4/30/07 I saw a great bumper sticker yesterday that said "Get Off The Phone and Drive!"

4/28/07 James Smith the Autoharp Man just finished his performance at the store tonight. He really does a great job of singing the old songs and putting them into perspective with his stories and introductions. It is always a pleasure for him to come and perform here. He started out as usual with "O Susanna", but adds the line "I come from Alabama with my autoharp on my knee." We all sang along. He probably performed 15 songs many old folk songs like "Danny Boy" which always makes Julie cry, "Flower From the Fields of Alabama" a pre civil war love song, my favorite "Soldiers Joy", both the 1700 version and the civil war verson complete with the stories. He did Hank William's "Jambalaya", Leroy van Dyke's "Auctioneer" and some of his own compositions including "Weeping Willow" about environmental destruction with a line I really like being an ex forester (maybe being a forester is like being a Marine, you are never an "ex", but a "former") "does the eagle cry that the woods are all gone..." and "It Don't Get No Better Than This" which has a neat message of faith. All his stuff was good.

The downside is that we may have had 10 people show up and 5 stay for the whole show. That really makes my job harder trying to get good musicians like James to come here and play since I can't pay them and they come for tips. Not many tips with 5 people. I always sweeeten the tip jar some, but I am limited too, this is not a money making proposition yet (hopefully one day soon, but that's another story). Anyway I am very disappointed with the turnout. It reminds me that the Moonlight Music Cafe in Vestavia Hills, without any doubt in my mind the best small venue for local and other musicians in Birmingham, had to close last fall for the same reason; not enough people came to the shows, and these were good quality professional musicians even. Of course we don't have to put on music here , we can just be a coffee house, but the music is important to me, it is one of the main reasons I did this, and I want to keep it going if it is at all possible. But I have been agonizing over what to do with it. I have the same problem with open mikes. But as long as musicians want to come, I probably will keep providing a venue, but I wonder how long they will want to come to a nearly empty house. I really hope we have a good house for Microwave Dave next Friday. So far we have done OK for him, but the next show is always the one that matters. I just feel that there surely are 50 people in Cullman who would have really liked the show tonight. But how do I get them here?

4/27/07 I feel like I need to say something positive today after my "rant" on war, as one customer called it, yesterday. I didn't mean to rant, but reading it over I guess I did, I have a lot of frustration there. So today I will talk about the Cullman County Water Festival. Every fourth grader in the Culman City and County school system came to Wallace State this morning to attend three half hour classes on water, eat lunch and then watch a live magic show in the auditorium. I was a presenter for one of the classes, I had a total of six classes to teach. The class I taught was called "watershed in a box" and its purpose was to teach the kids about watersheds. The other classes covered the hydrologic cycle and aquifers, but we delt with surface water. After a short talk on what a watershed is and how we all live in a watershed and what that means, they got to build one. In a large box they took styrofoam building blocks of various sizes and arranged them to simulate the watershed terrain; the creek or lake in the center and hilly areas around it. They then covered the blocks with tinfoil to make the landscape. We then added water to the depression in the tinfoil that represented the waterbody at center of the box. We then talked about how pollution occurs in the watershed; how such things as lawn chemicals, oil leaks on pavement, exposed dirt, litter and human and animal waste end up in the water supply. To simulate this we took different flavors (colors) of Kool Aid and sprinkled them one at a time, over the area on the watershed above the waterbody. Each color of Kool Aid represented one of the types of pollution mentioned above. When this was done, we gave the kids spray bottles full of water to simulate rainfall and induce erosion. They had all learned about erosion in school, so they understood the concept presented. This caused the dry Kool Aid to turn wet and run into the water body. The end result was a yukky black looking puddle of water at the bottom of the watershed. We then talked about our water supply here in Cullman County which is Lake Katoma, most of the kids knew this. We showed how the model watershed we made pretty realistically represented Lake Katoma and how it becomes polluted from runoff of the same elements we simulated in the exercise. That lead into a talk and a demo on filtration at the water plant and how the water is cleaned up for our use. The bottom line is that we tried to show them that it is better to take care of pollution at the source, around our homes and the places we requent rather than have to clean it up after the fact. They all seemed to enjoy the exercise and understood the importance of what we were trying to get across. I hope so.

Last Wednesday the Cullman County Forestry Planning Committee of which I am a member, hosted all of the City school sixth graders to a Forestry Awareness Day at Sportsmans Lake Park. I was a presenter there also. During several 25 minute sessions we taught them about forestry, wildlife, soils and the importance of trees and tree products in our lives. In the fall we will do the same for the County sixth graders. We have been doing this one for 12 years I think. This was the third or fourth year for the Water Festival. I enjoy doing this, mainly because I believe that the kids do not get enough environmental eduction in school, and taking care of our planet may be the single most important thing they need to learn learn. Everything else they will do in their lives is dependant on having a healthy planet to work and play in. Alabama is in an envirionmental crossroads and this generation may be the one that determines which way it goes: do we lose our natural heritage and cause serious repercussion in our lives, or will we protect it for future generations to enjoy too. This choice will need to be made soon. The kids seem to understand the importance of these issues.

4/26/07 Today will be a departure from my normal comments dealing with music and our store. I will venture into the muddy world of politics. I am a former Viet Nam combat veteran. I flew 783 combat helicopter missions including med evacs and recon patrol inserts and extracts, the most dangerous missions there were and was shot up many times and went down twice, and am fortunate to be alive. I preface my comments with this statement because i feel my background entitles me to comment on war without being labeled a liberal, hippie, treehugging, peacenik complete with all the stereotypes and prejudices that come with that label.

War should never be entered into lightly. I feel that we had cause to go into Afghanistan, our national security was imperiled by the Al Queda training camps and their Taliban support. However, I felt at the time and still obviously do, that we had no business going into Iraq, there was no credible evidence that our national security was threatened by Saddam. I have supported the efforts of our troops in this misguided war, because I know how it was to have the public turn against you like they did against us in Viet Nam. But I think enough is enough. We have had 5 years to win this war and we are no closer now than we were 5 years ago, and worse we are on the edge of losing in Afghanistan because of our lack of focus caused by our misguided foray into Iraq. In Viet Nam we tried in vain to win the hearts and minds of the people against the Viet Cong and the NVA and never suceeded. And through all of those years our leaders, all very removed from the conflict like today, kept saying things were improving when they never were. Sounds like the same story over again. Iraq cannot be won by US troops on the ground, any more than Viet Nam could and we will never be able to train enough Iraqi soldiers to fight and win just like we couldn't train enough South Vietnameese soldiers to fight and win. The silent majority, who in RVN may have secretly wanted us to win, would not stand up and help out of fear and neither will the Iraqi silent majority who may want us to win and without them we can't. Our enemies are ruthless, they reign with terror, which should be no surprise even we call them terrorists. Terror keeps the silent majority from taking part in the solution. To win we will have to fight them as the ruthless enemy they are with no holds barred, which we couldn't do in RVN and can't do now. We are afraid to look bad in the eyes of the world, so instead we try to fight a clean, surgical war. All of us in RVN knew that we could have won that war in any 30 day period of time if we had the will to fight ruthlessly, but we didn't and still don't. Americans want to fight a pretty war, where no one gets hurt, but war is ugly, it is a horror, but those words don't mean anything anymore. So unless we are willing to face the truth and kill and be killed, we have no business being in a war at all. Our troop in Iraq are handicapped, not enough personnel (never were enough), not enough of our best equipment (we have bomb resistant humvees, but where are they?), reporters on every coner to make a big deal of any little problem and wars are filled with problems and atrocities, things happen, people have to make split second life or death decisions. I hated reporters in RVN, they slanted the news and they tend to get in the way of victory since they second guess everything and inhibit leaders from doing what they have to do to win. I was chewed out by a general one time for calling in an airstrike on a "friendly" village when two Marines had just been killed there. On his map it was friendly, on the ground it was a war zone. In war winning is everything and not how it is done. I hate to say that, it offends me, but I know that it is true and if you can't face up to that you don't need to be in a war.

We basically got into the war in Iraq without counting,the cost. We didn't know our enemy and were overconfidant. Our leaders made business decisions, not military decisions, trying to get the most bang for the buck at the cheapest cost, going for frills and not substance. Our real military leaders were too cowardly to stand up and say no.

So here we are, about to lose on two fronts. What can we do now? The real war should still be fought in Afghanistan. We need to immediately commit the resources there to stop the new Taliban attacks, quickly rebuild the infastructure which for some reason has not been done since the war began 5 years ago (part of the problem here is the wasting of our money through bad oversight and outright thievery. Yesterday on the news we heard about a contractor running off with $300,000 which was to be used to rebuild a school while the Taliban offered to rebuild the same school with their money extorted from the drug trade), we need to interdict the opium trade and confront Pakistan. Hopefully this would energize the Afghans, especially the non Pashtoons to rally behind the new democracy. We may still have a shot in Afghanistan if we start an aggressive program now. Iraq is hopeless, is is a rathole that will continue to drain our resources. There are too many factions and problems there for us to solve. We didn't create the problems, we just opened Pandoras box which Saddam had kept the lid clamped on. Best thing we can do is insure the Kurds can stay autonomous and try to either broker a deal between Sunnis and Shiites against the outside insurents or leave them alone to slug it out. I think if we did the latter the world community would step in and find a political soution. So what if we eat crow, our leaders screwed it up from the start and they need to. The bottom line is that the American people need to be better represented by our leaders, they need to be held accountable for what they do with our lives and our money, which they arn't and haven't been for a long time. We as a people need to exercise the power of vote, even against our sacred cows (those politicans who bring home the pork, but screw us at the national level, I think that is all of them!!). Vote them out and vote them out again until we get a governmet that is responsive to us and not those with the most money. My new slogan is "Give 'em the gate in zero eight!"

4/25/07 We had the second meeting of our planning committee for the upcoming Folk Festival to raise money for Daystar House, a local home for homeless and abused women, yesterday. We have decided on Saturday September 29th at the Cullman Farmer's Market also known as the Festhall Market Platz, which, when it is finished, (by May 12th we are told) will be one of the best facilities of its kind in the stae, as the date and place. We will probably start at 2 Pm, when the farmers are done, and run as long as necessary, I would guess 8-9 PM. Admission will be $15.00, in advance, and free to under 12's. We hope to have some workshops to run concurrantly as well. I have begun to contact artists to perform and the response has been overwhelming. So far Karren Pell, an internationally known folk singer, author, and poet from Montgomery and Tom House, a nationally known folksinger and writer from Nashville, have agreed to come and even hold a workshop on songwriting. Bimini Road a really great folk rock jam band in the Grateful Dead tradition, Liberty Junction, a wonderful bluegrass band (they will be playing here on May 12th), James Smith the Autoharp Man (playing here this coming saturday), Phillip David Harris, a Nashville singer-songwriter originally from this area (playing here in July), Jack Ellis, a folk singer, from Huntsville, and Dr. Dennis Haynes a local storyteller have signed on as well. More folks will want to come I am sure, but just this lineup so far exceeds my expectations and gaurantees a great festival. These folks have agreed to come free of charge to support this great charity and I am extremely thankful for that. Stay tuned, I'll be writing more about this as things began to flesh out.

4/23/07 I have heard nothing but wonderful comments about our singer-songwriter night this past Saturday featuring Julie Lindsey and John Lott. This is the third or fourth time they have performed here and they get more polished each time. Both Julie and John are very accomplished songwriters. They both write from unique personal backgrounds, but in two completely different styles. John stories are about broken relationships, alcohol abuse, the pitfalls of materialism and hedonism, drifting, homelessness; basically about the raw, tough side of life. And he tells his stories with authority, he has been there. His playing and singing is more "in your face", he has his message to tell and he does it no hold barred. His voice is very reminiscent of John Prine and this really makes his stage presence captivating. He in a sense forces you to hear him and when he is done, you are glad you did. Some of his songs are edged in a dry humor, that takes the hard edge off his message and makes it more palatable. I particularily liked his "Hole in the Soul", "Rambling", and the deeply pesonal "So What". John prefaced all of his songs with the life experience that prompted the writing, which connected them all to the audience. Julie, on the other hand, writes about love and hope and dreams, about relationships both good and gone bad, sometimes about a dark underworld, but with the hope of a bright future up ahead someplace. She sings and play her guitar in a quite, almost timid, reflective manner, quite unlike her off stage persona, but infused with hope and faith. She borders on being a philosopher/theologan, her material can be very deep and philosphical. She did some wonderful covers like "Firefly" by Laurie McCanna, which just fits Julie to a tee. Her originals are wonderful; "Desert's Daughter" and Mark's Song" just to name a couple. In all a great night, a good crowd, wonderful performances, what more could you want for a free Saturday evening.

4/18/07 Gerri and I had a really neat experience yesterday. About 4:30PM a couple of young (30's)guys walked into the store carrying a large camera. They ordered espressos and were obviously foreigners. As it turned out they were freelance journalist from Milan, Italy, Vincente and Raffel, who were sent to Alabama, Tennesee, and Mississippi to do an article of dry counties. Apparantly in Italy, deaths from accidents due to drunk driving are skyrocketing and the government is considering laws to restrict alcohol consumption. They were doing research for an article to see how well restrictive laws work here. They had flown into Nashville, rented a car and went to Lynchburg to the Jack Daniels Distillery and then to Huntsville where they spent the day with the ABC police and even went on a bust. The ABC guys had teenagers fronting for them trying to buy beer from convenience stores. They came to Cullman because they heard about our dry Octoberfest and met with the Chamber of Commerce. Somehow in all that they found our coffee house after wondering where they could get espresso in Alabama. Anyway we started talking and the conversation turned to moonshine. I have had a lot of experince with moonshiners and whiskey stills during my 33 year career as a forester in the South. Without revealing sources I managed to get them a little moonshine to taste, some raw and some charcoaled. I hope to set them up an interview with an old (retired) moonshiner and bootlegger Thursday. So far the active moonshiners, mostly in their 80's now, don't want to talk to strangers. As far as I know there are no young people moonshining, at least around here, its more profitable to make meth or grow marijuana. After their encounter with moonshine they left to go into Mississippi and may stop by here on their way back if I can get them an interview. We were with them for 2-3 hours and got to share a lot about our respective cultures. One thing I found extremely interesting is that they wanted to talk about Christianity without the religion. See my blog on 4/13/07 for a discussion on that. They said that many people worldwide are seeing the problems that come from religion and are rebelling against it. How 'bout that, its a small world. I'll keep you posted if there are anymore developments.

4/17/07 We had a great open mike last night, we had some of our great regulars and some musicians show up who hadn't been here in quite a while. I broke the ice with a couple of banjo tunes and then Kerry Calvert came up and started us off with a really nice song about cowboys and then did a couple of originals. Dennis Kaylor was next with some of his great originals including Copperhead Hill. Then we were fortunate to have Joanne Johnson, who recently moved back to Cullman from Miami, do some old 60's songs, Dillon and others with her guitar and harmonica. Carlo was next with two old folk songs done in his unique acapella style. Garland Talbert, our 90's something poet lauriate, recited an Edgar Allen Poe poem and then brought down the house with Casey at the Bat. Last was a new group, The Awkward Silents, with Shea Hollaway and his friend Seth from Birmingham. Seth has one of the most unusual and haunting voices I have ever heard. I want them back for a concert. One of the songs they played was a song Shea wrote that I have heard before and really like, The Ballad of Lost John. They played an original by Seth as well. You need to hear these guys. We went around again and I closed with a request. It was a great night. The crowd was small but enthusiastic and fun.

4/16/07 One of our regular customers, Meliah Miller, a college student at Wallace, invited us to her 21st birthday Saturday night at her parents home in Locust Fork. We got there about 8:30 after driving around rural Blount County for a half hour or so trying to find the road she lives on. Locust fork is about a hours drive southeast of Cullman in central Blount County, a pretty rural part of north Alabama, but beginning to be effected by the Birmingham sprawl. There were probably 50 young people there, most in their early 20's, most college students, some from as far a way as Tenneesee and Georgia. It was a really great time. The kids were all well mannered, and having a good time. Some were really proficient musicians and played celtic and other music around the campfire on fiddle,guitar and jimbe drum. They cooked marshmelleows, made smores, played games, it was just a great time. Meliah's folks, Mary and Wendell Miller were gracious hosts. Most of the kids were friends from home school, relatives or college friends and had known each other a long time. In fact I think these outings were part of family traditions. It was really good to be around a group of young people that were having a good wholesome time, enjoyed each others company and were planning out their futures in ways to be a part of the solution and not a part of the problem. These were mostly, if not all, Christian kids who were serious about living out their faith and making a difference. You don't see that much anymore. Thanks to Meliah for making this possible, Gerri and I really enjoyed ourslves and came away more hopeful for the future of our country.

4/13/07 I want to write a little bit about the Organic church which meets here on Thursday evening from 7 (or so) until 9 (or so). I had an acquaintenca tell me this week that the Organic Church was a religion bashing group that was subversive and the implication was, I think, non-Christian. Wow!! He has no idea of what goes on here. It's true we are anti religion, but we are not anti church, we are just looking for the church that Jesus built and not the man made church that is so prevalent today. And, by the way, which is not making a positive witness to our world today, either by their words or lifestyle, and is becoming increasingly irrelavant to most people. We, on the other hand, are searching for real life changing Christianity and not just Sundayanity feel good and then business as usual on Monday church. We believe that Jesus empowered all believers as equal members of his church, with differing gifts of course, and did not commission just a few superstar personalities with elaborate and alluring productions and programs, to run the church. We also believe that Jesus was truly our redeemer and that once we accept Him we do not have to continue our redemption with works or rituals. Life change and love toward others is what it is all about.

For the past two Thursday nights we have been discussing the Kingdom of God, the very thing Jesus seemed to talk more about than anything else, and what it means to us today in our daily walk. The discussions have been far reaching and life changing, and everyone is involved. Our participants are from many different religious backgrounds, all ages from high school students to seniors, all life stages, even a few with seminary degrees (we don't let that interfer with our discussions). Anyone is welcome to come and take part.

4/10/07 I went to the Cullman Audubon Society meeting last night. The featured speaker was David Holloway the senior naturalist at Camp McDowell in Winston county between Jasper and Double Springs. He is an ornithologist and shared bird calls with us, he sings them with words, really cool. He then gave a great program centered on Alabama's fantastic biodiversity which is almost second to none. He gave us a bunch of statistics like 'Alabama has 144 endemic species', these are plants and animals that are found nowhere else in the world but here. David is a great speaker, very animated, loud, and enthusiastic. During the training season at Camp McDowll, which take place in the spring and fall, they have two groups of 180 kids per week come to learn about the natural world. He also trains naturalists from all over the country. Then he took out a live great horned owl and allowed us to touch him and he showed us all the adaptions that make this bird what it is. For example, their talons can grip with 400 lbs of pressure, enough to carry of a small cat or dog, not something they normally do however. By contrast a red tailed hawk's talons grip with 200 lbs of pressure. He showed us how the owls round face worked like a satilite dish to focus sounds to his ears to allow him to better sense the direction of sound. Then he brought out a live red tailed hawk and went through the same procedure. It was a great learning experieince. He also had a real hawk and an owl wing and when he flapped them in the air, the hawk wing made a flapping sound, but the owl wing was completely silent. Hawks are fast fliers, 90 mph in a dive, and sound is not a factor in capturing their prey. Owls on the other hand are slow fliers and thus need to be silent. It was an amazing presentation. The Audubon Society meets every second Tuesday at 7 PM in the St John's Church annex, the old radiator shop which has really been fixed up nicely. They have a neat program every month. Dues are $15/year. We sell the new Cullman Audubon T shirts at the store as a fundraiser for them.

4/2/07 Open mike night last night went very well, we had some old and new performers and a good crowd of listeners as well. Seth williams was back from a stay in San Antonio and played some of his great originals in his unique style. He and I played some old folk songs together as well. Csilla Elam, a great Christian music performer came and gave out free cd's to anyone who wanted them. She sang some new songs she has recently written. Josh Brooks played also, it was good to have Josh back and look forward to him coming more often. Meliah sang some of her old songs like Moon River and she brought a good contingent of Wallace students. Everyone had agood time.