The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Christmas on the equatorial South End doesn’t arrive on Black Friday, one hour after Turkey Day is still undigested, the way it does the rest of Jingle Bell America. The urge to drive 40 miles to the nearest mall with a maxxed out credit card doesn’t compel us to hurry up the holiday that will only push us one step closer to bankruptcy trying to buy the kids enough presents to hide the water basin under the tree.
Oh sure, it’s swell to say every year that the holiday is really about the Spirit of Giving, that the True Meaning is sharing and love and blah blah blah. But for a full month the REAL meaning blasts across the airwaves, piles in drifts of glossy sale ads, whistles down the blacktop in a high decibel muzak howl fever-pitched to buy buy buy some more….
Nothing new here. Nothing we haven’t heard every year of our lives. Too much commercialism. Too much emphasis on materialism. Too much tinsel, too little joy? Plug in the Blu-Ray re-released hi-definition “It’s A Wonderful Life” and watch it for the 50th time, only $29.95 on Amazon or run down to Wal-Mart at midnight on Thanksgiving with White Christmas spewing over the loudspeaker in a synthesized cadence determined by a shopper survey study group to enhance purchasing.
Naw, you can have it. Down here we’re gonna hang the nettle wreaths the day before Santa sets sail, string a few festive lights (that won’t stay up all year) and maybe invite a few neighbors in for a Yuletide nog spiked with something savory. We won’t give too many gifts, you can bet your stockings hung with care, not in these hard economic times, but we’ll help fill the food bank carts for those who need help this season way more than us.
Like always, we’ll drink a toast. To another year with our loved ones. To Peace on earth. To good will toward men. And women too. We probably won’t watch “It’s A Wonderful Life”, we’ll just try to live it. And hey, all you Cyber Monday Shoppers — A Merry Christmas to You, Too! Just not 365 days of the year, okay?

My shack has ghosts. Poltergeists. Gremlins. Whatever you care to call the little demons that are turning my lights off intermittently, then turning them back on. I don’t really believe in phantasms, but I know my lights are flickering off, then going off completely, then later suddenly snapping back to life. It’s disconcerting, I do know that.

I pulled the breakers outside, replaced them and for awhile, they seemed to work. But only for a day or so. Now the lights are turning themselves on and off again. It’s driving me batty. Yesterday I tore into the walls, jerking out switches and outlets, looking for a loose wire, a faulty switch, a connector come undone. So far nothing…. Now more lights are turning themselves off, turning themselves on. I was convinced there was a logical explanation, but more and more I’m starting to wonder.

I wake up every day to strange stories in the news. Sexual harassment, Russian probes, Senatorial races with a bigot and child predator, lies and faux news, it never ends, just drives me crazy. The nation seems stuck in a reality meltdown where paranoia reigns and obvious lies are uttered without embarrassment. I need meds. Lithium, valium, anti-psychotics, whatever it takes to reduce the brain-fever. The truth is flickering on and off. The news is driving me insane. Faux news, real news, on and off, on and off, day after day.

Today the lights in the house went off. I checked the fuse box and nothing was amiss. No breakers were OFF, but the power was. To half the room I’m in right now. Half on, half off. I’m sure it has a logical explanation. I’m sure an electrician could explain this phenomenon in a nano-second. The truth is out there somewhere. But somewhere isn’t here.

I shut off the power entirely to the shack finally. I turn it on when I’m down there working, but I’m afraid to keep it on when I leave the building, something might spark and the place will go up in flames. I should probably do that with the news, just turn it off, but I’m afraid the country will go up in smoke if I don’t pay attention. Am I crazy? Are we all going crazy? Maybe I need to turn off all the lights once and for all. Before they turn themselves off. Except that seems illogical. Doesn’t it??????????

Pastor Paul was visibly troubled at the monthly deacon meeting of the Little Church of the Ravine this past week. “That slaughter in God’s house down in Texas could happen here,” he was saying to the assembled deacons after his introductory prayer for the 26 deceased churchgoers in the town of 400. “We need to make sure it doesn’t.”

Tony Travers held his well-worn King James leatherbound Bible tightly in his lap and seemed to be swaying slightly. “I hear you, Paul,” he was saying quietly, almost inaudibly. “But the Lord’s will be done.”

“C’mon, now Tony, let’s not turn this into a crisis of faith,” Brandon Fallows said. “The Lord helps those who help themselves. What we need here is some security.” Pastor Paul nodded sagely. “I agree,” he intoned. “Security. What do you have in mind, Brandon?”

Brandon obviously had given this considerable thought because he spoke right up. “Someone stationed at the church door,” he replied. “Someone who can act if the occasion arises.”

Phil Crenshaw shook his head no. “I know where you’re going with this, Brandon, but guns aren’t the solution, they’re the problem. You can’t put an armed guard at the chapel entrance.”

“Can’t we?” Brandon retorted. “That maniac in Texas would’ve killed every person in the church that morning if a neighbor hadn’t gotten there with his own rifle. He saved countless lives, you better believe that.”

Phil shook his head. “Violence begets violence. Vengeance is ….”

“Oh stop the horseshit, Phil,” Brandon said, cutting him off, then caught the disapproval on Pastor Paul’s face. “Sorry, Pastor.”

The deacon meeting never came to a conclusion. Brandon offered to serve as armed guard, but the others were unsure of the rightness of that course and less sure what the congregation might think of one of the deacons packing heat before services. “Let’s pray on this awhile longer,” Tony suggested and the majority seemed to relax visibly. All except Brandon who left muttering about defending himself and his family. No doubt next Sunday he would probably come loaded for bear.

Just in time for the holidays, the notoriously festive South End String Band will be playing a joyous concert at the Cama Beach State Park Lodge on Dec. 16th, 2017 from 6-8 pm. Holiday spirits will be served! (How else can the Band’s irreverent music be appreciated?)
Fresh on the heels of their untimely ouster from the Lights of Christmas for refusing to play Christmas songs, opting instead for their brand of gnarly old time fiddle tunes and contemporary politically incorrect salutes to South End Culture, the infamous collection of musicians have agreed to bring some lively jive and jingle to Cama’s WINTERFEST gala salute to Camano Island.

Good chance they will not be invited back so put on your Santa cap, pony up the reindeer and head on down to Camano’s best kept secret, the Cama Beach State Park Lodge.

It’s a cold day here in the North Pole. Santa Claus has been charged with felony harassment by multiple unnamed elves who claim in separate testimony the funny fat man had groped them in the toy factory’s main office after hours. St. Nick denied all accusations and claimed it was faux news, a smear campaign by those who want to wage war on Christmas. Mrs. Claus, unavailable for public comment, has reportedly filed divorce papers. And in a related development, Donder and Blitzen, two of the delivery sleigh’s mainstay reindeer, avow they will not ride for the accused Santa.

The scandal has even reached the U.S. Congress where legislative leaders are in a bind whether to support the Gift Giver or call for investigations. Rep. Jerry Snyder told a CNN reporter that the nation will be plunged into certain recession if Christmas were to be canceled because Santa Claus was asked to resign his position. “Elf groping in itself may not be a crime,” he stated. “Elves aren’t protected under law and anyway, these charges date back decades. I say let the American People decide whether the man can use their chimney or not. Christmas presents delivered by Santa Claus are a tradition that must be protected at all costs. My kids wouldn’t talk to me ever again if I voted to investigate St. Nick.”

But Sen. Betsy Feelingbetter responded by saying “Enough is enough. Elf or leprechaun or Queen of the Maypole, it’s time to put a stop to employer harassment. These men think because they have all this power they can treat us with complete disrespect. We’re looking into criminal charges for Mr. St. Nick, I can tell you that. The times have changed and if the price for ending predatory harassment is a cessation of Christmas presents this year, so be it. We’re not negotiating this crime, you merry gentlemen.”

At the time of this writing the future of Christmas Present and Future looked bleak indeed. The elf workshop is in complete shutdown and the factory is surrounded by reporters from every known media from every country that celebrates a consumer Christmas. UPS and FedEx stocks have tumbled to their lowest share price since the Great Recession and Turner Broadcasting has pulled “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Miracle on 34th Street.” The world may have hung their stockings with care, but will they be empty on Christmas Day?

Here’s some breaking news for all you addicts out there. Facebook was designed, so say some of its founders, to dig deep into your brain and reward you with instant and constant gratification. Likes, dislikes, tweets and pinging. They want you to keep in touch, they say, with your ‘friends’ and relatives. Ho ho. Just trying to help you.

Can you say Ennabler? Can you say Pusher? They do want you to stay in touch, all right. They want you to chain yourself to your phone, your computer, your device and let the ads wash over you like a soothing shower. Just like the tobacco boyz, they’ve studied you and they’ve designed a delivery system you won’t be able to resist after a very short time. The cigarette pushers took some tobacco leaves, chopped them fine, then added everything from formaldehyde to the pancreas of endangered species, put them with 100 chemicals known to the state of California as carcinogenic, made a slurry, then dried the toxins into a compact little roll that resembles real tobacco. They made these neat little filters they perforated so that you had to pull very hard to get your dose and called those Menthol Lights, less tar, more flavor, that kind of ad rubbish.

Facebook, they took some behavioral research from B.F. Skinner’s monkey experiments and Pavlov’s dogs and applied them to you. We always knew social media was addictive, I guess, we just didn’t know the folks upstairs had manipulated us. Just like tobacco. Just like McDonalds. Just like Coca-Cola even after they took out the cocaine. When sugar was under investigation, the sugar daddies blamed heart attacks on fat. Facebook, we’ll have to wait and see who they blame. I’m betting the Russians. Parents who don’t do proper supervision. Video games. But the truth is a lot more sinister than those pesky Ruskies. I’m afraid I have to unfriend Mark Zuckerberg and his fellow gangsters. Your social media is a social destabilizer. Big thumbs down, Mark. But I hafta admit, you won. We lost.

I always knew, deep in my fluttering heart, the Day of Reckoning was going to come. As sure as winter comes every year, as certain as Monday and the timeclock, as predictable as Christmas sales starting in November, it’s got to be faced. And no, I’m not talking about that vote in Alabama too close to be called between a man who as a federal prosecutor brought justice to the bombers of the Birmingham church that killed those kids back in the 60’s and the man who rather date kids, not that kind of reckoning.

Naw, I’m talking a little closer to home, way closer to the bone. I remember the day when I had nearly completed my little homemade sailboat and the time came to cut the slot in the bottom for the centerboard keel to slip through. You know if you make a wrong move, all the work that preceded this will be for naught. So you put it off, you double check your calculations, then you put it off some more. But … there comes that day when you just gird your loins and hold your breath and put the saw right down the bottom of the boat you spent a month building.

The boat survived the saw. I outfitted it with black sails and launched her a few weeks later. It wasn’t the most elegant of vessels and it certainly wasn’t fast under sail. I flipped it on a camping trip up in the San Juans and this time, I survived, evidently not a Day of Reckoning for the builder, not that day anyway.

Today I’m doing the final work on my handmade guitar, the one I’ve been obsessing over for weeks. If all goes well, I’ll have it strung up and played by mid-afternoon. The neck has been attached and the top glued down so there’s no more room for adjustments or corrections. It pretty much is what it is. I’ll put on the nut and the tuning machines, attach the walnut pickguard, screw down the fancy tailpiece and set the bridge. Then wind up six strings, monkey with the action as much as possible, then pick out a song and see what it sounds like.

It may sound crummy, I don’t know. Like I say, Day of Reckoning. If it doesn’t sound good, I can’t do a single thing about it, the deed is done, the die is cast and I can hang it on the wall as a testament to over-ambition, unwarranted optimism, bone-headed endeavor … or just call it wall art. I figure Stradivarius had to build fiddle #1. Course, he probably apprenticed for ten years under a master. Well, like my old man always said, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Nothing lost either, I’m figuring. At least not lives….

I got a pal who wrote a really good book on the Barefoot Bandit, well researched, tautly written, humanely told. He’d hoped to parlay that into a movie with the Academy Award winning screenplay writer of Milk and J. Edgar, but something went sour beside the kidney pools of Hollywood and the movie lapsed beyond the internet interest expiration date. He’s holed up at his cabin on Orcas, doing what most of us artists do, waiting for the phone to ring.

Ten years ago I had breakfast with a local artist here on the South End. He’d just finished a huge mural at the new theater and their outside lobby of the restaurants that ringed the place. He was depressed, he said, now that the project was over. He couldn’t understand it, big artwork installed to great acclaim, good money, all good. And now he was depressed. He poked forlornly at his chicken fried steak. That project was a yearlong undertaking and he figured it would open the floodgates to more of the same. Fame and fortune would surely follow.

I gulped at my 3rd refill of coffee, set it down empty and said, “Post partum depression.” He looked at me with a mouthful of heart attack and said, “What?”

“You got the afterbirth blues,” I said with some authority. “You’ll look at the other stuff, the usual paintings, as piddly-ass. The big stuff as an adrenaline rush. When it stops, the rest seems blasé’ It’ll pass … or else you’ll get another big one.”

I just went two years in withdrawal. They don’t make methadone for this. There’s no cure. And there’s no prescription. You wait for the Next Project, cold turkey and sweating in the wee hours of the night in a blood fever.

Like I told Orcas Bob, you’d think it would get easier for us Old Hands. But it doesn’t. I like to think — when I’m partially rational — the hunger lets us keep an Edge. Too much success, we’d get fat and lazy. Probably go to socialite parties, get accustomed to the applause and the alcohol, then squiggle out the next artwork by rote and routine. Maybe we’re actually the lucky ones. You know … if that phone ever rings again.

An Alabama church put this up on their readerboard: They Falsely Accused Jesus. Vote Judge Roy Moore! I guess if you think ‘they’ falsely accused the Son of God, you should probably vote for the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, the righteous and indignant Judge Roy. I personally am not sure who was accusing Jesus for something he didn’t do, but hey, it’s been a long time, and like Trump always says in regard to Judge Roy’s transgressions, it’s been a long time. Me, I’d probably just say Jesus died for his sins, let it go.

Politics and religion are always a volatile mix. The American Taliban, all those Bible thumping holier-than-me yahoos think they ought to be able to preach politics from the pulpit, and of course they do. I just think they ought to have their tax exemptions pulled and then they can rant and rave to their heart’s content. Course, today Trump just announced the United States will consider Jerusalem the capital of Israel which made a whole lot of evangelicals very happy. The rest of the world, not so much. Kind of screwed up the Middle East negotiations and if anyone was paying attention, the Holy Land is a mess these days. So why throw a monkey wrench into the works???

Half of Alabama thinks it’s okay to vote in a child predator. The man has been banned from malls for menacing young women fer Chrissake. C’mon, children, you really think that’s forgivable?? He certainly hasn’t repented and he certainly is guilty. But you want to vote him in as Senator of your proud state? The great state of Alabama, home to Gov. George, segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever, Wallace?

What kind of funky facile religion do you folks practice down there in the humid South? You read that Bible you like to quote so often? You listened to your boy Jesus? You ever read the New Testament? Or do you just preach what you practice?? Check out a little piece of wisdom called the Golden Rule, chillen, something about doing to others what you’d like them to do to you. And don’t tell me you’d like to prey on young girls. Although … that would explain a lot.

I know a lot of folks watching my valiant attempt at building a guitar feel like they’re rubbernecking a highway wreck. Just at really slow speeds. They witnessed me trying to bend walnut into a shape nature never intended walnut to pretzel itself into and on multiple tries, nature proved its point. They watched in horror while I whacked on a Sitka spruce block with a froe, a flat length of steel used for splitting cedar shakes I’d let rust for 30 years, then tried to plane the bookmatched sections down to 3/16th of an inch and glue the two side by side together for the soundboard.

Some had to avert their eyes when I made kerfings to attach to the bent sides to create a glue surface for the top and bottoms and add strength to the skinny carcass. When I cut spruce and cedar bracing wood for the top and then the back, they cringed. The big boys scallop these, but I drilled holes to take away mass. The last thing you want is a top that doesn’t vibrate freely because you stiffened it too much.

Remember this mantra: let the top sing! Let it vibrate! Most guitars have a soundhole cut right into that vibrating top. Not me, pal. I’m building mine to let sound out the side so I, me, myself, can hear it, not some mythical audience I’ll never play for. The fretboard on most guitars gets extended over the top down to the soundhole and glued, more dampening of the vibrations. Me, I’m going to elevate it above the top a quarter inch or so, nothing touching that singing spruce.

Ditto the pickguard, usually a plastic affair cemented to the top too. I’m either eliminating it altogether or making a floating wood one attached to the side. Most strings on a traditional gitbox sit on a bridge then drop down through the drilled top where the stress on the thin soundboard is compensated by a hardwood reinforcing strip, yup, glued down. I’m going to attach a fancy tailpiece at the end of the guitar bottom where only the bridge touches the top, the only place the soundboard is tampered with. Good good good vibrations sez the Beach Boys. We’ll see. No, actually, we’ll hear…. Stay tuned!