Tuesday, June 28, 2011

A Trip to a Far Away Moon…

Dear Friends,

1,216 billion kilometers, about a billion miles away from the pale blue dot that is our home-world, is a very small world that we humans call Enceladus. It is a moon of Saturn, and it circles and swims amidst the most dense portion of the gaseous, ringed and giant planet’s E-ring. Enceladus is so tiny that its entire diameter could be nestled in the distance between Montreal and Washington, D.C.
Something interesting is happening out there. On a patch of dust where ice serves as the fifty-mile thick rocky mantle and crust of a deep frozen speck of creation, there are geysers. How can this be? Perhaps, we thought, under that frigid presentation to early robots visiting from Earth, there is an ocean. The founts that emerge from this world’s surface are rich in water and the chemicals sodium and potassium. Nitrogen makes up a good portion of the ice that cloaks the roiling, hidden ocean that is bubbling in the massage of Saturn’s titanic gravity. Beneath that ocean lies a core of iron, silicates, and carbon. On Eceladus there is the chemistry of life.
We wonder, what sort of life might be bubbling in that dark ocean that has never seen even the dim light of a distant sun? The clever machine, Aldrin II, completed its seven year voyage to the Saturnian system in 2028. It threaded its way through the debris of the great rings to orbit Enceladus and then descended to its surface. There it deployed Aldrin’s cryobot, Armstrong. It took six months (in Earth time) to bore down to the ocean through the mantle of ice. Eventually, however, there the great question was answered; at least in part.
The briny deep was a soup of pre-biotic and biotic materials, detectable to the robot’s “senses.” Amino acids complexed into RNA, DNA and proteins, flakes of what could have passed for earthly flesh and weird bits of what seemed to be vegetation but contained no chlorophyl were abundant near the ocean floor where sulfurous fumaroles vomited out the substances of the ancient world’s core. Peering into the murk, Armstrong detected in this exobiology what appeared, at first, to be bacteria to any doctor born of our terran orb. On closer examination, this first judgement was precisely wrong.
The bugs of Enceladus were all inside out. Exterior to their lipid cellular membranes was their genetic material. It makes sense that nature might direct such an evolution. In a cozy but constrained womb such as this weird ocean, evolution had opted to make the exchange of genes as convenient and speedy as possible. Higher up the food chain were similarly constructed creatures. Their bodies had the appearance of flattened eels that squiggled through the waters. Their guts secreted their gastric juices through a slimy skin that was covered with long cilia that captured their digested food and swept it into pores and thence, apparently to an alimentary canal that had no mouth but the being’s surface. It did, however have an anus, from whence the rich broth of the Enceladan biosphere was, in part, derived.
There was more. That plant like detritus was revealed to be the dissolved remains of plankton-like beings that had evolved to bio-fluoresce to signal each other in the otherwise impenetrable darkness of their home in an encapsulated deep. With this talent they gained the ability to form jelly-fish-like colonies, massive creatures that captured and consumed the eel-creatures. They lived on top of the alien food-chain, died and just fell to pieces.
Twenty years after his arrival in the alien deep, Armstrong still swims this strange ocean. It continues to report back. Alas, almost nobody is listening but kids who are strange, have never kissed a girl, and have time on their hands. The governments of The Allies have cut back budgets for space exploration. There are wars to pay for. Meanwhile, the people of our gloom benighted orb may yet hear news of a species that might want to speak to us through a piece of our technology made from junk made from stuff we dug from this Earth, and flung toward the stars.
Hic Finis Est,
S


Sunday, June 26, 2011

A Transcendent Moment…

Dear Friends,

I was walking along the old state highway by my Mother's house. As a big, noisy semi hurled by, I strode over the shattered corpse of a small turtle that had wandered up to the shoulder of the road from the swamp down the gully. The was a the moldering body of a dead robin not to far along and in plain view. The ghost of my Father made an appearance in broad daylight.

Res Ipsa Loquitur,

S

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

A Complicated Story

Dear Friends,

Here is a complicated story of a Nazi photographer's photo album. In war, nothing is simple, and both winners and losers take a beating. But, this tale also has more layers and meanings from the vantage of 70 years passed and this newfangled technology, the 'Net. Of course, this tech allowed the mystery in this story to be solved, new meanings in photos in an old album to be deciphered… it is a product of our striving to survive in the wars that folks brought upon themselves. Life is rich with meaning, as well as puzzles.

Res Ispa Loquitur,

S

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

A Latter Day "Dark Star"

Dear Friends,

Here's a jazzy, midified latter day "Dark Star". It's from RFK in July of 1990. The boyz play a rather gentle game of catch me if you can, at first… then things get a little rough. Things get weird. Time and space bend as the Hyperthruster kicks in. Corners turn round, the circles are squared and broken and the door flies open on a strange wind. The very atmosphere shatters in sonic icicles. Then the air melts. Who let that dragon into the room!?! Where'd that big rabbit come from?

Suddenly, there's the ghost of Coltrane playing through the fingers of an old professor on a bass guitar whose neck is made of rubber. The troublesome kid on the rhythm guitar seems to be trying to just screw everybody else up, but the drummers will not be deterred; they are busy building a castle in the void. That guy with the keyboard is apparently intent on mutiny as the Fat Man supposedly in charge, The Captain, has his shaded eyes spinning like two compasses lost in a galactic magnetic storm. He strains to guide the ship and its bewildered and bewildering crew toward an unseen horizon that can never be reached. The crew and their charge are upon an ocean of Nothing frothing with Reality a'borning.

Then, without resolution, the recording ends. What has become of our crew and their passengers?

Res Ipsa Loquitur,

S

A Latter Day "Dark Star"

Dear Friends,

Here's a jazzy, midified latter day "Dark Star". It's from RFK in July of 1990. The boyz play a rather gentle game of catch me if you can, at first… then things get a little rough. Things get weird. Time and space bend as the Hyperthruster kicks in. Corners turn round, the circles are squared and broken and the door flies open on a strange wind. The very atmosphere shatters in sonic icicles. Then the air melts. Who let that dragon into the room!?! Where'd that big rabbit come from?

Suddenly, there's the ghost of Coltrane playing through the fingers of an old professor on a bass guitar whose neck is made of rubber. The troublesome kid on the rhythm guitar seems to be trying to just screw everybody else up, but the drummers will not be deterred; they are busy building a castle in the void. That guy with the keyboard is apparently intent on mutiny as the Fat Man supposedly in charge, The Captain, has his shaded eyes spinning like two compasses lost in a galactic magnetic storm. He strains to guide the ship and its bewildered and bewildering crew toward an unseen horizon that can never be reached. The crew and their charge are upon an ocean of Nothing frothing with Reality a'borning.

Then, without resolution, the recording ends. What has become of our crew and their passengers?

Res Ipsa Lloquitur,

S

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Some Recent Drivel fr: FB re GD

Yeah… I rode this particular monster thru The Grateful Show in '83. I lent it my all, as any fine citizen must when Liberty calls and certain business must be attended to. Yes, I know that young lady with the flowers exploding from her curls. Guilty.

So, you already locked me up and that was a cure for nothin'; not even your own misery.

Let's try this instead. Dance with this girl on the Shores of Heaven. Taste her.

www.archive.org
Set 1 Bertha-> Jack Straw, Bird Song, Mexicali Blues-> Big River, Althea, Hell In A Bucket-> Deal Set 2 Scarlet Begonias-> Fire On The Mountain, Playin' In...

10 hours ago · Privacy: ·  ·  · 

    • Steven Solomon Ah, then that "Playin'; in the Band". Remember the moment went that lick, ""You can't close the doors when the walls caved in!" came into your mind. So pure and simple. I do remember the exact second. Bang! No turning back. Fire the Hyper-Thrusters! As soon as I forget about that moment, I start to screw up. There is fire on this mountain that some of us explore
      10 hours ago ·  ·  1 person

    • Steven Solomon 

      Actually, listening to this recording, it is remarkable that I, any of my friends or the band lived thru this performance. Well, many of them didn't, but that is another story. Anyhow, there's just astonishing stuff in this performance. I c...See More

      10 hours ago ·  ·  1 person

    • Steven Solomon Into Space! Sonic gorgeousness that rips a hole in The Heavens, drums that can beat against the Vastness of Empty Space and rip up Time itself with the help of a nine-fingered guitar player. The kid on rhythm plays like he's banging on the boiler of an old locomotive. The old man on bass seems to think he's playing a trumpet. We seem to be getting messages from an alien intelligence!
      10 hours ago ·  ·  1 person

    • Steven Solomon 

      Then, the drumz thunder and moan. This is how we scared away the big cats. This is not a moment for the timid. There are vibrations that will rattle one's rib cage and make the big muscles in your legs feel like warm jello. Some must flee the auditorium to evacuate their bowels. But now that the Sky has been ripped open every notion that might be common is rendered asunder to make way for more Space, Futhur exploration, and perhaps something to ease a worried mind.

      10 hours ago ·  ·  2 people

    • Steven Solomon That would be "The Wheel". This here's the sound of my own happiness and hope. Thank you, Hunter. Thank you, dumb ol' Garcia. You guys built a tower of blissful simplicity with a few words and a few chords. Not a bad job with what'all you had to work with ;-)

Friday, June 17, 2011

Brutally Beautiful & Relentless!

Dear Friends,

Everybody must hear this little ditty from Miles and his posse of 1973. Bad-ass crazy jazz to blow apart your mind and expand your vision of what music can be.

Res Ipso Loguitur,

S

Saturday, June 11, 2011

100 Avast; What Do Aliens Eat: Part II…

What do Aliens Eat: 100 Years Avast Pt 2 Solomon © 2011
Dear Friends,
Now imagine that our intrepid travelers, generations two and three of the original crew (they now deceased) have arrived and landed upon Gliese 581d, that big rocky world bathed in an oxygen rich atmosphere and titanic oceans. They are recognizably Human Beings, but mutated en-route from conception by human tech to protect their tissues from the ravages of interstellar radiation, as well as by the radiation, itself. Some odd things have popped up in their genomes. The latest generation has some of their minion now enhanced with chloroplast-like organelles with fruity organs blossoming from their ears to turn the inescapable cosmic rays into energy. They are truly Human but  also truly alien. Mostly Human, but partly a vegetable that had never grown on the home world that their grandparents departed. These individuals have never know Earth.
Nonetheless, they are essentially Human. Thus, upon arrival at their new home in the sky, a primary question is, “what’s to eat?” These folks have never tasted anything but flesh grown in petri dishes, dry flakes of lab-grown broccoli, carrots and such mixed with water purified from urine and feces, and a gruel constituted from Krill nurtured in tanks full aforesaid wastes. These folks are hungry.
Alas, the only apparent edibles on land are mainly various mossy plants that smell like puke, and hard, woody trees. There are some many varieties of insect-like critters. They are found to possess exoskeletons so sturdy that they require hours to butcher with expensive tools better used to maintain the spacecraft. Worse, when their flesh is finally exposed, it is revealed in the lab to contain cyanide. The “terrestrial” creatures on Gliese 581d have apparently evolved from a primordial species whose metabolism utilized cyanide rather than potassium or sodium to mediate its well-being. But, for a Human, to eat their flesh would be to die.
Fortunately, this new world is eighty-percent ocean. It’s horribly salty and presents a strange fragrance of vinegar by its shores. Still, the waters are so vast and ancient that a remarkable ecosphere has therein evolved. After much trawling on improvised rafts with nets crafted from the fabric of pressure suits no longer needed by the deceased first generation, three fauna are identified as edible. There is also a tasty sea-weed flora near shore. It would be quite suitable on a sushi plate, if anybody remembered how to make sushi.
What our Off-Worlders do remember how to do is boil and fry. That’s how most of the gunk that they’ve eaten since coming out of the incubarium was made savory, or at least palatable.
First, close to the surface of the Great Ocean are a sort of bacteria, but a very large bacteria. Each prokayote-type cell is as large as a dime. They fry up nice and are tasty when shredded into a frothy drink of purified urine. Better yet, are the larger jellyfish-like beings; the so-named Jello. They are genetically close to their bacterial kin, but have learned the trick of colony living. They are essentially lipid bags containing a somewhat more developed form of their apparent ancestors, all living and in communication within the floating bag that they communally create. They communicate through florescence. They are quite a treat when topped with the aforementioned vegetable crumbs and baked (after hours soaking to get rid of that vinegar odor) as the residual bluish light emitted from their bodies adds a certain romance to any dinner.
Then, there’s the top of the food-chain. In this case, it’s the bottom of the food-chain. In an ocean, food falls down. Prey comes from below. The Off Worlders call this species the Big Hairy Worm. That’s sort of what it is. It is basically a six meter long alimentary canal outfitted with flipper like, uh, flippers. But, there are no bones in this beast. The Big Hairy Worm just squirms its way through the deep, flapping the, uh, flippers by taking in gulps of smelly, salty water. It has always got it’s non-existent jaws open (it has no jaws) and lets the those big bacteria and the Jello breathe through it’s savage gut to be emitted moments later in bits from the rear end. It has swiped the nutrients from its neighbors and provided nutrients for its next prey.
It is best prepared after a week of soaking in sodium bicarbonate, thorough washing, followed by a shave. Then a marination for several hours in whatever you have handy. In the case of our fearless crew, a lot of grandmother’s cologne, smuggled onboard forty years, worked fine. A crew member with profound intestinal fortitude then slices the beast into fillies, bakes it, fries it, and adds more of the crummy vegetable powder and some of that salty sea-weedy stuff as a garnish. Mighty fine dining 20 light years from a place that the diner cannot even detect in the sky on a clear night by an ocean big enough to swallow two Earths!
Hic Finis Est
S

Sunday, June 5, 2011

100 Years Avast!

Too the Stars! © Solomon 2011
DARPA and NASA have jointly issued a request for information soliciting ideas for an organization, business model and approach for a self-sustaining investment vehicle in support of the development of a Starship that could make at least a century long run through the heavens. In other words, they want private business to figure out how to build, run, and staff such a craft. They are also curious about what it might be good for.
Good question. It’s the same question that sea faring nations, and bankers and insurance companies in Europe asked when crazy people came with crackpot ideas to build boats capable of traversing our terran globe. Why would you need a boat to go someplace faraway? Why not just take the horses and carts to China? They already knew how to do that. But, the money guys and the Kings of nations with ocean coastlines eventually saw the economic benefit, or at least potential in such experiments. At least the King might get a watch that actually worked out of the deal (such would be required for navigation across the seas), and maybe some of that mythical gold at the edge of the world, in the Land Where There Be Dragons.
Well, today we know there is no edge of the world, but there is outer space. In our own backyard of Sol’s neighborhood, there’s plenty of gold to be found, as well as more useful stuff. There’s the lithium in the battery of your laptop or hybrid car. There’s Helium 3, which will come in handy when we finally build that environmentally friendly fusion reactor. It’s all over our own Moon. There’s lots of other stuff to be mined and explored. Maybe even extraterrestrial life. Someday, a shrimp-like creature from the submerged ocean of Europa may be a delicacy on your grandchild’s plate. But, such exploits, business schemes and exploration will not require a space craft capable of a hundred year voyage.
So, what to do with such a craft? How about going to a place like Gliese 581, a star but twenty light years away from our home? That is not far by cosmic standards. That is almost next door. But, at first blush, it is uninteresting. It’s a puny M-Class star, a Red Dwarf, that barely shines. Circling it, however, is Gliese 581d. This is a large rocky planet where it is likely that fresh water might exist for critters to slake their thirst upon and swim, perhaps even bath in. That is if there is an appropriate atmosphere for the bathing beauties to indulge their fondness for the pleasant fragrance of alien flowers, or simply to breathe.
We have already directed messages toward this plant, using our greatest radio telescope in reverse, sending rather than receiving. It will take forty years to get a reply, if there is to be one.
Back to the real questions at hand. What are the essential details of a trip to Gliese 581d?  Assuming that we will develop tech capable of powering a large craft fitted out with all the practicalities to keep many folks fed, toilets that work, care and schools for the kids that will inevitably be born, there’s still the issue of speed.  We are presently nowhere near running a space craft at near light speed. We will likely not send people out to just look at the sky aboard the grandest invention of the Human Race , and thence die in a the void… unless our purpose is to rid the planet of religious nuts.
So, assume that we develop the tech (or our travelers improve the tech brought from Earth) to reach half or a third of luminal velocity. They would be using the acceleration to produce artificial gravity. After some years of increasing speed, they might get to Gliese in one piece. Maybe. But…
Let’s do the arithmetic and future myth. One Hundred years is about four generations of Humans today. It will take two generations to get to Gliese 581d. It might be three, if kids continue to fornicate as my generation has. Generations Two and Three will have never known Earth. Their grandparents are gone. Their parents never knew Earth, neither. Would the grand kids or their children want to come home to a place that might be as much a fabled place as the Garden of Eden?
Whoops, we’re back to the religious nut problem, a possible religious war on a world that has never known Humankind before we brought our strange ways to their doorstep.
Perhaps, though, like the folks that came to the so-called New World, they would have no desire to return home to a place of such strife and hardship as their grand parents told them of. Maybe they would make a New World. A more perfect union? Meanwhile, in orbit is a Starship all ready to sail on for another fifty Terran years and still under warranty…
Hic Finis Est,
S
Artist's Rendition of Gliese 581d

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Quite a Twisted Time

Quite a Twisted Time  © Solomon

Folks,

This has been a boss weird couple of weeks. The weirdest since my first tour in the Grateful Dead Show through Western Massachusetts, Eastern New York, Vermont, and Southern Canada . That was back in the ’70’s… I think. Who knows for sure. Whatever.
So, here’s what went down recently…
I was staying in a room at the edge of town. I’d just moved back to Noho so I’d be able to get together with my Chinese writing partner, Dr. Tao, to finish up work on a book/movie deal we have in the works. Some things cannot be done via email. Madmen on a mission must, sooner or later, collaborate in an adjacent space and time. So, I took this place after speaking on the phone with what seemed like an agreeable fellow who had a room to let. He managed a joint for the absentee owner. The next day he took my first and last month’s rent. The guy’s name was Boxo.
Within a day, he was no longer agreeable. He was the most disagreeable man that I have ever met. The first morning I woke there, before 8AM, the guy was having what I would learn was his usual breakfast. That was cheap beer. That first beverage would prompt him to burp loudly and with great satisfaction before the angry complaining would start to issue from a foul mouth as beer froth dripped from this ogre’s shaggy mustache. Around 11AM, it was cocktail time. Rum and Coke! The anger and whining rage at an unforgiving universe that done him wrong intensified. At this point, I’d leave to go work with my partner across town, or to just get away from the torment.
I’d come home around 6PM, to get dressed down for doing my “faggy things” downtown. He’d mouth off about how the Jews where ruining his life. I am a Jew, but not gay. Nonetheless, while the Jew-thing put me off, just a bit, the “faggy-thing” really twisted my ethical shorts. I stand with anybody who gets picked on for being born as they got born.
I said to him: “Yeah. I’m a Jew and I’m a fag.” I went upstairs to write in my room until he likely passed out, but unable to tune out the continuing chaos downstairs.
He would not pass out for several hours. First he had to whirl and stumble through the Hour of Nagging the Girlfriend, and more beer. Then, there was the brief thirty minutes of The Blessing of Yeasty Happiness, when all was right with this bozo. This was followed by the Mysterious Rite of Barfing, and finally the Moment of Splendid Collapse on the Couch. Of course, not being a supplicant of the Orthodox Church of the One True Drunk, he was allowed to take the sacrament of Procumbent on the Floor.
This went on, day after day for about fifteen or sixteen days. Who’s counting? Eventually, though, the Great Moment of Reckoning occurred. This dude was the sort of drunk that seldom remembered what he had done the previous day, nor how much booze he had washed down his poisoned gullet. He had, the evening previous to the Final Accounting swilled down not only all of his bad beer, but his girlfriend’s rum. Finding the fridge barren of liquid gruel and no intoxicating sugar drink to mend his bruised pia and dura maters, he was a very grumpy troll. So was his girlfriend, the over-plump Ms. Dixie. She railed on his soul and threatened to kick his fat, sweaty ass.
Boxo was not a man to be treated in such a way. No! He was a Marine. Never mind that the U.S. Marines kicked him out the corp before he got through an enlistment engineered by a parole officer to keep that fat sweaty ass out of jail for numerous and sundry crimes as an addled and possibly mentally handicapped youth. A Marine is always a Marine. Ms. Dixie backed down and retreated to cry in the bedroom when threatened with yet another beating by this trained killer.
He turned his sites on me. He blamed me for tossing back that jug of rum and ten cans of beer. Now, I haven’t had a drink in about sixteen months, and I never much favored rum. Grain alcohol and branch water was my drink, chased by ten or twelve hits of speedy blotter acid. None of that sissy rum and coke stuff for me. Jeezuz! If you’re going to do a job, do it right. Whatever. Those days have passed for me. But, Boxo never got to drink that wine. He’s a sad man, a miserable man who has never tasted ecstasy. Now he was blaming me for his troubles with a fat lady who was just plain scared of him and his poor behavior.
Anyhow, I look into his dilated eyes beneath his sweaty brow. He’s clenching his thumbs in his fat fists, kneading them like putty, as he hunches forward and proclaims, “Buddy, I want you out of here!” I can smell the funky musk of adrenaline and alcohol on his breath.
“That’s fine. I’ll pack my things. What about my next month’s rent? You owe me money.”
“Fuck you, man. I’ll rip your ears off!”
Now, my dad was also a Marine. He was the first guy to enlist on the morning of June 7th, the day after the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor. He actually got his picture on the first page of the New York Times, and he became a Marine Drill Instructor.  He was a formidable man and a good father. When I was a kid he taught me a few things about how Marines fight.
In an instant I remembered some of those lessons. First, I recalled him telling me that a reasonably fit human can truloy rip another guy’s ears off. It takes just three foot/pounds of torque and a good twist to make the enemy earless. Second, you should never bring a weapon to a fight unless you mean to use it. In the present situation, my weapons were my hands and feet, as were my opponent’s. Third, if you know that your enemy has a vulnerability, exploit it. Forth, if the opponent engages you in hand to hand combat and goes for your head, duck, turn around and kick as hard as you can at that soft spot. I knew that Boxo had a blown out right knee!
Now, if he had come after me, I could have possibly achieved those first four steps and saved my hide. But, step five was not appealing. Once I had the pudgy bastard down, I had been instructed to stomped on his head until his skull was crushed or his neck broken. And, of course, there was the Prime Directive issued by my father. If you’re going to do it, DO IT! In other words, don’t even think about what you have to do before you defend or attack.
Whoops! I’d just thought about it. I would not have minded killing this jerk, but dealing with the following mess, the puke and shit, blood, a corpse and the cops was not to my liking. Neither was the prospect of time in prison.
Fortunately, at that moment of crisis, a neighbor came out of his garage with his lawn mower and took notice of a conflict on the adjacent property. Boxo took a deep breath. I stepped back and quietly asked him when and where I should meet him to get the money owed. He mumbled  grumpily, “Tuesday, May 31st, the parking lot by Pop’s… you faggot.” I went upstairs to pack and make a couple of phone calls, hoping to find a place to land later in the day. Meanwhile, Boxo did a woozy dance with the rig of his old motor boat before swerving down the road toward the river for an afternoon of endangering others on the public waterways.
May 31st, the Day of Near Final Collision, arrived. I arrived at the parking lot outside of Pop’s to find Boxo getting into his big, yellow Econovan with a case of beer and a handle of rum. In the passenger seat was his buddy, another murderous thug so loony that even the Marines found him useless. The buddy was waving an envelope from the window, and I walked up to get whatever was in it. As I reached for the package, Boxo stomped on the gas, fish-tailing the van and almost clobbering me with the rear end, but I got the envelope!
As Boxo and his moron accomplice weaved down Main Street at speed, I counted my change. He’d only given me half of the money owed. Whatever. Our paths were untwined. I took some satisfaction in the prospect that the cruiser waiting up the street would pull him over and send his sweaty butt to jail and thence to court for his third DUI. I had a roof over my head for the next few days, and a place to write. The weather was sunny and mild. I had some cash in my pocket. It was a good day. Nobody got killed.
Res Ispa Loquitor
S
Ad Endum
There’s an amazing recording by The Bard, Robert Hunter that is dear to me. It’s called Tiger Rose and it includes a tune called that I do love. Here’s a capable rendition of Cruel White Water performed by Donnie Eidt (with lyrics in text). This old bit of banging on the floor boards and words were well in my head as I awoke at dawn the morning of June 1st. No online version of a Hunter performance, in his perfectly foggy country tenor is available, as far as I’m willing to spend the time to tell. But, a lyric shorn of music is a lamentable thing, so I pass on Eidt’s fine effort. Anyhow, see the following lines from the song for the essential message that was called to mind from the tune. Each word in this song is precious when wedded to the rhythm and melody, so I included Donnie’s link for both musical and literary delectation.
Home inside the hour, tuning my guitar
I get that sudden urge I know so well
I finished my rendition of don't pity my condition
Then looked around to find what I could sell


Okay, I’m done with my words, and I trust you may enjoy those of Hunter’s. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming of Deep Space Adventure and Music for the Soul.
Hic Finis Est
S