 By baregrass, on December 30th, 2010
2010 is almost history. It’s a good thing too, at least in my opinion. Not that I could say that the year was a complete wash because there were some bright spots in it for sure. The high note for me was the November elections when the voting public decided that some sanity was needed in government and handed a much needed rebuff to the far left Democrats and socialists in control. Hopefully 2011 will prove to be a true rebuilding year and this country will be able to get back to work.
If you read some of my posts you will see that I love music and love to play music, especially the fiddle. In that vein, I discovered a wonderful book. It is “The Violin Maker: Finding a Centuries-Old Tradition in a Brooklyn Workshop” by John Marchese. I am now reading it for the second time and enjoying it even more than the first. It is a good read and I would recommend it for anyone that loves violins. Another great book I came across, dealing with violins and their players, was “Stradavari’s Genius: Five Violins, One Cello and Three Centuries of Enduring Perfection” by Toby Faber. The title is self descriptive. It is a very good book.
I have to say that, as for me, the year was an almost complete wash. I have no idea what I actually accomplished except for rebuilding a quarter mile section of fence on the east side of my property. Well, I did get most of the outside of the house repainted and I started learning how to play “Jerusalem Ridge”, a great tune by Bill Monroe and I did include a new section here about New Mexico Hispanic musicians.
Well, here is wishing all a very good 2011. We need a good year. It just seems like the whole country is exhausted.
By baregrass, on December 12th, 2010
Finally there may be an end to the longstanding struggles of Native Americans to gain a little bit of justice for what they have suffered at the hands of the government. I am referring decades old Cobell lawsuit against the Department of the Interior. Congress passed the enabling legislation and President Obama signed it just the other day. For more information here is a link to the Cobell settlement website.
I do not agree with hardly any of President Obama’s positions but in this case both he and Congress made the right decision. It is long overdue. My best wishes to the tribes and individuals that will be positively affected.
By baregrass, on November 9th, 2010
I have just added a page on New Mexico musicians. It is not yet finished but is a start. It is a subset of the main Culture page. Check it out!
By baregrass, on November 3rd, 2010
Interesting elections for sure. The Republicans have garnered a second chance and I hope they are smart about how they use it because if not, this might be their last chance. There is little they can do to undo the damage of the last two years because they only control the House but they need to press forward anyway and let the Senate and the president take the blame for any failures. They are going to need a very smart and effective media policy because they are going to to have a big target on them and the major media outlets are going to demonize them like never before. They better get out and get the word out about their efforts to introduce some sanity and prudence in government. The public will understand that the House will not be able to change much because any reasonable and effective measures will be killed in the Senate or vetoed by Obama. Obama by the way, in his press conference today, has shown no inclination that he understands what has happened and he basically is quite defiant.
Here in New Mexico we did elect a conservative Republican for governor, Susana Martinez. She will have a massive job ahead of her just to clean up some of the corruption and mess left by Bill Richardson, who I consider the worst governor we have ever had. The other bright spot is that our Congressional District 2 returned to conservative Republican hands. However we still have 2 very liberal representatives in Districts 1 and 2 and both of our senators are very far left.
How will things turn out? Who knows but for the sake of the nation I hope that the various parties in Congress and the president will work together for the good of the American people but I doubt it will happen.
By baregrass, on September 18th, 2010
It sure looks like I had abandoned this blog this summer but not quite. I just had a lot of other things to do and I have to say that I wasn’t much in the mood to do any blogging anyway. This has to be one of the hottest summers I have experienced here. We didn’t have a lot of extremely high temperatures, it just has been unrelentingly hot all summer with temps in the middle and high 90′s. The only good part was that we did get quite a bit of rain but now even that has tapered off. So here we are, in the middle of September, and today is back in the 90′s again! October, we will be glad to see you!!
By baregrass, on June 19th, 2010
US Congressional Representative Joe Barton from Texas had the temerity during hearings to express contempt for the $20 billion deal done at the White House between Obama and BP. He called it a shakedown and then the political you know what hit the fan. Not only did he get it from the left but from his fellow Republicans as well. The Democrats were delighted to say the least.
Should BP pay for the damage to the Gulf and all those Gulf residents affected by the spill? Absolutely. Did Obama do a shakedown of BP? Of course. Does this stuff go on between elected officials and corporations all the time? Yes. Are both the Obama administration and BP corrupt? Yes. Was some kind of a backroom deal done before the so-called “meeting” the other day? Yes. Will a bunch of the set aside money end up in the pockets of Democrat politicians, local elected officials, outfits like Acorn, trial lawyers and unions? Yes.
Joe Barton’s real stupidity was to just not keep his mouth shut until this deal failed like everything else Obama has tried to do and then, when the chickens come home to roost, he and the rest of the Republicans would have had a huge club to beat the Democrats over the head with. I don’t expect elected Republicans to be geniuses, I just want them to be endowed with some political common sense and maybe figure out that when your enemy is hanging himself with his own rope just let him go ahead and do it. Yeah, Joe Barton was telling the truth but there are winning and loosing ways to do it.
By baregrass, on June 5th, 2010
There is an ongoing conversation in the media now about whether the so-called “old media”, meaning left wing organizations such as TV nightly news, newspapers and news magazines will be able to survive in this new media age of the internet and 24 hour cable news. Some are saying that the “news” is dead but here is my take on it.
The news is not dead and never will be. Even in the old Soviet Union news traveled by samizdat and most people knew that whatever Pravda and Izvestia printed was a lie. Thus the saying, “In the Truth there is no news, and in the News there is no truth”. (If you don’t know what the quote means do some research.)
So, the real problem that ABC, CBS, NBC and the rest of the left wing press has is that I, along with lots of others, no longer believe that they are telling us the truth. They served as constant cheerleaders to the Obama campaign and constant denigrators of the Bush administration. They have become as Pravda and Izvestia, media organs of the state. Lots of Americans simply don’t watch their news programs or read their papers and that means that there are fewer eyes on the commercials they run and their corporate sponsors know that. Is it any wonder that the Obama administration wants to prop them up with federal money and tax the new media to do it?
If the old media wants to survive they might consider upgrading their product which in this day and time means telling the truth and avoiding left wing partisan slants. A little fairness would go a long way.
By baregrass, on May 20th, 2010
 Image: Michelle Meiklejohn / FreeDigitalPhotos.net Our bluegrass music fest we undertook last week was a great success. Many thanks go out to the local KOA Campground for hosting the Fest! That sure made it nice for the attendees that had trailers and RV’s. There were over 400 people attending which was amazing because the weather was not too good; it was quite cool and a little windy. There was a lot of good music from the various bands which came from New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma.
By baregrass, on May 20th, 2010
Nice rain the last few days and it is so welcome. And the best part is that we didn’t have to endure the nasty stuff they had across the state line in Texas. I could see the back end of that massive storm that hit Dalhart and Stratford, Texas. It had a very pronounced and huge ring of turbulence circling the whole system.
One of the benefits of the moisture we received over the winter and of the recent rain we have gotten is that there is a riot of wildflowers all over. I’ve never seen many of them and yesterday the county agent came out and we are trying to identify as many as possible. So far we have identified scarlet globe mallow, sagewort, ragleaf bahia, an unknown type of primrose and an aster that looks like bog aster but is not supposed to be growing in New Mexico. There are 10 or more varieties of flowers growing in my yard and many more out in the native pasture. Interesting stuff.
By baregrass, on May 6th, 2010
Well, here I am 2 months later and finally writing something here. Tonite is the first night of the Bluegrass Fest in Tucumcari and I am getting ready to get up on stage in a few hours with my bandmates and open the show. Little nervous but not too bad. We will be opening for some professional bluegrass bands so I hope we don’t screw up too bad. I am fighting a case of pneumonia and our harmonica player has been having trouble with his diabetes so it might be interesting.
|
|
December 30th, 2010 | Tags: 
Recent Comments