May 18, 1980.
This is my 79th post on this Substack
bloggish thing (what do people call these? Simply “Substacks?”). How in the Frigging world did I get to 79? Some possible answers:
1) I am simply a creative person - content creator is the current term. Am I an Influencer already? You know, like Charli D'Amelio ?
2) This is a symptom of Hypomania. I have been clinically diagnosed with a mental condition common to artists especially musicians called Cyclothymia. Its like Bipolar Disease but much gentler and easier. It can turn into Bipolar Disease. Most people haven’t heard of it - or know much about it. For instance, my orthopedist saw that newly on my chart and started looking at me differently - one could read the “OH SHIT! I AM IN A CLOSED ROOM WITH A MENTAL DEVIANT!” in his eyes. When this happens, I call them out on this, not to shame them but to educate. them. The Shaming is an enjoyable (to me) byproduct.
3) I have nothing better to do. this, phone calls, emails, texts and other relentless verbiage of large quantity are driving my friends and family nuts. If they ignore me I will go away.
4) I have so much else to do. Its just that I am lazy and never get around to what I should be doing and have given up caring about it and could give a shit.
5) I think I am clever when I am simply an idiot who should shut up. (the Self-Depreciation curve is heading up like BA2.12.1. Straight up)
6) I have fooled myself into thinking my readers a) read this and b) actually like it.
Enough of this list. I have a credible report of how one of my best posts (Acres of Cures) gave everyone happy smiles on a usually very depressing Monday in the Covid-challenged Restaurant Industry. The CEO of Ivar’s has promised a meal for me at a restaurant of my choice and with guests such as our mutual friend Ray Troll if he’s around. He had no issue about us going to another restaurant up on Madison that serves Basque food. There is a restaurant in Portland that serves Peruvian food that remains my favorite and that is a possibility though this might be for the 2nd night out.
Perhaps the best aspect of this Substack is that I focus on writing for the general audience that I would otherwise write on Facebook or some other platform of increasing loathability. I do not do Twitter nor Instagram or any others. Facebook (user name casey.burns.906) is still useful especially for the pictures and I have a good YouTube channel (user name cbwim) and love YouTube. I watch on TikTok but have no desire to post there. Its a good place to make discoveries such as @aravosis and @laughterinlight.
So what I do less is spare my friends from having to read or respond to so much verbiage sent to them personally. They are too busy to read them or like my older sister, simply refuse to read them due to computer difficulties or wondering what is the point of this. She seems annoyed by my creative output sometimes. Frequently she would rather watch the news at 4 than hear any news that her brother may have. My other sister won’t even talk to me after I got on her case over a rather ugly incident involving her antivax attitudes. There is no way she will avoid catching the current and future variants. I hope she got vaxxed but is too proud to admit it.
For most who go on TikTok, their attention spans are being simply reduced to milliseconds.
A few close friends have recently bitten my head off when I have attempted to make phone contact and apparently called during some crisis that happens between midnight and 11:59PM the next day, day after day after day.
Many have just simply stopped responding. I can understand - its hard to feel chatty as Mr. Putin’s troops murder thousands of innocents in Ukraine and threatens to end all life on the planet probably on the day the docs tell him he’ll be dead by tomorrow morning from whatever apparently and obviously ails him. Waiting for the End is never comforting.
So if Putin can’t be around to bully the world, nobody else can be. Its in his power to do this. I keep watching for that blinding flash of light from nearby Bangor. That will be Humanity’s Approaching Windshield and the last thing to pass through our minds will be our assholes, as the joke goes.
Thus The Great Silence continues as people hunker down for the next Wave which is also upon us. Are others experiencing this? It occasionally pisses me off and at some point I need to get that off my chest and will perhaps get everyones’ attention via Snail Mail. We are all in crisis mode, have ailing or dying relatives, are worn out by the mishandling of 3 years of the Covid Pandemic, are worried about inflation as well as the war and our own political situation with such new old concepts as Replacement Theories and January 6th organizers winning last night’s primary in Pennsylvania. Fortunately its over for Madison Cawthorn - though I suspect he will anoint himself as the GOP candidate to replace Biden. I am sure he has done a lot of anointing and its annoying.
(Added later) I just spoke with a dear friend and fellow musician who also is an astute observer of the human mind in his professional capacity. He was the one who suggested I look into Cyclothymia. I asked him if my observations of this social sharpness was just me or if this is a widespread phenomenon. He has noticed this himself actually - so its not just me. Please share with me your observations as well. Use the Comments - note that Comments are always allowed here as long as these are real, not spam, and maintain respect and dignity.
(Also added later) We also discussed a few dear mutual friends. Many have stopped hearing from others and this lack of social impact is further corroding the social fabric/ether/shared space that is now further corroded by self-isolation. A few of my friends when I call them say that they really have nothing to say - nothing to add. And that the few who do make an effort to contact are similarly topic-challenged. I suspect that if we collectively make an effort to interact maybe on a weekly basis this will have a positive effect.
(Also added later) Plus we are running out of time. Many of us are old, challenged with our own health issues. All of us are challenged by Covid. This winter we lost the local ornamental artist and teacher Peter Gerstel who lived just over the hill from me. He was a former shop teacher whose dad was a kind of a Don Draper on Madicon Avenue. Peter gave away most of his inheritance, but kept enough to build the workshop of his dreams - and used that as a platform for teaching other ornamental turners worldwide. My friend David Lindow is arriving sometime to collect MADELathe #4 and bring t back to the Plumier Foundation. See madelathe.com and plumier.org. Peter and I were just getting to know each other. A sudden aggressive cancer was his demise.
We also lost Tom Rice, a former bridge tender on the Hood Canal Bridge and 1st Avenue Bridge who also created the Sea and Shell Museum above the Port Gamble Store. The core of his collection is still on display. See it while you can as the corporation that owns Port Gamble could suddenly get a bee up its bonnet and sell or trash the collection, or change it into something that lacks the original charm with hand written labels. To retired to Rawai Beach near Phuket. Typically he would rush up or down stairs with his takeout in one hand, and a tray of shells in the other. In early November this resulted in an 85 year old man falling down a two story flight of stairs and spending nearly two months in the hospital where infections eventually killed him. Tom also published the highly respected shell collecting magazine Of Sea and Shore which has been mostly archived and is available here: https://www.conchology.be/?t=8000
But then the one that hurts the most was losing my dear friend and fishing buddy David Stone who ran the violin workshop on University Way. David, his late wife the violist Aviva Leonard and their cellist daughter Sarah (see https://www.sarahabigaelstone.com) are more or less close family. David and I last spoke just before his diagnosis with another aggressive cancer and it was a good recap. We never got around to the bow re-hairing however. David was diagnosed and had to rush to arrange the closing of his workshop with the aide of a few colleagues, who dealt with the long list of consigned instruments, repairs in progress, and then proper disbursement of assets such as tools and supplies. sarah also has Dave’s house clutter to deal - he was a bit of a packrat! For years he and I would go fishing. Aviva and Nancy would hang out as our close-in-age daughters played together. Lila. inherited all of Sarah’s baby clothes. See https://davidtstoneviolins.com
And then there are the millions we have lost and will lose to the Pandemic. And the thousands we are losing to Putin’s crimes against Humanity.
Its not going to help anything if we stop talking to each other - or immediately respond like the squirrel who bit me earlier this week with its 7000psi force. Time to trim your Talons and Incisors people or I will go join a friendly cult somewhere. Or someone you love will suddenly up and die and disappear, most likely because everyone stopped calling. You won’t feel any better about it - just regrets about how you wish you could have been nice.
If this keeps happening to me, I am going off to the deserts of Central oregon to start my own commune called Rajneeshees Without Borders. We will respect the land use laws of Wasco County, arm ourselves with Safron-colored Masks and Covid test kits, avoid dress code colors as well as the Salmonella-laced with Covidsalad bars of The Dalles- and dance and party hard as we practice social distancing. Drug use with such as Cacao and Ivar’s-Mectin (read the Acres of Cures post again) will be encouraged. I, as the Big Gouda am happy with my newly-oiled Honda Civic Hybrid at 220,000mi and any car donations will get sent to KNKX. What would I do with 40 Rolls Royces besides consign them at West Hills Honda anyway?
The people living near the John Day River in Clarno, Oregon saw the beginning of the Rajneeshee Invasion in Central Oregon first, back in the late 1970s. Or they thought they saw this beginning. Instead, it was me a few years before they arrived, simply hiking above Red Hill and other former favorite haunts on the scenic ridgeline above Camp Hancock wearing one of my orange bicycle-related tea-shirts and some very comfortably cool Safron-colored bloomer pants from India which kept the sunlight off my legs. They called the invaders the “Red Devils” and in my case, the descriptive label is still spot-on. I am sure that every rancher downhill from me was watching me through their gun sights.
I haven’t a clue who influencer Charli D'Amelio is and what he influences about and am not about to add to his following. Please do not tell me.
Below are a family few pics of Mount Saint Helens. In the lower picture: my favorite aunt who my mother refused to let me know because Mom hated her. Mayme and her friends on their way up Mt. St. Helens in the 1930s. In the upper picture: Mayme and my uncle Bud on ice. Bud was an artist who made all of the dolphin-like Swimmers seen on the cornices of Jantzen Swimwear’s old buildings just south of I-84 around 5th or 6th Avenues in NE Portland. They were more or less Bohemians in the aesthetic sense, amd built their own Maybeck-inspired house in Vancouver WA. Mayme actually was 50% real Bohemian as her mom who I loved as my great-grandmother was from Praha (Prague). We called her “Muddy”. She taught me early on how to say some of the nastiest phrases in that language.
I am feeling on edge today and am still angry that my mom kept me away from these creative people to the point where I only met them once or twice when I was really too young to remember. Another reason: Oh Frug. The Internet is down.
Well its back up now - several hours later. Power is out in Suquamish. Sunny and lovely here as the storm passes through and we are somewhat in the wind shadow. Today I went to the docs to have a spot of worry looked at. Apparently melanomas don’t hurt. This spot in the middle of my right eyebrow began to hurt like hell and made the entire orbit around my eye hurt like hell. I am trying to grow my eyebrows out like my friend Kevin’s but they just can’t. I somehow irritated and plugged a few hair follicle blood vessels. Am now on “Oxi” as in Doxycycline.