musician and someone who, even as productive as he had been was lost too soon in the music world. He died of prostate cancer, which I am personally fighting myself. It makes a difference.

22 Black Sabbath: Listening to their first album just made me wonder how I missed this kind of music before. My parents hated it. They didn’t understand it. Then I realized that there really wasn’t anything else like it. It was where metal would go that would end up being copy-cats… but this is the original.

23 Blonde on Blonde: It started when my older brother had given me a copy of Bob Dylan’s “FreeWheelin’” when I was really young. I started listening to music when I was 6 or 7, and I just couldn’t understand some of the kids around me that were listening to Herman’s Hermits and told me that Bob Dylan was not that good cause he couldn’t sing like Peter Noone. Okay- I liked pop. But I loved this album.

24 Yes: Roundabout: “In and around the lake- mountains come out of the sky and they stand there.” Damn- this record was great. It was prog. rock, art rock- it was whatever you want to classify it as- but it is just the combination of sounds that were unique musically. Man- then Close to the Edge. Incredible- prog rock often didn’t get the credit it deserved. Still doesn’t. (ELO- how bout that?)

25 Abbey Road: I could have listed the White Album or Revolver. Whenever the newest release would come out from the Beatles I had to get it the first day. I think I played this album all weekend over and over again when I bought it. It was just the way that it was constructed and the whole suite of songs to the swan song of “In The End….”. I was going out with a girl in Jr. High who was a huge fan of the Beatles too. She and I spent the next weekend listening to it over and over. A year later she died of leukemia and I listen to the album differently still to this day. It’s like a dinner with all the ingredients – nothing missing.

Could I list 20 more? For sure. I missed some gems. Then there is jazz. Whoa.

Also there are very many complete albums by artists my millennial kids have introduced me to that actually could make this list too. Still some very good music to hear out there…Thanks specially to Andrew McMahon, Chris Carrabba, Anthony Green and Leighton Antelman (Lydia) – some great pop artist in an alternative world.

What is your list like? Personal I am sure- but List it. Go ahead it won’t hurt.