Saturday, I became the happy owner of a new guitar:

I remember exchanging some comments with Altivo about twelve-string guitars, which reminded me that it had been too long since I had one. It took a couple more years, but finally I have one again. It's from Elderly Instruments in Lansing, Michigan, which fulfills another longtime dream to buy a worthy instrument from them. (I'd bought CDs there but never an instrument.)

It was down to two choices, a Guild 12-string that I liked an awful lot and the Taylor. I played both for something like an hour, with Dave patiently listening and even helping by (nervously) holding one or the other. I had the run of the little room with acoustic guitar amps, and it was while testing each one with the amp that the Taylor pulled ahead. It's so smooth and easy to play and sounds great amplified or not. It's also awful good-looking. I have to admit that I've had more fun playing this one in half a week than I have had playing all my other guitars in a long time. In fact, I wish I was playing it now instead of merely writing about it. Maybe that means I've found a way (or a reason) to start doing more music again. At the very least, I have to relearn some songs to take better advantage of the twelve strings.

I pretty much owe it all to Dave. He says you only turn fifty once. (Well, I might turn twice fifty, but I'll probably forget what a guitar is by then.) This guitar is a gift in honor of that. I just don't really have enough words to express my thanks, and not just for that but for the patience while I figured out what I really wanted. At one point, I was thinking about a digital SLR camera instead. I'm glad I came around to the twelve-string; I think Dave is, too.

I've been enjoying a subscription to the New York Times this year. I'm not spending an hour a day combing through it, but I do manage to check in a few times a week and see what their headlines are and what their op-ed folks are saying. It's valuable, though I have to admit it helps keep my worldview on the negative side.

Exhibit A: Why Bambi Must Go
In an op-ed piece, a professor of biology at William & Mary notes that the decline in many migratory bird species such as certain warblers is due to the overly successful management of forests for maximum populations of white-tailed deer. The deer reach population densities up to 75 per square mile, and eat every piece of greenery they can reach, which destroys the nesting habitat of warblers that nest low to the ground, such as hooded and Canada warblers. The professor's suggestion is to stop managing for deer (and deer hunters), something that I'm sure will not be embraced by the armies that hit the woods for two weeks every November. Yet another example of humans meddling in the affairs of critters, resulting in unintended consequences, to my mind.

Exhibit B: The Beginning of the End of the Census?
The House of Representatives have voted in support of legislation that would kill off the American Community Survey, an adjunct to the constitutionally mandated decennial census that collects a wide variety of economic and sociological data on the U.S. population. This data fills so many needs of businesses, researchers, and government policy makers and affects everyone. But, according to the ironically named Daniel Webster, first-term GOP representative from Florida, it is too big an intrusion into the homes of Americans, and costs too much to boot. Apparently he even uses ACS data on his own website; it is not known what he will do if he is successful and no longer has access to current data.

Exhibit C: Of Bile and Billionaires
Regular NYT columnist Frank Bruni starts with the story of the SuperPAC funder who wanted to bring President Obama's former association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright back into the news in an attack ad (which, even though the ad has been canceled, was successful in reminding us of the former association). Bruni eventually says what I realized a while ago, that political discourse from almost all sides has degenerated into "bile instead of reason, catcalls in place of conversation, and the basest of instincts." I would say one can't have a functional society if you can't talk to each other reasonably. Bruni at least finds some solace in that voters seem to be fed up with the nonsense too.

Those who would control us would rather we just listen to the boilerplate positive spin they put on what they talk about and not ask further questions. I'm glad that there are still some journalists who are asking questions and telling us what They don't want us to know.

Snapdragons have grown in my front yard by the house since I moved here. I'm careful to not say "I'm growing snapdragons," because I'm not doing anything except for not getting in their way. Any that I have are due to what Rosemary, the previous owner, planted, or maybe even HER predecessor. Early on, they were sparse. Some years, it seemed that more grew in the cracks of the sidewalk or just outside the planter box than in it. But last year they really took off, and this year, because winter was not harsh at all, they have come in with a vengeance. This is the best they've ever been.
( More behind the cut )

Not much to say, lately. The big event was my mom's 73rd birthday, whieh we celebrated on Sunday with a nice dinner and gifts. My sister got her two very pretty potted plants that will be suitable for a bigger pot on Mom's balcony. I got mom a new TV antenna, which I hope will allow her to watch her shows without them breaking up. (The apartment building has lousy reception, and don't even get me started on the digital TV conversion here.) I hope the antenna works; it's bigger than the one she has, and that's supposed to count for a lot. Yet it just hangs on a wall or lays flat. No rabbit ears, because there aren't any channels anymore on the frequencies that rabbit ears were good for.

Otherwise, I've been mostly working and sleeping. Last night, I went to jjfmi's open mic at Mentobe Cafe* in downtown Farmington. It's a very nice shop with tasty food and beverages, and a good bunch of musicians. I even took my own guitar, but managed to mangle the last song so badly I had to give up. Well, the other two went pretty well, at least, and everyone else's songs were pretty spiffy.

* pronounced "meant to be"

I mean, this isn't even the most egregious example, you can kinda see how it might happen, but still: The Shelbyville, Tennessee Times-Gazette reports that a man was arrested for passing counterfeit money, when in fact it was a real, though old, fifty-dollar bill. (This was noted in BoingBoing.com too.) Careful, don't let your head-shaking get out of control, you might get whiplash.

I was hoping to do more to observe National Poetry Month than haiku, but never managed to write anything new. Just to get something in before the month ends, I'll present some of the haiku that I've written and posted on Twitter. (I should be taking my lawn mower to the shop for repairs, but it's raining.)
( Observations in seventeen syllables... )

The opening salvo from Thunder over Louisville 2012. This was pretty much the best shot of the bunch. In the part I cropped out you could see that I had the flash on. I turned off the flash so I wasn't annoying everyone else, but then all the other photos turned out at least slightly blurry. Ah well.
( One more pic from later in the show )

No, not the fun one that LJ sponsors. I've been kind of blocked as far as coming up with something to share here. I'm not even managing comments. (I'm still reading, if you're wondering.) I hope that changes at least a little soon.

I visited Dave last weekend. The centerpiece was seeing Thunder over Louisville, the big fireworks display that kicks off the two-week period known as Derby Season, leading to the Kentucky Derby. I got photos, but most of them didn't turn out very well. We also went birding near the Falls of the Ohio and saw one of the bald eagles nesting there, along with a few other birds. I got photos, but the eagle photo was barely good enough to identify (but then, at that point, we had left binoculars in the car and the camera was all we had). The photos are still in the camera, but I hope to download them tonight and they'll probably be here (and on Flickr) soon. As we usually do, we went out to very nice dinners, but there are no photos of that.

Other than that, I've been working and eating and sleeping. Nothing much to see there.

On Monday, my nephew and his wife greeted their third child, a boy named for his father, Nephew Jr.. Er, no. But he is my first great-nephew, even though from the photos he looks pretty small yet.

Anyway, watch this space. I know one of the fireworks photos came out nicely, so that ought to be worth seeing, I hope.

Sharing one of my favorite poems for National Poetry Month... Detroit's Metro Times printed a poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti sometime in the early 1990s. It's "#15" from his famous book A Coney Island of the Mind: Poems (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1958). I clipped it from that MT issue and kept it all these years; I was going to scan and put it here, because the placement of the words on the page is equal to the words themselves in making the poem so effective, to me. It turns out that the Poetry Foundation has it — Constantly Risking Absurdity (#15) — where they actually managed the layout without turning it into a .jpg. They also got permission, where I didn't, so go take a look. I don't want to give too much away, but toward the end the reference to the legendary silent film star always makes me smile.

I went to McDonald's for lunch this past Saturday. It was my first visit there for a burger and fries since early January, when my trainer read me the riot act about my diet and I stopped going for fast food. (Dave and I have been to McD's twice for milkshakes after DSO concerts this season, but that's kinda "our thing" and doesn't count.) I had two cheeseburgers and a small fry, and Mom had a Big Mac, because she gets one of those a year. We also had an apple pie each.

I wish I could say that it was a negative experience, that I had lost my appreciation for their greasy fatty salty food products and was now disgusted with it or at the very least very "meh." But that would be a lie; it still tasted good, and I had absolutely no regrets. So, unfortunately, I will have to rely on willpower alone to keep myself out of fast food restaurants. Isn't it kind of risky to have but one weapon in one's arsenal?

At least the apple pie prices make sense now. It used to be 89 cents for one or a dollar for two, so every time I wanted just one they tried to upsell me for just another eleven cents. Now one is 75 cents and two are $1.50. A little bit of a discount would be nice, but ... well, it doesn't really matter to me, now, does it?