Good-bye Mary Ann

My eleventh-grade English III teacher passed away this past week, while I was doing ukulele camp. The guy who maintains the connections to the class of '65 sent us a note, saying she was ill,  sent home from the hospital to hospice care, and before we could try to get into contact, she was gone. Only ten years older than my wife and I, who were both her students before we started dating.

I didn't maintain a strong connection with her after high school, though I did send her copies of all my books when they hit the racks. My very first science fiction short story was an assignment for her class, and she was the first person to read any fiction I'd written. She was a gorgeous, sassy, sharp-witted woman, and told me she was impressed, with the story. Given that I was a sixteen-year-old pimply-faced four-eyed geek, that was enough reason to want to be a writer right there. 

Mary Ann married a judge, and they had a daughter who was about the same age as our son. We bumped into her and her family a few times when we lived in Baton Rouge after high school. She retired to raise her daughter.

When we went back to the 25th reunion, because we happened to be in town, I saw her husband in the lobby and went to introduce myself.

Oh, he said, you're the guy who sends her all those books?

My ego soared right into the clouds: Why, yes, yes I am.

And Judge Brown said, Yeah, she reads them and says, 'Who taught him to write like that?!' and throws them across the room!

My ego's wings melted off and it plummeted into the sea ...

He laughed. Just kidding, he said.

No, No, I said, I'm going to be dining off that story for a long time. And I did, and I still am.

Mary Ann Brown encouraged me-and a lot of others, it seems–just at the time when it was of major import. Would I have become a writer without that? Maybe. Probably. But it certainly gave me a hope I might not have had otherwise.

Thanks, Mary Ann. Rest in peace. You did good while you were here.

Uke Book Intro

Introduction:

Behold the ukulele, that shrimp-sized guitar-wanna-be with only four strings, the my-dog-has-fleas plinkety-plinkety thing that–if you are of a certain age, might, when somebody mentions the sucker, immediately bring to mind the late Tiny Tim. 

If you are older, you might think instead of George Formby, or Arthur Godfrey. Younger, you might know Eddie Vedder or Jake Shimabukuro, or maybe for you, the uke is just another instrument in a pop group, since the uke has–at least for now–become cool once again.

Or maybe you see a grass-skirted hula girl and wind-blown palm trees.

Or maybe none of those resonate; you seldom, if ever, thought about the ukulele before and you are just mildly curious enough to have a look at this. 

I used to be like that last one. And then one day, I wasn't. 

In spades.

It was completely unexpected.

I got my first tenor ukulele at the end of February, 2013, and as of this writing, it has been a few days over a year since. It has become, if not an obsession, pretty close to it.

What I’ve done and how I have gone about it is the main theme of this short book.  Mostly, I expect any audience to be kind of like me; more than a total newbie, but not long in grade. Maybe a few die-hard uke fans looking for any material about the instrument might drop round.

There will be some background, how I began my musical journey and got to the point where I started ukery. Some odd bits as they float up in my memory, and not all of them will be specific to the ukulele. Like the old TV show Connections, sometimes a thing way over there leads one along a twisty path to a completely different thing over here ...

Oh, and I tend to blather. 

Why am I doing this book? Well, not to make money because it won’t, but because I want to, and because I can. I like reading memoirs about how and why somebody got into something, and how and why he or she learned this or that. It’s the “why” and “how,” I’m dealing with, not so much the “how-to.” When I’m not plucking at the uke or walking the dogs, I make a fair living as a writer. I ought to be able to keep the narrative moving.

A warning: My non-fiction writing style is informal and chatty, I jump about like a grasshopper and stop here or there to offer observations on whatever I have landed upon. I am opinionated, sometimes obnoxiously so. If this bothers you, save your money, or ask for it back, I won’t be offended. I have found generally in my work, if I’m not pissing somebody off, I’m not doing my job right. Some folks resonate with what I do, some don’t. 

Que sera, sera.

In the course of this, I will try to address some general history, and some things I have so far found interesting in my personal trip down to the shore to paddle out into the third ukulele wave. Your mileage, if you enjoy things ukulele, will, of course, vary. 

There are scores of books on how-to-play ukuleles–chords, songs, techniques. This is not one of those. If you have gotten this far and you are thinking I’m going to teach you how to play? Stop now, ‘cause that ain’t happening. I am not good enough to be teaching anybody. I’m a storyteller, so that’s what this is, and maybe now and then, you might see something you can actually use, or that you didn’t know before–I’m going to try to ladle some of that in.

No promises ...

So. Cue the theme music for Hawaii Five-O, dial it up loud, groove to the beat, and visualize the image of that monster breaker rolling in.

Or, if you want the tune done with the instrument we are discussing, check out  Honoka and Azita on YouTube. 

It’s all good.

Non-Fiction Book

Here's what I'm thinking. Just a rough on the cover, but you get the subject matter … In my copious spare time, of course ...

Turn the Page

"Wimoweh"

In October of 2002, we bought a camper. It was a Born Free 24'/Rear Bath, a small, but fairly high-end rig. 

There were several reasons we went for it. We had big German Shepherd Dogs who liked to bark at other dogs. We reasoned that if we had an RV, we could park it away from other folks and not worry about Cady and Scout carrying on like they did at the dog motels.

My wife's job was most stressful, and the idea of just piling into the camper and leaving town for a few days was most attractive. We'd have a chance to be alone, with nothing we had to do, no yard work, no house cleaning.

It didn't pencil out, insofar as how many times we'd be likely to stay in a dog motel somewhere on the beach, or to fly back to Louisiana to visit folks, versus the cost of food and gasoline, but we did it anyway. Took the 5000-mile trip down south and back, and then mostly did shorter jaunts, a few days here, a few days there.

Over the next decade, we didn't have any regrets about our decision. We loved the thing, it never let us down. 

But things change, worlds move, and one day we looked up and realized we weren't using the rig much. The next set of dogs were smaller, my wife had semi-retired and the stress was much less, and there were things to do at home and in town that called to us more. We were still paying on the loan, there was the rent for the covered storage space, the insurance and upkeep, and of a moment, we realized that having the camper parked and unused wasn't in our best interests.

So we found a dealer and put it up for sale, on consignment. 

We won't get our money out, but that's okay. Probably we'll get what we owe, and that will be money not going out every year. 

It was hard to let it go, there were a lot of good times in and  around Wimmie. ("Wimoweh," the original name of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," and Born Free, which is about Elsa, the lion, that's what that is all about.) Lot of nostalgia there.

This maker's products are in-demand, well-made and safe. One of the selling points was that it had a rollover bar and that nobody had ever died from an accident in one. 

We kept the rig in good shape, under a roof, and it's low-mileage and pretty cherry inside, so we think it'll find a new home with somebody who wants to hit the road. Good for them, good for us. 

Another page turns ...

Percussive Uke

As an instrument, the uke has some limitations, but it's amazing what somebody who really knows what he is doing can manage ...

The Grape and the Grain

There's an old saying amongst drinkers: Never mix the grape and the grain. What this means is that if you are going to drink wine or beer, that's fine; or if you are going to have bourbon or scotch or gin or vodka, that's okay, but that you shouldn't do both, as this would make your hangover worse, should you overindulge.

I dunno how true this is, and I'm not a heavy drinker, at least not these days. As a lad, before I was legally allowed to imbibe alcohol, I used to go out and get plastered with the boys now and again. And I mean seriously three-sheets-to-the-wind, falling-down, room-spinning, toilet-hugging drunk.

I don't recommend this. Bad idea on so many levels.

And yet, I never had a hangover. Until that one time, in the summer of 1964 …

July, I was a working as a lifeguard, sixteen-years-old. Back then, there was a stretch of Hwy. 190, just west of the Mississippi River bridge, that was where Baton Rouge went to do serious bar-hopping. Outside Port Allen's limits, so these were freewheeling places, night clubs. I can't remember all the names, but there was the Club Louisianne, Major's, and Courvilles. This last was the biggest dive. They had live music, a dance floor, cheap drinks, and they didn't check ID's, so of a Friday or Saturday night, it was packed. Local rock bands with the knobs turned up to ten, hundreds of people jammed in, drunk, partying, getting into fights.

You didn't tell your parents, but you told your friends: Where you goin'? Across the river.

Sometime I look back and wonder: How did I ever think that was fun? Because I was young and stupid and drunk? Yep, that would do it.

It was interesting to watch the monkey dances. Two guys would step outside, recite their lists of felony arrests and convictions, and have at it until somebody couldn't keep going. 

Sometimes the deputies would get there before the fight was over, but they'd just watch and wait. Never saw 'em break up a fight.

This particular hot night, I was with my buddies, whose names are changed to protect the guilty: Hatcher, Roy, and Joe D. And Joe D's older brother Sammy was there, but not with us, he had a date.

We arrived, started drinking beer, and as the evening commenced and the place got more packed, ran out of money after a couple hours, so when people were up and dancing, why, we'd just pass by an empty table, pick up whatever they were drinking, and swill it down.

I seem to remember that John Fred and the Playboys were playing, but I could be conflating that with a New Year's Eve gathering. 

By this swiping of drinks, not only were we mixing the grape and the grain, but tasting things we'd never tasted before. Grapefruit juice and sloe gin? Oooh, nasty!  But, what the hell, it was free ...

I recall one event clearly, in which Hatcher, even more stoned than the rest of us, approached Sammy's date. Hatcher stood up as straight as he could and announced, in a loud, slurry voice, what he wanted to do to her, five words, crouched around the anglo-saxon term for sexual intercourse, ending in an exclamation point.

Sammy was in the toilet, else he would have punched Hatcher's lights out. His date, a lovely girl wearing the teased beehive hairdo of the day, smiled and said, "Sorry, no, I'm saving my moss for Sammy."

"Moss," here is a euphemism for, well … you  know what's it's for, if you recall a time when women didn't, um ... mow the lawn.

Somehow we eventually got out of there and home. I don't think I was driving, and I don't think Hatcher was, but I can't really remember that part, so that might have happened. The God who watches out for fools and children really has His work cut out for him watching out for foolish, drunk children …

Next morning, I had to go to work. And I had a hangover. First one, and it was a misery upon my head, to be sure. I sat in the hot sunshine atop the guard's chair, and every so often I would just lean forward and fall headfirst into the pool, in an attempt to make it better. It didn't help. And I got no sympathy from my fellow guards, either. Hangover? Haw, haw!

So, maybe it's not true, the grape and the grain thing, but aside from never stealing drinks again, I don't mix those past maybe a tasting of somebody's fine bourbon or scotch after wine with dinner. Haven't had a hangover since ...

Not Your Grampaw's Yo-Yo ...

I might have mentioned along the way that my one innate talent, discovered when I was eight years old, was that I had a knack for the Duncan return top, aka, the Yo-Yo.

Those of you with no clue as what this is, go look it up.

I have stuck this into a book or two, and the basic story is simple: My mother sent me to William's five-and-dime store to buy something and I came upon a yo-yo contest in progress. These were held in the late spring, the Duncan Y0-Yo guy came to town, and you showed up and did tricks. You got two tries for each trick, the last one to miss was the winner, and the reward was a yo-yo with rhinestones embedded in the sides, and a qualification to enter the city championships at the end of the season. Place in the top three there, you went to the state finals. Win there, and it was worth a trip to this brand-new theme park in California, Disneyland, and the winner of the Nationals got a $5000 college scholarship, which back then, was a full-ride at the local U …

So I parked my Huffy bike and went into the store, got what I was sent to get, and on the way back to my bike, stopped to watch.

Hey, the yo-yo man said, Come on, you can do this, too.

Can't, I said. I don't have a yo-yo, and I have never used one before.

No problem, I'll lend you one, and show you what to do.

Okay. Why not?

There were eight or ten kids, and to make a long story short, I won the contest.

Never held one before, but the guy would show me the trick, and I was able to do it well enough to beat the other kids.

Might have been my peak athletic moment, that. 

Back then, there were a dozen or so basic tricks, with names like "Sleeper," "Walk the Dog," "Over the Falls," "Rock the Baby," "Skin the Cat," "Creeper," "Around the Corner," "Loop the Loop," "Around the World, "Barrel Roll," "Man on the Flying Trapeze," etc., none of them particularly hard, and having tasted victory, I was hooked.

From eight until fifteen, I was there every season. I always won at least one local contest, and then went to the city finals, where I lost. Last season I was eligible–fifteen was the cut-off–I placed second in the city, then fourth in the state championship. Won a radio.

I might have done better, but having discovered girls, my practice suffered. 

Well, along the way, I got fairly good. Could do some complex string tricks, though I wasn't ever able to do it with both hands at the same time, which is what you needed to get hired by Duncan. 

Fast forward fifty-odd years:

The old wooden yo-yo, with its fixed wooden axle evolved. There came the Butterfly, then weighted things with centrifugal this or that that would spin a little longer. I got a metal one a few years back and it spun longer than any I'd ever used.

But, wait! There came another generation of improvements, ball-bearing axles, yo-yos that spin but don't come back unless you do a special binding maneuver with the string, and Geez Louise, these things are to my yo-yo as the starship Enterprise is to a Model T.

I haven't been keeping up. How I know is, my nephew sent me a link to a video with a six-year-old kid at an international contest, and you would not believe what Yo-YoBaby can do. And I mean, you really won't believe what you are seeing if you are of my generation and you used to wait for the Duncan Yo-Yo guy to arrive.

I kept saying, "Holy shit! Holy shit!"



My mouth just hung open as I stared and drooled …

So I got one of the moderate-range yo-yos, (it's upgradable) and it spins, O how it spins! I can do just about every string trick I know, one after another, and of course, this six-year-old makes me look like the mummy's grampaw, but if I'd had one of these back in the day? I would have ruled!

My life would have taken another path, I am sure ...

Winter Wonderland

Okay, so we didn't get as much snow as the picture in the previous post indicated, and not a third as much as they did just down the road in Corvallis; still, there is about six inches on the ground, with the prediction of more to come, possibly mixed with freezing rain, before normal, plain-old rain comes to wash it all away in a couple-three days.

Lovely.

Even though this was predicted, Thursday was a disaster on the roads around here as everybody decided to leave work early, and apparently at the same instant, snarling traffic. Twenty-minute drives took three hours. There were multiple-car pile-ups on the interstate, some deaths. We aren't geared for more than a dusting here, and people who blow past at forty in a twenty-five zone wind up in a ditch or sliding into somebody else as often as not. 

One of the reasons, after thirty-five years, I still avoid driving in snow if I can is not so much I'm worried about what I do, but what that fool who thinks Jesus is his co-pilot and caution is for everybody else ...

My wife took her car our yesterday and the 4WD was enough, sans chains, to get to my son's house and take him shopping (for tire chains, among other things) but the stuff is packed down pretty good on the roads now, it hasn't risen above freezing for four days, and where cars stop for lights, the snow melts and then refreezes. 4WD helps you get started, but it doesn't stop you on an icy road real well.

We have enough supplies so we don't have to go out, save to walk the dogs, and with their stubby legs, we'll have to stick to the walks or watch them plow with their bodies. 

So, as long as we don't lose power, we are okay.

One of the luthiers I follow who lives on the Big Island of Hawaii put up a picture recently. Showed his car with a few ice cubes on the hood, with a note saying the temperature had dropped to 58º F. overnight. 

In my should-be-writing-but-ain't mode, I've gone over the songs and instrumentals I am essaying to learn upon the uke. About seventy-five minutes of material. Somewhat ambitious since I'm a slow learner, but I'd like to memorize them in the next month or so. I can mostly get through them all using the cheat sheets, and half the instrumentals and nearly all the vocals from memory. Of course, memory is the second thing to go. The first thing is … um … ah ...

Instrumentals:

Don't Get Around Much Anymore

Baby Elephant Walk

Falling Slowly

Game of Thrones

Stairway to Heaven

Titanic

Something in the Way She Moves

Quigley Down Under

Ashokan Farewell

Chariots of Fire

Vocals:

Addicted to Love

A Summer Song

Bring it on Home

Cakewalk into Town

Dorothy

Hallelujah

Hey, Jude  

Hotel California

Let it Be

Methamphetamine Mama

One Toke Over the Line

Political Science

Lonely at the Top

The Second Time Around

St. James Infirmary

Wagon Wheel

Woke up Dead Blues

Yesterday

Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out

Winter

Seventeen degrees at Steve's house, eleven o'clock on a Thursday, blowing snow starting to fall. The prediction is for anywhere from an inch to eight inches, depending on where you are in the valley, and there's a stiff east wind that drops the wind chill down into single digits. 

Hummingbird feeder is frozen solid, and the stream down the hill is about half iced-over.

Say it might be an actual blizzard in the Gorge.

Had to wear the heavy jacket and a hat and muffler, with the Thinsulate ski gloves, to walk the dogs. The Corgis with their double-coats seem unaffected; I use the ThunderShirt on the Cocker Spaniel, although her hair has mostly grown out since we got her.

I wanted weather like this, I'd have moved to North Freezing Dakota …

Ingenuity

Some ukulele stuff I found interesting.

 Before you watch the video, the set-up:

Wooden musical instruments are said to open up after they have been played for a while. Exactly why is open to debate, but the notion is that, over time, the wood and glue set, and some kind of mystical attunement of the wood from the vibrations of the music all come together to make the tone louder and more mellow.

The phenomenon seems to be real enough; recordings of new instruments compared to the same instruments played a year or ten down the line seem to sound noticeably different, at least some folks' ears. 

Some woods open up faster than others. With guitars and ukuleles, the soundboards are often made from spruce, which opens slower than, say, cedar or redwood, which is also used for those instruments.

So, there is one theory that goes with the vibrations, and to that end, there are gadgets that can be stuck into the sound hole of guitar that will allegedly help it open faster.

I hadn't seen one like the machine in this video before. The luthier's name is Ron Saul, and while the whole video is good for me, if you fast-forward to the 22:30 mark and play it from there, you might find this section interesting. 

Amazing what somebody with an idea and skill with machinery can do, he puts his mind to it ...

Strange Has Always Been With Us

You know about sex toys: You'd think this is a modern phenomenon, but it isn't, they go back to the Paleolithic Era. Of course, blow-up or silicone girlfriends are relatively new, but still, Perry Como charted with "Glendora," back in 1956. It was a novelty song, but it's a little creepy even so ...

Glendora by Stanley Ray, sung by Perry Como, 1956 

I'm in love with a dolly named 'Glendora'  
She works in the window of a big department stor-a!
Eyes of blue, hair like gold,Never been young, but she'll never get old
Oh Glen-dora . . . I wanna see more of you!

Chorus:

O' Glen-dora . . . O' Glen-dor
Oh Glen-dora . . . I wanna see more of you!

She's so shy that I don't know how I found her
With three big body guards always workin' around her!
One just nods, an' two just grins,
An' three got a mouth full of safety pins . . . 

Oh Glen-dora . . . I wanna see more of you!

(Chorus) 

Bridge:

I stand left an' I stand right,
Outta my head 'cause I'm outta sight . . .
Oh Glen-dora . . . I wanna see more of you!

Late last night at the store they did some changin' . . .
An' I stood watchin' when they started re-arrangin' . . .
She lost her wig, she lost her arms,
An' when they got through she lost all of her charms,

O' Glendora . . . what did they do to you?
O' Glen-dora . . . O' Glen-dora . . .
O' Glendora . . . what did they do to you?
O' Glen-dora . . . O' Glen-dora . . .
O' Glendora . . . what did they do to you?

(Good evening, friends ....) 

Living in the First World

A little under the weather here, inside and out. At least the outside is just cold rain and not snow and ice.

Had to get a new universal remote for the TV. Back in the day, before remotes, you got up and walked to the tube and fiddled with the knobs. Nothing was automatic, and the picture would do all manner of funny things, roll horizontally or vertically,  compress, snow, and you had a row of knobs to turn to balance things. Sometimes you had to climb up on the roof and turn the aerial to get a signal.

The remote we had was going bad. Push the buttons, nothing happened, or sometimes it would do other than it was supposed to do. Probably I would have just gotten up and fiddled with the controls on the TV and put off buying a new one, but these days, there are no controls on the TV, it's the remote or nothing.

I  changed the batteries, didn't help, so I tooled on over to Best Buy and got a user-friendly new one. 

It's the cat's pajamas. Has a button says, "Watch TV." Push that, everything that needs to happen for that lights up, presto. Done? Push the power-0ff button, tah dah!

Once can get apps for one's iPhone or iPad if one wishes, but I would rather a remote that can live in the drawer of the little table next to the chair in the living room. 

The old universal remote I had worked by copying the signal from the separate remotes for the TV and VCR and whatnot. Don't have a VCR any more, but the new one, you plug it into your computer, go online, then download the control codes for whatever brand of whatever you have, and there you go.

If, for some reason, things don't work as they are supposed to work, the remote's help button asks questions: Is this the problem? Hold on a second: Did that fix it?

Great living here in the future ...

Zukulele Sound Sample

So, a quick and dirty sound sample on the new uke. You'll have to excuse the crappy playing, and the recording is a Blue Yeti mike straight into QuickTime on the Mac, no equalization, no tweaks on the sound at all, so it sounds better than that.

Glad the phone didn't ring, nor barked the dogs ...

I'll do another sound check in six or eight months when it has had time to open up.

More Ukulele Porn

Top: Woodley White Tenor; middle, Michael Zuch tenor; bottom, Alan Carruth tenor

So, the collection, and probably–probably–all the ukes I'll be owning for a while. Each has unique playing qualities and sound, and should cover all the needs I'll run into any time soon.

No, but, really.

These are tenor ukes, but interestingly enough, they are all slightly different sizes. The White is widest and thinnest–it won't fit in either of the other two ukes' cases. The slotted headstock makes the Zuch the longest, and the bottom is less rounded than the Carruth. The Zuch also has a slightly wider fretboard, 1-1/2" as opposed to 1-3/8".

The Zuch won't fit in the case that came with the Carruth, though it does work the other way around. 

The White has warm, woody tones. The Carruth is very bright and loud. The Zuch is midway twixt the other two, moderately bright and loud, but has to open up. For those of you who don't know what that means, wooden stringed instruments tend to change tones over time, particularly those with certain kinds of soundboards. While cedar seems to be pretty much open to begin with, spruce changes, as the wood "settles," which means several things: The glue sets, the finish hardens, and some other more mystical, hard-to-pin-down things that result in a fuller, more resonant sound as the instrument ages. It might take six months or a year or longer for spruce to open up. (In the case of violins, they might keep opening up for decades or centuries …)

The White is koa, that being the wood-of-choice in Hawaii since they started making these things, and what high-end makers went to when they copied ukes elsewhere in the world, and thus has a lot of brothers and sisters. There are tens of thousands of koa ukuleles in assorted sizes, probably more.

The Carruth and Zuch, not so much. As far as I can tell, there are only a few ukes made from osage orange, and none that match mine with the other woods. 

Google shows only one ukulele with tulip magnolia back and sides, and that's the Zukulele. 

These are not the most expensive instruments by a long shot, but If I'm not around, the ukes I don't take with me will be locked in the gun safe ...

NUD (New Ukulele Day)

This last image is closer to the true color, which is kind of a gingerbread shade.

I didn't put anything in to give you the size, but in the first photo, that sound port on the upper bout is just a little bigger than the last joint of my thumb.

I have been playing ukuleles for less than a year, and I claim no expertise in any aspect of them. I have, however, been fortunate enough to lay hands on several top-of-the-line instruments from well-respected luthiers, including Woodley White, Alan Carruth, and Gordon & Char Mayer, so I do know what a well-made and beautiful ukulele looks, feels, and sounds like.

The Zukulele that Michael Zuch has made for me is as good as any I've had a chance to play.

In his signature on UU, Michael has the term "Aspiring Luthier."  He has a full-time job, and does this for love, but I'm thinking he should drop the first word in that sig. He has made more than a couple-dozen of these, and I believe this one by itself certainly qualifies him as more than "aspiring;" he's there enough to drop the modifier.

This is a lovely instrument, clean, with a great tone, especially considering it hasn't opened up at all. I expect that six months down the line, it will sound better still. It is Low-G,CEA, and the action is smooth, the intonation great.

Here, the specs:

Back & Sides: Tulip Magnolia
Top: Adirondack spruce
Bracing: Sitka spruce
Neck: Spanish cedar with carbon fiber reinforcement
Neck joint: Mortise and tenon with bolt
Rosette, headstock overlay, end graft and heel cap: Brazilian rosewood
Fretboard and bridge and pins: East Indian rosewood
Bindings: Faux tortoise shell with B/W/B purfling
Inlays on headstock, fretboard and pins: Mother of pearl
Finish: Nitro-cellulose lacquer (over epoxy sealer and pore filler where needed)
Tuners: Grover Sta-Tite, for slotted headstock, with replacement buttons
Strings: Worth BT-LG Fluorocarbon

As you can see from the pictures, there uke is clean and form-follows-function. That works for me, though I've got nothing against tastefully-done bling. When we started talking about this, I allowed as how I had two things I wanted: Low-G tuning, and a slotted headstock. This latter is a want based on having played classical guitars for a while and I like that look and feel.

Other than that? Luthier's choice.

Michael had a set of back and sides in Tulip Magnolia which had a great tap-tone, he said, and he'd never built one using that wood. How would that be?

I'd never even heard of Tulip Magnolia as a tonewood. Go for it. 

Would I be interested in a sound port? 

Yes, I would. 

Would a fretboard a bit wider work, since I was coming from classical guitars?

You betcha.

What about trim?

Go with what looks and feels good, you're there, I'm here ...

So he did those things, and I couldn't be happier with the result.

The build went quickly, and the uke left Michael's shop in the middle of the Arctic blast that froze most of the U.S.

I expected it to be fairly bright, given the spruce top, and it is, which is good, since I think that works for fingerstyle playing, a thing to which I aspire. 

As soon as the strings settle in and I have some time, I'll do a sound sample and stick it up. 

This is just soooo cool!

Addendum:

My wife and I decided to go out for lunch, to celebrate this 'n' that, and give the Zukulele time to warm up in its case before I opened it, so we went to our favorite rustic Italian place. Got there, sat down, and there, on the decorative table next to us … ? 

Tulip magnolia branches with blossoms …

A coincidence, of course, but really, it seemed awfully auspicious. 

Cutter's Wars #3

The Vastalimi Gambit seems to be doing okay on Amazon.com. (By okay, I mean, in the top 53,000 in paper and 27,000 in Kindle, so I'm not buying the Rolls just yet.) Only a couple reviews, but at least a couple people liked it ...

The final book in the Cutter's Wars series is turned in and tentatively-scheduled for January, 2015. There will be more work done on it, CE ms, galleys, cover art, etc., but in the back-and-forth with my editor, I did a bit of back-cover blurb work. This isn't what will show up on the book, but it is a general idea. Attend:

The Fog of War. The uncertainty that came with bullets and bombs and enemies charging or retreating, You could never be sure exactly what was happening on the battlefield, no matter how many eyes and ears you had watching and listening. Never ...

After a couple of assignments that involved a lot more intrigue and skullduggery than Cutter Force Initiative ever wanted, the unit is looking forward to being part of a straight-up, short-term industrial war on Earth.

Cutter agrees to a support role offered by an old Army comrade who is now a general in a larger military force, and the pay is good, the unit happy. All they have to do is basic ranger stuff, sneak-and-peak, shoot-and-scoot, with no responsibilities for the overall effort, which is a welcome relief.

Set in a section of SoNorAm called Tejas, Cutter’s forces hit the ground to gather intel in preparation for what is to be a simple and quick engagement.

But, of course, it’s not that simple. What starts out as a corporate fight to occupy a valuable piece of contested territory quickly goes sideways, and once again, Cutter and crew find themselves in the middle of situations in which things aren’t as they seemed on first look, and the unit must determine the truth or lose more than just a battle.

It’s hot, it’s wet, and there are old enemies as well as new. There are duplicitious aliens with religious issues, genetically-engineered forests, boots-on-the-ground battles, bar fights, big game hunting, and some really nasty weather. The solution to the final problem is serious business and if they screw it up, they won’t have to worry about getting in trouble, because they will likely be dead ...

Never a dull moment in CFI.

Plenty of gunsmoke and action for the team, and some surprising events that will change them dramatically in ways no one ever saw coming. 

Who wins? Who loses? Who lives? Who dies? 

The answers lie in The Tejano Conflict ...

Bullet Technology

Check this out. Fan rounds …

Of course, most shooters of any skill will look at this and allow as how if you can't hit your intended target, you ought not to be shooting, and I have to wonder how wide most shooters in panic mode miss,  too. Will this kind of thing do any good? Maybe. 

It's surely spooky to watch that whirling dervish hitting targets, though ...

More First World Problems ...

Yeah, I went down to Starbucks, but my coffee got cold/

My Rolex needs windin', my Mercedes is gettin' old …

From Whitebread Blues

My leaf blower shorted out last week and died. Plug wire had been getting chippy and there came a bzzzt! and the extension chord and leaf blower cord became one as the prongs and socket welded themselves together …

So I had to get another leaf blower and extension cord …

For years, I resisted the very notion of a leaf blower, which I considered a noisy abomination spawned by the Devil to ruin Sunday mornings. I had a rake, by God, what kind of pansy needs a leaf blower?!

Turned out, on me, it didn't look so bad, and it was ever so much less work. Never use it before ten a.m weekdays, noon on the weekends, my attempt at balance.

After one of the driest Decembers on record here, the forecast was for a week of rain, ending in a visit from the Pineapple Express, which means a lot more rain, so I wanted to get the leaves off the walks and patio, and also clean out the gutters, which were full.

Why a leaf blower in full-on-winter January, when most of the country is freezing its nuts off?  Because my stupid gum ball trees out front are still dropping leaves, that's why. Last to lose 'em in the winter, last to green up in the spring. 

These kinds of tree lines the walks up and down my street, and mine are always the last and last, go figure.

So, got the blower. Got on the ladder and hand-scooped out the gutters. Even though it was a dry December, there was still a half-inch of water under the dried leaves, go figure that, too.  Cleared the walks. Which already have more leaves out front from the retarded gum ball trees.

All done, at least for now.

Came the rain, and I felt good about having beaten it to the task.

Then the clothes dryer died. Well, it had a major heat-attack, in that the drum still rotated but there wasn't any warm air, which meant that it takes about three days of tumbling to dry one's clothes. Last time that happened, it was a thermal fuse, repair guy was in and out in fifteen minutes, relatively cheap. 

This time, it was the heating element. Not as quick a fix, and not as cheap, but still less expensive than a new dryer. He also found a quarter that had gotten into the werks and was worn almost completely smooth, so now le drier runs fine and is also a little less noisily.

Had the plumber out a couple weeks ago for a couple of leaks. All fixed. Well, except for the one out back that drips a little when you run water through the hose. That would have involved tearing out sheetrock and fairly big bucks for something that a bowl under the faucet takes care of just fine. 

First-world problems are often those which, if you throw money at them, go away. If you have the money, of course, which in this case, I did. So I don't get to bitch about them. 

If you want to see how people who have no right to gripe do so anyway? Drop by WhiteWhine.com. Some of these are so laugh-out-loud funny you will, but mostly, you'll just shake your head and wonder how some people have enough wherewithal to remember how to breathe ...

New Uke

Adirondack Spruce / Tulip Magnolia Ukulele

So, it's done, the new Zukulele, and on its way. Trekking across the frozen country, and I hope that Arctic blast dropping the temperature and wind chill way down into the basement doesn't craze it ...

I'll put up specs later.