Passages

We lost a friend January 8. He was just 76.

“So sorry to have to post this… Rocketman passed away yesterday. Local favorite entertainer, musician, loving father, pirate, and friend to so many here in our islands… He most certainly was one of a kind, and the likes of him will surely never pass this way again. My condolences to his daughter, Roxanne, and all his family and friends in the Keys and all around the world. The old man certainly was right: it sure did beat 40 below, shoveling snow… And I do like it! If ever there was a life to be celebrated in style, it was Rocketman’s. Godspeed, Rocketman.”
— John Bartus


Robert Hudson played music in the late 70s and 80s in Las Vegas before coming to the Keys the same year we did. He became known as Rocketman the Pirate and he drummed, sang, and played with just about every other musician in the Keys. Between gigs he sold treasure.

“Too bad. He needs a replacement,” Rufus said. “Bartus is too accomplished. I am too fat (and I don’t live in the Keys).”

Not too fat. Too old.

I don’t think fat matters, per se. Old does. He was a legend but we need a youngster to take his place. The next Rocketman needs to be under 40.

“No way,” Rufus said. “The age was part of the attraction. Otherwise he is just another troubadour.”

The way you get to be an old troubadour is to start as a young troubadour. Not to mention our need to have somebody around for more than another couple of years.

“Aging out is American popular culture vernacular used to describe anytime a youth leaves a formal system of care designed to provide services below a certain age level.”

The troubadour has a storied history. The earliest troubadour whose work survives is the Duke of Aquitaine, portrayed as a knight, who first composed poetry on returning from the Crusades which he “related with rhythmic verses and witty measures.” Today, we think of a troubadour as a poet and singer of folk songs and rock music and other fishy ballads. Apropos of nothing, troubadour rhymes with albacore.

We are watching our favorite local artists and community leaders “age out.” Or worse.

Ben Bullington, a country doctor and singer-songwriter from Colorado, died in 2013. He was 58. He was a small town family doctor until his pancreatic cancer diagnosis; he immediately stopped practicing medicine and made as much music for as many people as he could. Vermont musician and legend John Cassel died in ’14. He was 78 and working when he suffered a heart attack after playing a show. The man of a thousand songs, Ron Hynes from Newfoundland died in November. He was 64. Blues guitarist and border legend Long John Hunter of El Paso died last week. He was 84.

I’ve been thinking about aging out a bit, ever since my family doc reminded me that he’s a year older than I. See, he’s aging out, too. That means he’s going to retire sooner than later and I’m going to have to break in some young whippersnapper.

We need to train our replacements for Dr. Bullington, Mr. Cassel, Mr. Hynes, Mr. Hunter, for the other beloved local legends. And for Rocketman.

Psychology Today rules that by dividing your own age by two and then adding seven you can find the socially-acceptable minimum age of anyone you want to date. So if you’re a 24 year-old, you can date anyone who is at least 19 (i.e., 12 + 7) but not someone who is 18. And if you’re 89 as Hugh Hefner is, you can feel free to be with anyone who is at least 19 but not someone who is 18. Oh. Wait. You can be with anyone who is at least 51-1/2 (i.e., 44-1/2 + 7) but not someone who is only 51.

When Ronald Reagan turned 75, Dennis Miller wished him a happy birthday. “Seventy-five, and he has access to the nuclear football? You know, my grandfather is 75. We don’t let him use the remote control for the TV set!”

If I have to train some young whippersnappers, I want them to stick around for the long haul. That’s why Rufus is wrong.

Over in real life, I chair a small regional arts council (known in the trade as a “Local Arts Service Organization”). I’m not quite ready to pass the microphone yet, but we are looking for a fresh face for my job, too. Out on stage last year, I introduced a number of new performers to the professional footlights. We expect to do that even more with Summer Sounds, with the county festivals, and at other venues around area. See, our top-notch musicians are all getting a little grayer, too.

Eventually, it is forced on all of us.

R.I.P., Rocky. Arrrrgh.

 

Not Lion

My Liberal friends are very afraid.

Cowards need everyone else to be cowardly.

My Liberal friends are afraid of all the things that are little real danger.
My Liberal friends embrace all the actors who would kill them.

Example 1 (murder):
Wesley Cook who took the name Mumia Abu-Jamal murdered Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. Mr. Cook was convicted and sentenced to death in 1982. End of story, right?

The black nationalist and member of the Black Panther Party became the cause célèbre of activists and actors and liberal groups so our Liberal friends invited this murderer to give the commencement addresses at Antioch College and Goddard College.

“Hatred is the coward’s revenge for being intimidated.”
— George Bernard Shaw

Example 2 (mayhem):
Payton Head grew up on Chicago’s South Side where black murderers killed 282 other blacks by mid-year. Mr. Head enrolled in the University of Missouri where someone called him the n-word. They didn’t shoot him dead. They didn’t beat him senseless. They called him names. He ran for and won election as class president.

Our Liberal friends were so afraid of the n-word that they forced Mizzou’s president to resign.

“A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.”
— Mahatma Gandhi

Examples 3 (murder):
The four coordinated September 11 attacks were committed by Islamic terrorists. A homegrown Islamic jihadist fatally shot a Canadian soldier on ceremonial sentry duty at Parliament Hill in Ottawa in 2014. 20 died in the mass Islamic terrorist murders at Charlie Hebdo. At least 129 people have died at six separate sites in the Islamic terrorist massacre Paris last week.

“Canadians know acts such as these committed in the name of Islam are an aberration of your faith…” Justin Trudeau said in an address to Parliament just after the Ottawa attack.

“I just hope that people realize that once again this was not the action of innocent Muslims who want peace in the world as much as we do,” a Liberal friend wrote immediately after the Paris murders.

“Tolerance of intolerance is cowardice.”
–Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Example 4 (control):
The Independence USA PAC targets politicians with millions in television ads to scare you.

“Joe Baca sided with polluters voting for a dirty water bill…” Michael “I’m a bully and proud of it” Bloomberg proclaimed in his Independence USA ad aired days before the 2012 elections. He took aim at two candidates in Illinois because the NRA gave them each an “A.” He calls Florida’s Pam Bondi “an attorney general for polluters, not for us” because she joined a majority of U.S. states to sue the EPA for their overreaching new regulation.

“The nation that will insist on drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking done by cowards.”
— Thucydides

Mr. Baca called the ad “gutter politics at its worst” but it’s more. It’s a fear campaign.

We’re made to fear “pollution.” When that loses its edge, we’re made to fear “guns.” When that loses its edge, we’re made to fear “global warming.”

“Carbon will fucking kill you,” Mr. Bloomberg would have you believe in these latest ads. So where is the Independence USA ad showing the EPA as polluters, Mr. Bloomberg?

Liberals take control by making the rest of us fearful, not by giving us the facts.


Note: My very Liberal editor requires the following caveat — This rant applies only to those Liberal politicians who bend over for terrorists and the fellow travelers who elect and support and nurture them. My other Liberal friends are no more cowardly than the rest of us. Other than in their choice of politics. And, yes, I know that Audie Murphy was probably a Democrat.

 

Burning Man Will Not Be Held in South Puffin this Year

It’s not because of the bugs. We have plenty of bugs in the Keys but that is apparently a new phenomenon in Black Rock City.

“DEET can save you in the Keys but we’re committed to the dry heat, not the tropics for our art,” founding board member Crimson Rose told me.

The Nazi Treasure Train and Donald Trump were trending on Facebook yesterday.

“Maybe you should write about the treasure train visiting South Puffin,” Liz Arden told me this morning.

Nah. Not much is happening in South Puffin right now. In fact not much happens in South Puffin at any time so it’s unlikely the train would make a stop here.

I got to playing with a Random Headline generator this morning because not much is happening in South Puffin right now.

Heat Fans Pissed about Kanye’s Honorary Doctorate, Administration Unfazed
That could be true but with a twist. The School of the Art Institute of Chicago did indeed grant the rapper an honorary doctorate for his “transformative, genre-defying work.” See, the college dropout grew up in Chi-town and did a quickie show for da Bulls after receiving the honor from SAIC. I’m thinking our Heat fans didn’t even know.

The “Cruel” Twist in Netflix’ Bloodline Spinoff
All 13 episodes of the original Netflix series were shot in and around the Upper Keys although the stars did appear in South Puffin’s excellent restaurants from time to time. As far as I know, Netflix has no plans to renew Bloodline, let alone spin off the disappointing Florida noir into black sheep Danny Rayburn (actor Ben Mendelsohn) running a grimy Carnival cruise ship aground in Boot Key Harbor.

I live kind of back of beyond. The directions to the house in Vermont are simple: “Drive to Canada. Turn left. Stop when you hit water.” The directions to my house in the Keys aren’t much more complicated.

Ms. Arden likes to remind me that there is not the Endless Entertainment (even on Wednesdays) that she finds in Southwest Puffin. With a million people, there’s a social event around every corner in Southwest Puffin. With hundreds of industrial employers, there are great jobs in Southwest Puffin. And, of course, get everywhere fast by subway, or bus, or trolley in Southwest Puffin.

I gave all that up for the blessings. Havana is closer to Key West than Walmart. Every big city has cars and factories and overpopulation, belching dirty air and dirtier water. Parking is impossible. Lines are long. Crime is high. The streets are n-o-i-s-y.

The Perfect Day on the WaterAlmost every day, I can try to catch a cow on a hook for dinner. As Kenneth Grahame wrote, “Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing — absolutely nothing — half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.” Or messing about on the beach near the boats. And our criminals are much quieter.

Intrigue! For those who want the real story, two treasure hunters claimed to have found the “Nazi gold train” packed with gold, gems and money from 1945, all buried in a hill in Poland. The Silesian Research Group says they found the train two years ago but someone stole their treasure map.

Orange Is the New Hitler, quoth the Random Headline generator.

And none of the headlines are true in South Puffin.

 

We’ll Always Have Paris

I write a weekly newspaper column and chair an arts council so I get a lot of press releases. You just can’t make some of this stuff up.

The nice folks at The Big E sent me this year’s entertainment lineup for the fair.

The Big E, the Eastern States Exposition, is New England’s biggest state fair, with “year-round opportunities for the development and promotion of agriculture, education, industry and family entertainment while preserving our New England heritage.” It culminates in a “field days” festival that starts in September. And it’s a lot more than farm implements.

“It’s your little girl’s squeals of delight every time a cow looks her way. Or the way your husband smiles after finishing a Craz-E Burger, or fried dough, or key-lime-pie-on-a-stick. It’s the look on your best friend’s face as she twirls through the sky on a crazy ride. Or the feeling you get when you catch a strand of Mardi Gras beads at the parade. The biggest fair in the Northeast is filled with amazing little moments. What will yours be?”

State fairs began in the nineteenth century to promote state agriculture, so they have always had livestock, farm products, competitions, and entertainment.

Gotta bring in the rubes.

The Texas State Fair had balloon ascents and “appearances by such notables as John Philip Sousa, William Jennings Bryan, Carrie Nation and Booker T. Washington.” The Iowa State Fair has had more than politicians to entertain us over the years, too.

In 1881, historian James Wilson noted that, “One of the most valuable effects of the [Iowa] State Fair is the fraternizing, humanizing consequences of bringing our people together … No one meets and mingles with 20,000 Iowa men, women and children on the Fairgrounds — the only place they can be brought together — without growth of sympathy.”

In 1922, two locomotives traveling at 10 mph crashed into each other in the second staged train wreck at the Iowa Grandstand. In 1925, more than 100 people entered the new fiddlers’ contest. The new Education Building in 1927 was a great attraction with its second floor art gallery.

The Big E is the only state fair in the nation with six states; the Avenue of States has replicas of each New England state’s original statehouse sitting on land owned by that state. The Vermont Building was constructed in 1926.

In past years, the fair has hosted bands I have booked or know well including Prydein for Celtic rock, the Western swing of Rick and the Ramblers, JimmyT and the Cobras with outlaw rock, Young Tradition Vermont, and many more. My friend Rebecca Padula who played for me at Bay Day this year was disinvited from the Big E lineup because her singing partner moved to California last week.

Some performers are more widely known.

Paris HiltonHidden among the 2015 notes that Alabama will play, that the Big E is ranked as the fifth largest fair in North America, that the Charlie Daniels Band will kick off the proceedings, and the agriculture results, is Paris Hilton.

Paris Hilton? “Yes, this is for real…Paris Hilton has added turntables and headphones to her accessories and is Western MA bound to DJ at The Big E!”

Turns out her debut album sold over 600,000 copies worldwide.

She can sing?

I watched her semi-explicit Good Time bubble gum video which features Lil Wayne.

She can sing?

The Big E had DJ Pauly D perform in 2013, something they called a “big success, attracting thousands of fans to the Fair.”

Paris might draw more, but for singing?

They have a countdown clock. The 2015 Big E with Paris starts in exactly 73 days, 20 hours, 00 minutes, and 00 seconds. I may go this year. I’ve always wanted to watch cow wrangling in Paris.

 

Flag on the Play

Flags of Conquered CountriesI’m a Yankee. My mother was born to a quiet Quaker lady whose father was an abolitionist. Still, I have no dog in this fight except one: Freedom of speech and expression in the United States is protected as our first and most fundamental Right. I also have one or two observations:

• The U.S. bested Great Britain in more than one war. The Union Jack still flies.
• The U.S. bested the Cherokee in the Chickamauga war. The Cherokee Nation banner still flies.
• The U.S. bested Eyalet of Tripolitania and the Sultanate of Morocco in the First Barbary War. The Royal Standard of Morocco still flies. The flag of Ottoman Tripolitania flew until 1911 when the seeds of Libya were sewn.
• The U.S. bested Spain in more than one war. The flag of Spain still flies (adopted in its current version in 1978).
• The U.S. bested Regency of Algiers in war. The flag of Algieria still flies.
• The U.S. and the Republic of Texas bested the Comanche Nation in war. The flag of the Comanche still flies.
• The U.S. bested Greek pirates in the Aegean Sea Operations. The flag of Greece still flies.
• The U.S. bested Fiji, Samoa, and Tabiteuea in an “Exploring Expedition.” The flags of the Republic of Fiji, the Independent State of Samoa, and the land of no chiefs still fly.
• The U.S. bested Mexico in the Mexican-American War. The Mexican still flies.
• The British Empire, France, and the U.S. finally bested the Qing Dynasty in war. The flag of the Qing Dynasty flew until 1912.
• The U.S. bested the Confederate States in war. The Confederate Battle Standard still flies. Oh. Wait.
• The U.S. allies bested China again in the Boxer Rebellion. The flag of the Qing Dynasty flew until 1912.
• The U.S. bested Germany and Mexico in the Mexico-United States border war. The flag of the German Empire flew until 1918.
• The U.S. bested Germany and Nicaraguan Liberals in war. The Republic of Nicaragua’s flag still flies.
• The U.S. bested Germany in more than one war. The flag of Germany still flies (adopted in its current version in 1949).
• The U.S. bested Japan in war. The Rising Sun still flies.
• The U.S. and Jamaica bested Grenada in war. The national flag of Grenada still flies.
• The U.S. deposed Manuel Noriega and bested Panama in war. The Panamanian flag still flies.
• The U.S. and allies deposed Muammar Gaddafi and bested Tripoli in war. The Libyan flag still flies.
• The U.S. bested Iraq in war. The Iraqis have had many flags; at least one may still be flying.
• Vietnam bested the U.S. in war. The American flag still flies (adopted in its current version in 1960).