the world as i see it … humboldt county and beyond

Hopefully this will not be a problem, this is an old theme and one I had intended long ago to replace and just haven’t found the time.
So lots hope the upgrade doesn’t bork this .. and if it does, well I will be back to fix after I get all the other WP installs I have for clients done.

Well it works!

Tagged as:  WP 3.3 || 2 Comments

This is a link to a post I made for SoHum Awareness on emergency // earthquake preparedness.

Are You Prepared

Tagged as:  earthquake · preparedness || Leave a comment

I lived in Marin County, just north of San Francisco for most of the 1980′s. I don’t remember feeling many if any earthquakes until the October 17 1989 Loma Prieta quake.
At the time I was working at the Good Earth Natural Foods store in Fairfax on Bolinas Road, and doing housecleaning jobs all over Marin.

This particular day started out normally, I did my morning job and then went by the store (GE). While I was there I started getting this real ‘hinky feeling’, for no reason I could explain I called and cancelled my afternoon house cleaning job down in Sausalito (just north of the Golden Gate Bridge). Then I proceeded to buy large bottles of water, candles, matches, easy to prepare food stuff. I felt like I was in a daze, not quite all there. I drove down to the Post Office in Fairfax and ran into a couple friends, we both commented on a ‘strange day feeling’ and went about our business.

I drove to San Anselmo, where I lived at the time. I parked my 1968 VW bus in the driveway of the house where I lived, which wasn’t something I usually did. (The owner didn’t like it.) My room was the lower floor of a 2 story brick older home.

I remember setting the bags on the floor in the middle of the room and I sat down there too. This was not the ‘normal’ routine. Nothing about the day felt normal.
The next thing I remember was hearing a very loud ‘CRACK’ sound, my first thought was that something in the adjacent garage had been knocked over, but before I could get up the TV which was on a wimpy tv rack was on my back. I got that back in place and realized what was going on.
I opened the door to the driveway and watched as my bus bounced up and down, back to front – over and over again. Imagine what a rug looks like if you shake it out, the ripples in it.. the earth was rippling under my feet.

I looked up at Mt Baldy and the trees were doing hulus.. I had never seen anything like this before.

It seemed to go on for a very long time.
I went in and turned on the TV.. and got the news feed coming from the World Series at Candlestick Park in SF..
In a daze it became apparent this was a big quake.

Outside in my neighborhood people were screaming and running with babes in arms..where to I don’t know or understand. My landlord called and said, “Don’t let the old man next door turn off our gas or we won’t get it back for weeks.” I did stop him from turning the gas off. There was really little damage in San Anselmo, or Marin, a great shaking up but nothing like what was happening in the city, or really further south in the Santa Cruz area, where this quake’s epicenter was at.

I became glued to the tv watching all the horrors of pancaked houses, freeways, and bridges collapse. For days.

More than anything, I started to pay attention to this ‘feeling’ I had had that day. I call it my earthquake radar, and many times I have felt it before a quake hits, sometimes I get a ‘hinky’ feeling days in advance of something big. Mainly I need to get out of the way and pay attention to it.. it is right more times than not.

Here are some links:

lomaprietastories.wordpress.com

www.vibrationdata.com/earthquakes/lomaprieta.htm

Google Images

USGS

Tagged as:  earthquake · Loma Preita || 2 Comments

This is a test of a WordPress to Facebook plugin. Testing from my personal blog in case it blows up. Several clients want this now, and I hope it works flawlessly. I think it will work better with a photo in the post, but often the posts from clients won’t have photos, so curious what it will do.

Well straight off it pulled a thumbnail from my sidebar to use. I guess each client will need a ‘special’ image to tell it to pull if no images are in the post.

Tagged as:  Facebook · wordbooker · WordPress || Leave a comment

Kim Sallaway was kind enough to send along even more photos from the show last week at the Kate Wolf Memorial Festival.

This is my favorite photo from the whole series:

Wow thanks Kim !!

For more photos and the review:
Bruce Cockburn and Jenny Scheinman at Kate Wolf and www.CockburnProject.net.

Tagged as:  BruceCockburn · CockburnProject · Jenny Scheinman · Kate Wolf Memorial Music Festival · Kim Sallaway · PhotoOps || 2 Comments

I just put together a front page article at the CockburnProject.net about the Bruce and Jenny show at the Kate Wolf Memorial Music Festival.
I will fill in more details here in a few days.

Here are some more photos I took:

The Wailin’ Jennys join Bruce and Jenny for the last 2 songs of the set.

And now for some music:

(Lovers in a Dangerous Time – http://youtu.be/pGM9pS-rC0M )

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( Iris of the World – http://youtu.be/XayBOT0UeZ0 )

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The Wailin’ Jennys joined Bruce and Jenny for this one:

( Waiting For A Miracle – http://youtu.be/HFG_3ZpxJ-Q )

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Many thanks to Riley Q. for the video! And here is a photo from Riley of Bruce and Jenny // and the totem poles as you enter the festival.

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And a couple more photos compliments of Kim Sallaway, taken during the afternoon soundcheck.

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Kim Sallaway sent me even more great photos — you can find them HERE.

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Tagged as:  BruceCockburn · CockburnProject · Jenny Scheinman · Kate Wolf Memorial Music Festival · Kim Sallaway · PhotoOps · video || 2 Comments

Well it’s been a month of Bruce and gardening.
When I haven’t been planting, harvesting or watering the garden,
I have been working on an old website of mine that has a lot of Bruce Cockburn content, right now doing the setlists from all the live cds I have.
I am bringing all this content from a static hand coded site into WordPress and doing a lot of cross referencing with the CockburnProject. I have been listening to many of these shows, and it’s kept me in the the Bruce bubble all month … which is a lovely place to be.
And it is also priming me up for Sunday’s show at the Kate Wolf Festival.
I just found out that Jenny Scheinman is joining Bruce for this show as well. It will be very interesting seeing / hearing them together without Gary Craig on drums. You know I will post back here after the event!
I am excited.

Tagged as:  BruceCockburn · CockburnProject · websites || Leave a comment

Feels great to be leaving southern Humboldt and its’ June-uary weather of cold rain, to points south.
Napa is about a 5 hour drive from our home, plus stops along the way. We drove into some warmer and partly sunny weather which really helped my mood.

Napa was having an outdoor market that encompassed about 4 blocks in downtown just outside our motel and a couple blocks away from the Uptown Theater. After checking into our room we strolled a bit to get the driving feeling off us and got a bite to eat.

I mostly look forward to standing in line before shows as it is a great way to meet people and see other Humans and connect with Bruce fans.
The Uptown Theater has reserved seating which makes that not necessary, but we strolled over to the venue early any way.
On the way there a familiar face was walking towards us … I stopped Gary Craig .. he was s bit surprised, “Do I know you?” .. “No, but I know you!” And we did a minute of “I love your drumming and had hoped to meet you one day”, and he was off to buy some wine.

The Uptown is a beautifully restored theater. The seats are comfortable and we had great seats, about 5 rows back and center. I personally prefer not to be down in front as looking up tweaks my neck. It holds about 800, but only sold about 450 seats, if that.

The stage set up was spread out as others had mentioned, but as I watched the show it seemed to me that each player expanded to fill all that space!

I won’t go into song by song, but some of the highlights for me were Tokyo. Why? Well believe it or not it was the first song I ever heard by Bruce. There’s a whole story around that that and I will link to it later. But I love it. Call It Democracy is also a favorite it did not disappoint.

There were times that Jenny Scheinman just blazed .. blew me away really, as I usually am so riveted by Bruce that I barely notice what else is going on, but she demanded attention. Arrows of Light was a perfect example of that. It was as if she was channeling that light and her and her instrument became one, it was so tight and so intense. Bruce was so into her playing, really smiling and enjoying letting her have the spotlight. Wish I had a recording of this show.

Gary Craig is a joy to watch .. it’s as if he is massaging his drums or what ever percussion instrument he is using. The first time I saw him with Bruce was during the Bruce, Julie and Gary trio touring in 2006, I saw him at the Mystic in Petaluma and at the Great American Music Hall in SF and he impressed me so much. He is just so good with Bruce.

The whole show was really heart felt and and the crowd was very supportive, which I was glad of, and I wasn’t the only one whooping it up
I do believe the balance was off, as there were times I couldn’t hear Bruce singing as clearly as I am used to, and Jenny (violin) seem too loud sometimes, but I was also hearing these older songs being played in a new way, and I am sure that lent a bit to that.

I wanted to hear Iris (which he did do in Arcata last year so I have heard it live), but that was missing from this show. I also wanted to hear Lois, but that also wasn’t played tonight. Comets of Kandahar was haunting. Last Night was a perfect opener, Mighty Trucks and Waiting for a Miracle were real surprises.
And I really liked Boundless, it’s the only song he played that I haven’t learned all the lyrics too!

One thing that I noticed is that all the ‘usual’ people I would see at shows, say at the Mystic in Petaluma, or up at Solfest, or down at GAMH were not here in Napa. There was not one person I recognized in the audience, and I really can say that has never happened before in all the shows I have been too. But of course I did meet a few new interesting fans.

The Uptown Theater security was in full force. My bag was checked several times. Mostly looking for alcohol being brought in.

We were toward the end of the line for the meet and greet, wish now we had been last. The security people were really hustling the people through the line, it was not really casual at all.

As I approached for my 15 seconds, Bruce surprised me by getting up from his seat and coming out to hug me!! What can I say, love that. It was a good heart hug too
I had a photo of the 2 of us from the Arcata show that he signed. I didn’t really get to talk to him, as security was pushing us along.
But the hug made up for all the words that could of been spoken.

When we got to Jenny and Gary, I was pulling out the ticket for Gary and Jenny to sign, and talking with Gary a bit, and Russel was talking with Jenny.
We are from the same general area in northern California (southern Humboldt County), and her and Russel were comparing who they both knew.
Then we were swept away, and I didn’t really get to say anything to Jenny.

And there were no pictures taken, this time

I am looking forward to seeing Bruce again and solo this time at the Kate Wolf Music Festival coming up June 26. Maybe we will get the chance to connect, I hope so.

Setlist

Uptown Theater, Napa CA
2 June 2011
—————————————-

Last Night of the World
Mango
Lovers in a Dangerous Time
Tokyo (with Jenny on mandolin)
Mighty Trucks of Midnight
Ancestors (singing bowls)
Pacing the Cage
Boundless (using those huge chimes)
Strange Waters
Bone in My Ear (charango)
Parnassus and Fog
Call Me Back
Littlest Prisoner (Jenny’s song)
Call It Democracy
Each One Lost
Wondering Where the Lions Are
Arrows of Light (Jenny became a conduit of light on this song – it was amazing how she and her instrument were one..totally awesome
–
Encore:

Comets of Kandahar
Waiting for a Miracle
Tie Me At the Crossroads
Gifts

Tagged as:  BruceCockburn · Napa · PhotoOps · Uptown Theater || 2 Comments