... fan of the band, Tower of Power, invites you to listen and shake it up around the room a bit ...

My sis and I had a really good time tonite rockin' out to this very golden oldie.  Chased away some of our doomy-gloomies (my previous blog mentioned that she may have lost her 401K since it was banked through AIG) ...

'course, if my neighbors were watching through the window, they probably thought we were ... ummm ... who cares ... we had a beer, laughed and danced around my living room and had fun. 

Monday comes soon enough for all of us. 

Sigh ... I ♥ this band forever ... doubledare you to sit still and not at least tap your toes while listening ... :)

 

K

Here's the lyrics:
"Credit"
as performed by
Tower of Power
{ Bass guitar intro }
Go and get it
With your good credit.
Go and get it
With your good credit.
You can
Do the town.
Paint it up red.
Don't worry about a thing,
You don't need no bread.
Go and get it
With your good credit.
You can
Dine in style.
Live like a king.
Keep the spirit flowing.
Ain't no big thing.
Go and get it
With your good credit.
(begin refrain)
Create a flash
With that plastic cash.
You don't need no green
To make the scene.
(end refrain)
Go and get it
With your good credit.
Check it out!
Go and get it
With your good credit.
You can
Pay your bills.
Cop a tailor made suit.
Sign on the line.
You don't need no loot.
Go and get it
With your good credit.
And I will show
you what to do.
You can
Rent a car.
Fill the tank with gas.
Cruise to the limit
Without no cash.
Go and get it
That's a fact Jack.
With your good credit.
Yeah, I like it like that.
{ refrain }
Go and get it
With your good credit.
 I got to take
it with me.
Go and get it
With your good credit.
All you got to do
is charge it!
{ sax solo }
Oh yeah!
Go and get it
With your good credit.
Go and get it
With your good credit.
Impress
Your friends
Do it to the max.
And what do you know
You don't need no scratch.
Go and get it.
With your good credit.
Lookey here,
lookey here,
lookey here,
lookey here.
Burn your ribs
Like ya done a lot
of talking.
That need a second look
And take a honey suckle
Mother ain't no fool.
Go and get it
With your good credit.
Now you know what to do.
{ refrain }
I'm trying to tell you.
Go and get it
With your good credit.
Try one, try big,
try to take it
with me.
Go and get it
Go and get it, get
it, get it, get
it, get it, get
it, hey!
With your good credit.
I like it, you
like, I like it,
they like it,
yeah!
Go and get it
With your good credit.
There's no doubt about it.
Go and get it
With your good credit.
Don't leave home without it.
Go and get it
With your good credit.
There's no doubt about it.
Go and get it
You're gonna need it.
With your good credit.
Don't leave home without it.
Yeah!
Yeah!!
Yeah!!!
Yeah!!!!
Yeah!!!!!

Musicians: Michael Jeffries, Marc Russo, Emilio Castillo, Greg Adams, Stephen 'Doc' Kupka, Mic Gillette, Willie James Fulton, Mark Sanders, Vito San Filippo, Chester Thompson, Lenny Pickett

Transcribed by D.E. Gogerty

Our soldiers are more important than our financial markets.

Dear Father, protect them first.  Bring them home proud heroes even tho this war has been forgotten because our country's priority has become the global financial markets.

Bring these guys and gals home and bless their honor and sacrifice and courage.

Let each one be safe and comforted that America does still care about them.

IJN

We momentarily dodged the bullet today.  This week's financial news has brought absolutely unprecedented and historic events to the US. 

We ordinary folks ... you know ... those of us who work the best jobs we can and who pay into and don't bleed the system with "entitlement" freebies or hugely disproportionate CEO salaries and other perks and (I detest this phrase) "trickle down" tax breaks and credits ...

are definitely the victims of financial terrorism. 

End of subject in my opinion.  Period. 

Ultimately, the problem was lack of oversight, greed and corruption and then greed again. 

Another question for us dummies is ...

Was this an act of foreign terrorism (you know ... like those folks who REALLY were the ones who brought down WTC ...)

OR DOMESTIC terrorism (like McVeigh, Waco ... the anthrax attacks on USPS) ...

Hmmmm ... actually, IMVHO, it's both.  Scary, huh. 

And, do remember, although this attack has momentarily and rightly been stalled from a hugely disasterous global and public panic reaction ...

The US government's reaction today has been the same as was led by the folks who told us that we needed to immediately invade Iraq because of Saddam's serious nuc, bio and chem threats to our nation after 9/11.   

To this day, we still haven't captured the real target of the horrendous crime ... how many years has it been since we've even come remotely CLOSE to OBL???

Because of the lookaway attitude to corporate and market and foreign governance (even while the USPS has an expensive anthrax sniffer checking nearly each piece of your mail ... truth, I used to invest in the stock of a company that made it) ...

Today's administration has effected probably the MOST SOCIALIST and ANTI CAPITALIST, ANTI FREE MARKET SYSTEM EVER IN AMERICAN HiSTORY. 

The light is on and the cockroaches are scattering.  We're not out of the woods by any stretch of the imagination yet.

I'm not sure ANY ONE person is capable of leading us out of this mess. 

Hi BakoFriends ... *Please* come out and support these kids on August 17. 

Some very special and wonderful folks have worked very hard to keep these kids going and growing through their mariachi music.  It's been a labor of love and culture for many years.  My life has been blessed working with these students and their families.  I've been especially proud to present my students who play with this mariachi group at the CMEA Ratings Festival for three years now. 

They truly need some community support now and how can a town like Bako not have enough love and support for youth mariachi music? 

Send 'em a donation of ten bucks (or more) even if you can't attend!

They're so worth it!  Really, reallly ... they are. 

Thanks,

Karin

I've dreaded this year for awhile. 

After being blessed with a full teaching schedule (seven days a week; no scheduled days off for the last six years) ... I have many students who are seniors and just graduated over the last few days.

Most of them have been my students for at least five or six or seven years.

Of course, mostly, they've bailed on me with their senioritis, finals and parties and post high school status for this last month. 

I've shared their excitement this year about getting in to the colleges of choice; the disappointment of taking second best ... their scholarships, their grants, their plans ...

Only one is thinking about continuing music formally after high school. 

I feel like a teddy bear tossed aside and outgrown.  Oh well, as another fine teacher put it recently ...

"We are about making them into better adults through the discipline of music."

Pooh pooh ... I know each will still have a place somewhere in their heart for music. 

I still feel mushy and lonesome for so many dear friends/students who are about to strike out on their own and leave me and the weekly lessons behind.

And ... crap ... I have tears dripping on my knees as I type this.

Oh well, it's still early enough to get out and water the yard tonight.

And to send my love and prayers to all those who are so dear to me and are suddenly independent adults.

Hope I've made a dent that means something somewhere in their lives.

I needed to meet my favorite pianist today for rehearsals with my students for our local Solo Ratings Festival at the junior high school where she teaches.

While I was there, some idiot punk hammered a three inch cement nail into the sidewall of my back right tire.

Thank God that tire got me safely home still at freeway speeds ... but when I needed to attend a second rehearsal at her house later this evening, I noticed a funny clicking noise and pulled over to look.  The tire wasn't completely flat yet and the clicking sound was that gigantic nail hitting my rim.

Thank God I wasn't too far from downtown Pep Boys and drove painfully slow nearly on my rim to get there.

Thank God Pep Boys was still open and had one tire left my size.

Thank God, even tho I don't have a cell phone and left my checkbook and credit cards at home I had enough cash on me to pay for a new tire.  Pep Boys was friendly and fast, BTW. 

But I missed my piano rehearsals with three of my top students, one of whom is seriously struggling with her solo. 

It was an oppressively bad experience ... and it happened on that "good" side of town ... where everyone has so much money. 

Sh*t. 

Did I get you with that title? <g>

I think spring has come too early this year.  I am not really ready for the yard to come out of remission. 

I live in a modest rental house in the Alta Vista area of east Bako.  The landlady here has had to evict probably the last three (I think) tenants before I found this place.  Well, actually, without getting in to the whole long story, my sis found this place for me when I needed to move fast ...

It's really not a bad house, old and with some obvious scars ... and I have good neighbors here.  Always a good thing.  I've been here a little over two years. 

But I am once again amazed at what happens to the yard this time of year.

In the blink of an eye, weeds and weeds and weeds.  It's like some freaky Twilight Zone story. 

One day, I'm looking out the window enjoying the bright oranges growing on a very old beautiful tree in the back yard ...

and I swear ... the next day those milk whatever weeds have grown to the height of my window.  With stalks at least an inch thick.

Then most of the rest of the back yard turns into a patriotic waving sea of what looks like wheat ... but it's actually foxtails.  At least a foot high ... instantly.

Mixed in with some of that geranium looking kind. 

And the places I didn't really bust down last year grow crabgrass as tough and tangled as ship's rope to cut through.

The front yard is a different woe.  It has probably been mowed to dirt for several years before I moved here (and had to tell the gardener that I was a new tenant and he'd just been stiffed by the last one who had been evicted.)

The shady areas are a favorite of that clover stuff ... with the pretty yellow flowers ... that turn into hideously painful thorny stickers when it dries out. 

And if I could enter dandelions in the Kern County Fair, I'd have an award winning crop.   Honestly, it looks like I grow and harvest them as a business.  (Tea anyone?)

There's some other stuff that grows with tiny purple flowers ... what's that?

I hate power tools.  They scare me and I don't like messing with gasoline.  My sis bought me a terrific gas weedeater when I moved here.  I can't start the damn thing.  I'm a girl first of all and I'm left handed and I don't have long enough arms to pull that rope. 

I don't feel too bad ... my sis can't start it either and when I tried to give it away to my best bud Kyle (gay but buff enough) he couldn't start it.  I'll advertise it someday for sale (hey, maybe here!) or give it away to some guy who's too macho to admit that it's really a pain in the ass.

So I bought one of those battery powered weedeaters advertised on late nite infomercials.  It's orange.

Actually, I like it a lot.  It's blissfully easy to start.  It's ergonomic.  It's not horrifically noisy.  I get free string for life (and yes, I actually have ordered replacement string from them for free.) 

But the battery poops out after about a half hour. 

If you order it, I recommend that you order a second battery.  I didn't yet because it made me mad that they really don't tell you that you only have about a half hour of work time. 

But a half hour a day of smokin' weeds is pretty much enough for me at a time, altho this year I probably will order the second battery. 

In spite of my genetically acquired nature as a procrastinator, I've been doing a little whacking every day.  The yard looks more tamed of the wild beasty weeds.  I've enjoyed being out in the early spring weather. 

And Mutters doesn't have to machete a trail from her favorite pee/poop spots to her favorite sun spot right now.

Cheers,

Karin

 

Well, as many of you know or may have guessed, I'm a hopeless stage mother when it comes to my students.

Would like to share some of their stellar successes and sincerely congratulate them ...

Dominic Culver, concertmaster of the Santa Clarita Youth Symphony, and his senior high school class valedictorian, will be performing as a soloist with the professional orchestra, the Santa Clarita Symphony on April 5, 2008.  He was specially chosen for this honor after auditioning for his conductor of the SCYS.

Michael Wisehart, one of the co-concertmasters of the Bakersfield Youth Symphony, will also be performing as a soloist with the BYS on April 5, 2008 and will be featured in a radio broadcast of selected soloists on KVPR 3:00 pm on Wednesday, March 26.

(Dang it ... I need a clone to be at both concerts that night.  GRRR to the scheduling gods.)

Laalasa Varanasi just phoned me tonight from Sacramento, tired and tuckered from a long day of traveling, rehearsing and taking her seating audition for the California All State Honor Orchestra today.  She is seated among the top ten (ninth chair) out of about thirty violinists in the second violin section after first being chosen as an alternate and then being informed that she would be needed to fill in for a player who could not make it.  She had much less time to practice for this audition than the others.  She also fulfilled all her obligations to all her rehearsals this last two weeks with her high school orchestra and her rehearsals with the Bakersfield Youth Symphony in addition to her usual high standard as one of her junior class valedictorians. 

I do think all my students are great; it's just that stage mom nature in me ... but thought these kids truly deserved a special pat on the back for doing so well.

He offered his and I offered mine back.  Apologies went both ways. 

Music director agrees with our formulating ideas and suggestions for better auditions next year to the board of directors.

Sincere?  Hope so, will take at face value. 

Hopeful that things continue peacefully and that all the personal differences are behind us.

So, more progress to report.

Progress.

Have talked to another teacher who agrees that we need to address the problems that can occur during auditions and formulate and recommend some guidelines for any audition committee.

A group of us will meet for lunch next week to discuss.

Should be productive and interesting.  Looking forward to it and just jawing with the "girls" will be nice too. 

Oh yeah,

Yesterday I got some phone call from a guy screaming the "f" word over and over about my spam website flooding his website with 500 spam emails. 

I couldn't get his name, but he told me he was hiring an attorney to sue me before he hung up on me. 

I checked the website name he gave me and, sure enough, plain as day for anyone to easily find on the internet ...

My full name, home address and phone number are listed as the owner.

I suppose it was a good thing he called otherwise I wouldn't have known that my personal information, credit cards, etc. had been hacked somewhere. 

So, spent the entire day calling my bank and my credit cards to cancel everything.

The charges for setting up the spam website are on one credit card that I use only a couple of places on the internet.  They are supposed to be secure sites.

One of them is my virus software provider.  When I called them I got run around to at least five different people and NO ANSWERS.  Just a hedge and "we will notate that your account is secure."

If it was their site that was hacked to get my information, wouldn't that make the news.

The police, of course, don't do anything except tell you they will call back and take a phone report "within 2 days" which they probably just file away forever.  I did try to bump it up by telling them I was getting threatening phone calls and that my name, etc. was still out there in public for everyone to see.

Not in the best of moods over this, I asked them if the police would come "after my house was firebombed" because of the hostility these webmasters have about spam.

I did call my nephew, who is a webmaster, to see if he could help get my name off the public record as the owner of the fraudulent site.

He looked it up while we were on the phone and said, "Wow, I've never known anyone who was the victim of identity theft."

"Well, leave it to your aunt," I said. 

There isn't much I can do except an email that he told me might take weeks to get answered. 

So I told him I didn't care if he hacked the sh*t out of  "you bastards who stole my identity" dot net. 

That meeting I had "off the record" with the Music Director was worthless.  It was just an attempt to appease me,  "make nice and keep her quiet."

It didn't address any of the audition issues. 

Nothing's going to change about those auditions because of it.  Except that my reputation as a teacher is hurt.

Why did it take me two weeks to realize it? 

My students are unsettled because of it; I'm freaked out too.

I've got some more phone calls to make. 

And some really big decisions.  This has only proven to me once again how fragile my livelihood is and how easily one person can ruin it for me. 

My class had an outstanding year last year ... and you know what they say about retiring when you're at the top.  Sigh ...

However, I will stand up this time for fairness and better auditions ... and I'll pull all the strings I still have.  I'll beg to get the biggest voices I can to speak up as well.

But I can't do this again every audition.  It really is making me physically sick.

I haven't written about my foster doggie, Mutters, in a while. 
http://www.bakotopia.com/ho...

Mutters was supposed to be my foster dog; I was only supposed to keep her until her family could rent a place where doggies were allowed, but it seems her former family has abandoned her to me.  I've been caring for her for almost a year. 

Mutters is a fourteen year old, very gray haired terrier mix  who was never "fixed" by her former family, and, judging from the fact that every puppy producing part of her is stretched out, sagging and pulled on, she's probably had enough puppies over the years to claim that any black dog with a white moustache in east Bako is part of her progeny. 

I've not seen any serious signs of her coming into heat now, so she's not been vetted by me for that. 

Don't dogs get "menopausal" too? 

My mom, (Grampsdon's fave lady), told me that when Mutters "goes," she thinks the family should hold an intervention to get me to adopt another dog, cause she thinks I'm happier and safer having a dog. 

Even tho I grew up with dogs and am a dog lover, I've been a renter since high school.  It's easier to rent with cats.  And I love my catters. 

Last Thursday afternoon, my early student and I heard a kitten's cries near my yard and we walked around the yard to see what was up.

Actually, I was relieved that we couldn't find anything ... good, let someone else deal with it; I've enough on my plate right now. 

This morning, my neighbor showed up at my door while I was teaching with the culprit kitten in her hands.

"I'm allergic; they're allergic; my dogs don't like cats ... you have cats; you like cats" ... yada, yada.

"Neighbor," said I, "I can't take another critter.  I already have three cats (two adopted already out of bad homes) and a dog (who was abandoned to me).  I can't have five animals."

"Oh, OK, I'll call animal control."

Sh*t.  "Has the baby eaten?"

"No, not for at least three days."

Sigh.  "OK, at least I have some cat food.  Let me have it."

This kitten is a tiny, fuzzy black baby, eyes still blue and barely open, weak and wobbly.  But, like every kitten in the world, unbelievably cute.  I'm amazed this wee one survived without a mama cat for so many days.  Way too young to be weaned yet, but is sucking/licking milk and watered cat food off a plate for me. 

What a fighter for life.

Too small for me to tell for sure, but think it's a male. 

Swear, when this one cries, you can hear it across the street.  My elder catters, who have all been fixed and never had babies, hiss, swat and hide and are pissy about the new arrival..

My students think it's adorable and want to name it.

I think it's too young to even handle the normal bodily functions of pissing and pooping without the natural help of a mama cat.

But what a fighter for life.  (Yea, I know, I'm repeating myself.)

Well, hello Mutters ... Supreme Experienced Mama Dog.  I don't think she can actually lactate again, but when I put the little baby kitten near her tummy just for comfort, the little one went happy nuts and started suckling, purring happily. 

Mutters is sniffing the baby's butt and I think she knows more about changing "diapers" in a young, helpless critter than I do.  She's licked the baby kitten too. 

Mutters is so old and gray that I can't help but laugh at her expression of "when did this happen?"

But it's obvious she's an old hat at babies and it's really sweet.

Mutters and the kitten are curled up together in Mutters' box bed right now.  The little one is exhausted and comforted. 

I knew it was coming.

I've lost students after this last round of auditions.

"The audition committee was tired; it was just a joke."
http://www.bakotopia.com/ho...

I'm so not laughing or joking.  Better that you had just driven a stake through my heart and paid off my credit cards.

I just teach hard and I care.

Anyone else in the Alta Vista area of East Bako wondering about the city street maintenance?

My gutters and sidewalks are torn up and out.  Have been for a month. 

There is an 18 inch deep trench in front of my house where they are supposed to replace the curbs and gutters ...

My sidewalks are gone.

My bud Kyle's street has been torn up for months; still doesn't have the all sidewalks done yet.  His next door neighbor's wife is disabled and in a wheelchair; having trouble with the incomplete work.

Where do they go after they tear the streets up and why does it take so long for them to come back to finish the work?

City's maintenance note says not to water ...

Actually, in a way that's good for me.

My yard doesn't look any crappier now than anyone else's.

Well, I heard Supervisor Rubio lives in this neighborhood ... bet the work around his house is done.

One of my students, who is also among the top of my class, seated very poorly at her high school orchestra auditions last week.

Part of the audition is to "sightread."  That means the kids are given a piece of music and have about 30 seconds to look through it and perform it.  It is a good way to judge a musician's inherent technique and ability.

I lost an audition once in college for concertmaster (first chair) because of the sightreading element.  The other girl was a good player I'd competed against before so, at first, I didn't mind.

Then she bragged to me about how she knew what the sightreading material was and that she had had a chance to practice it before the audition.

The only way she could have known the sightreading excerpt in advance of the audition was through the conductor of the orchestra.  He was obviously setting it up for her to win by giving her this advantage.

I confronted him about the unfairness of this.  He just shrugged his shoulders.  My word against his.

Back to my student ...

She had to go first at the high school orchestra audition.  So, we can safely say that she really did sightread the material. 

I have long known that the students at this school blatantly cheat at the sightreading.  It is always leaked about what passage is to be played.  Because of the size of the string section, the auditions take several days, and the kids who play later have more time to practice what is supposed to be unknown to them and graded as such.

The cheating goes both ways ... those who give the information out and those who find the information out ...

Well, the last two years, two different top ranked students of mine at the school have gone first ... and been stung in the seating placement because of it.  Both years and two different students' seating ranks have been so ridiculously out of whack from their normal ranking that I can only believe it is the sightreading element.

Unfortunately, I cannot defend the fact that my students, like all the others, leak the sightreading to their friends after they come out of the audition room.  It's so common that the kids don't even think of it as cheating.  However, as I said, it goes both ways. 

For at least the last three, maybe four, years, I believe, I have talked to my students and asked them to talk to their director about ways to improve the audition process here. 

My suggestions:  If a private teacher with students in the orchestra is chosen to adjudicate, then it does not seem difficult to pull in a whiteboard or something as a screen to have the kids play behind, give 'em a number and listen to them play without knowing who they are listening to.  My kids know that I've said I couldn't truly be impartial as a judge with my own students unless the audition was blind.  I've told them I'm not sure I'd be softer on them or harder on them as a judge.  A lot of them laugh and think I'd be harder on them.

The order of the kids should be drawn at random, so none of them would know what day they were going to play.  The sightreading material should be changed every day of the auditions and the kids who have already played their audition and know what the selection is need to be kept separate from those who haven't played yet that day so they are not tempted to "help" their friends out.  If this is too complicated, then leave the sightreading out of the audition. 

However, since the audition process has remained unchallenged still, I've told my kids I cannot consider it a fair evaluation. 

But my girl, who took the fall on the sightreading this year by going first, is really struggling with this.  She wants to quit orchestra, is not even trying to play well now and fighting with her parents about it.

Of course, as an adult and like her parents, I should be telling her to "buck up and take your knocks."

Actually, though, I feel more like she does.  I am ready to throw in the towel too. 

This teacher is tired of writing letters to music education administration, tired of phone calls to boards of directors, tired of meetings, tired of all of it.

I don't get paid well for this job.

I'm tired of my gut hurting. 

Just give me a nice, quiet day gig somewhere.  I need a life.

I've never been so shocked and stunned as a professional at the behavior of an audition committee as I am today by the remarks made to a few of my students. 

I've been around the block since I was a kid .. starting here in Bako ... and all across the US ...
and I thought I'd seen every political, low-blow BS musician trick in the book ...

*How enchanting <she says with intense sarcasm> to hear of new ones today.*

As much as I dread confrontation, I already have phone calls in and ready to speak before the board of directors Monday.

It all pretty much boils down to this;

if ya got a beef with me for what I can only guess is a BS reason ... talk to me about it ... don't mess with my kids' minds or talent or their dedication to what they're trying to accomplish.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!

OK ... like I need to bring it up to any Bakos out there as if they hadn't already noticed,

but, dang, like many folks in this area who live with an "EVAPORATIVE COOLER" instead of AC tonite ...

It's 11 pm right now and with 50% humidity and still 90 degrees. 

So there's no "evaporative" in this cooler tonite ... just SWAMP!!!

I'm glued to everything.  Everything feels like flypaper.

I have to peel my arms off my desk as I type.  If I stuck my legs on the desk, it'd be like a wax treatment and pull all the the hairs out so I wouldn't have to shave for a few weeks.

UGGGGHHHH ... and worse the next few days?????

Hang in all.

*sigh*

Already!

Even my little kids are saying that this summer flew by too fast.

*sigh*

Last couple of days, Oscar the Cat has become quite a celebrity.

At first I thought this story would be kind of creepy ... predicting and attending a death is a high calling few individuals ever want to answer.

This cat was adopted into the dementia unit of this nursing home.  So his presence signaling death is near is like a bridge to the world these individuals cannot express themselves.

So Oscar the Cat seems compassionate and comforting in his special calling.

I like this version of the story:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/...

Oscar, cat with the purr of death

A gregarious cat, quick to solicit ear scratches from a visitor, Oscar can be clownish at times. "Just go and try completing a medical form when Oscar's near enough to whap the pen," laughed Dr Joan Teno.

But it is Oscar's keen sense of impending death that has made him a legend.

"Medical people are sceptical at the start. But you wind up believing," Dr Teno said.

"Oscar is a normal cat with an extra-normal sense for death. He is drawn to death."

Occasionally, families are spooked by a cat keeping death watch, and Oscar is shooed from the bed and locked from the room. He does not like this. "He kind of rubs aggressively against the door, paces back and forth, yowls in protest," Dr Teno said.

Other families are deeply appreciative of Oscar.

Jack McCullough lost his mother and his aunt at Steere; the octogenarian sisters both suffered from disease-induced dementia.

His mother died in November 2005; his aunt in March this year. In both cases, Oscar hopped onto the woman's bed near the final hour, cuddling close and purring.

"Oscar's presence gave a sense of completion and contentment," Mr McCullough said. "Both women loved pets."

He added: "Oscar brought a special serenity to the room. What's more peaceful than a purring cat? What sound more beautiful to fill one's ears when leaving this life?"