Today I felt like prqcticing 6-3-08

     I've been working at the piano for some time now;  my specialty is jazz.  I like Wayne Shorter, Miles, Herbie Hancock, Taylor Eigsty, Bill Evans, Keith Jarrett, and all the other musicians from the bebop era.  I like smooth jazz also, but it has its limits for me.  It's not adventurous, groundbreaking,

     My love affair with jazz started years ago when I was a child.  My father was a musician.  He played in the Santa Barbara area in the 1930's.  He played Latin music: Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican.  It was a string orchestra and they dressed with hip pants, with the flared trousers--bell sottoms with  hats that had those little balls hanging from the brim all around.  I think there is a special name for those hats, but I don't know what it is. 

     I remember my father playing the guitar with a very rhythmic style, a strum and slap on the strings.  I must have been about three or four years old.   Still, though I liked it, I preferred "American" music.  I didn't know what that was, but if I had to play something, it would have been American music.    And it had to be a trumpet.  Even as a child I thought that was so cool.   It wasn't until much later---well a few years, maybe ten years,--I was fourteen years old when my father got me a trumpet.  Big band jazz influenced popular music when I was a teenager, in the fifties.  There was Woody Herman, Count Basie, Stan Kenton, Billy Mays, Ray Anthony, all good musicians with good bands.  I was enamored with what I imagined was the lifestyle that traveling musicians enjoyed.  Then  I heard Miles Davis play.  Wow!  I was blown away by his sound.  I had very defined ideas of what I wanted to hear on the trumpet, and Miles' playing was certainly it.   

---

Get trade secrets for amazing burgers. Watch "Cooking with Tyler Florence" on AOL Food.

O.K. I'm seting off once again.

We have a democracy which has been pretty good for a large number of us. But we are now at a point in our history in which we have to turn matters around. This is the core truth of our country: The very rich are comfortable and they want to stay that way. They are going to keep matters that way as long as we are disorganized. I'm not talking about Democrats alone. There are Republicans who don't have a pot to piss in and they are going to vote Republican just because they's voted Republican all their lives and that's the only thing they know. There is a point in which Republicans and Democrats differ: Republicans want less government; they say that the less government interfering in our lives, the better. Our problem, they say, IS government. So when Katrina came around, The reason the president didn't show up until a week later is that he was testing that tenet of his philosophy: Are you drowning? Is your city under water? It's not the government's job to save your ass. Get out of there! Leave! Go find a job somewhere else! And then there is the war in Iraq. Guess who's getting richer? Even the mercenaries from Blackwater are getting rich. I don't remember the exact figure, but it's $600-1000 a day. And they are not running the risks that our men and women in uniform are running. And who's paying for the war? Not the rich. Their taxes are lower than yours and mine are.

Do Democrats want more government? I think Democrats want to have a health care system that takes care of those can't take of their health issues by themselves. There are many people who are working but can't afford to pay for medical care. And everyone wants to get rich, Democrats included.The thing is let's not let the middle class bear the burden. The alternative minimum tax has got to go. That was Reagan's idea. At that time, the people in the upper income brackets were finding loopholes and paying less. I don't remember what the income was that the tax aimed at, but because of inflation more and more people are getting into the upper tax bracket. But the lawmakers don't want to stop the gravy train. They want to keep on spending and not making the hard choices. The choices are if they adjust the alternative minimum tax then they either have to raise taxes or not spend. So what do you want? Our infrastructure (roads, bridges, dams) is falling apart. Instead of starting the war this is what we should have done.

But unless there is a change in attitude and spirit we will never get out of the inequities that exist, no matter who's president. JB