Anxiety

  I have returned here following a two month absence. Many people commented that they were concerned about the continuation of the blog, and asked why I had not written more for some time now.
  First, I was travelling most of August, which made it difficult to take the time to compose, and then edit, and rewrite most of the pieces you have read here. A single page may take as much as two or three hours of rewriting to try to get pace correct, and I always intend to deliver good product. This is of course good for the reader, and it is good for me as well, as it will make me a better writer.
  August was understandable as I was never home most of the month.
  September is another story, and was a much different kind of month for me.
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  September ushered in three major points of anxiety for me. One was financial, the second was the state of my health, naturally, and the third involved family. My mood is almost always good, or if not that, level. But the first couple of weeks of September did indeed foul my mood.
  If my mission here is to deliver uplifting pieces to help other people, I had no business posting anything while my mood was so dark. This seemed like good sense.
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  Now for the "uplifting" part of this piece.
  It took me a while to establish a clear head about things.
  In a nutshell, anxiety is emotional. You feel it in your belly, and your chest. You might even get a headache from the worry.
  Anxiety is real, and your emotions are always real, and they are valid. Pay attention to your emotional state. The emotions are delivering a message.
  My anxieties were pointing me in the direction of real problems. So in that way, those feelings were both valid and useful. But we are more than emotional beings. We also have rational heads (most of us, anyway).
  Real problems can be broken down into their elements, and then strategies can be put in place to solve the problems. This requires rational thinking.
  I took this approach to the problems my anxieties were concerned with, and for the most part the anxieties have gone away, at least until the next episode of what seems like chaos. My stress level is back to a low level. and I am better able now to serve you here, dear reader.
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  The message here is that of course we all go through periods when it all seems so overwhelming. This is especially true if you have cancer. Pay attention to your emotional state, because it is valid. It will have an effect on your physical state. Try to translate the emotional state into rational thinking. Rational thinking will lead you to take action, and that is where changes occur.
  Some things we do not have control over. These things are in the hands of a higher power, always, and we must learn to accept that fact.
  But there actions we can take to help ease the burden from worries and anxieties. Change your mind, change your mood. It can be done.
Mr. Charming

How Rock Music Ruined this Country

Rock and Roll Music helped to turn me into a Lunatic,
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My dad always loved music, although he could not hold a note to save his skin. He had these old 78's, mostly Gospel music, which he loved dearly. This type of music had a great deal of emotional expression, or "soul".
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My dad would be working on some project in the garage, and he would have the radio on, tuned to some country and hillbillie station, playing music that I thought was dumb and abominable. Sometimes, they would play Johnny Cash, who was someone we both could agree on. I always liked Johnny Cash, and I loved my Dad. I still do, and he passed away some twenty years ago.
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One of my first albums was "Meet the Beatles". I think this came out in 1964. Even my parents knew who the Beatles were, as they had seen them on the Ed Sullivan show. The Beatles proved themselves to be very successful entertainers; later, we discovered that they were probably musical geniuses as well.
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I think that the sixties might have been the Golden Age of Television, which also went a long way to changing everything in this country. They had variety shows, like Ed Sullivan and Red Skelton, but also thee Smothers Brothers, and Laugh In, which were quite different in their natures.
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Growing up, I watched all these shows on television. We did not have much, but we always seemed to have a small black and white set that worked pretty good. Of course we did not have cable, or VCR's, or even color, so these shows had to be watched as they came on, or you would be penalized for missing a show and would then have  to wait six months for the summer re-runs. You sat there and watched these shows in the Moment.
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Television gave us the instant news on the Viiet Nam War. Every night there would be stories, and graphic accounts of the casualties, who were boys who came from small towns, like my town. People got sick of the news and .of all the pointless bloodshed. No one could come out and tell us we were winning this war. Television changed people's opinions in this country.
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Rock and Roll music was always in the background, changing the lives of young people everywhere. Young men and women were growing their hair long, smoked marijuana, and walked around nearly naked all summer, playing their stupid bongos and going to peace rallies.This all amounted to a lot of fun, and naturally the Government could not allow this. Names were written down, secret files were opened. We spied on our own people.
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My own story turned out pretty good. When I turned 18 they got rid of the draft, and in Michigan 18 was the legal drinking age.My friends were all growing their hair long, and so was I . Our adult lives stretched before us, full of wonder and promise. We were lucky enough to be born into this age of change, a maelstrom of it right in front of us. Life was going to be interesting.

Mr. Charming

Music

I was up late playing the music I love.
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I started by playing some classic Beatles. I played the album "Revolver".  I thin this one album signified a big change for the Beatles. The opening song "The Taxman" is a snappy little pop song, later covered by Stevie Ray Vaughn. The song "Within you, without you" was a real stretch fe Beatles. Listen to "Revolver". this album still holds up.
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One song I played was "Crosssroads" by Cream. I still am unable to replicate Eric Clapton's lead on this song, and I have practiced now for years. I will never be that good. Clapton deserves all the success and fortune he has attained over the years.
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If you have Rhapsody, like I do, you can check out new music fairly cheapy, and then you can buy the albums directly from Amazon, should you choose,

Mr. Charming

Pretty Girls

In my time I have had three very pretty girl friends. This requires a lot of work, as other guys are always attracted to them, and you have to fend these wolves off from getting too close to the prize. You also must pay a lot of attention to a pretty girl friend, as she expects it from you. All in all, they are a lot of work.
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Most of my other girl friends were just average. Usually with nice figures, but not so pretty that you had to keep track of them all the time. I am always attracted to smart women. I like them a lot. These women usually have something in common with me, be it sports, or life style, or political outlook. I love women.\
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Someday I might visit the Ukraine. They have a lot of beautiful women there, and they are all Christians. Uranian women do not mind going with an older guy like me. I should go there, snag one, and marry her. Maybe have a couple of kids with her. This is something I would like to do before I get so old I look like Pablo Picasso.

Mr. Charming

More Music

I love all kinds of music, and some jazz too. Recently I met a man named Floyd, who is now about seventy years old. For years Floyd toured with Artie Shaw, playing the upright bass. they toured the United States and parts of Europe. this story impressed me to no end.
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During the course of his travels, Floyd got to meet other jazz greats, such as Dave Brubeck ("Take Five") and also the incomparable talent, Bill Evans ("Blue in Green").
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Other great names to listen to are Vince Guaraldi ("Theme from Peanuts"), Errol Garner ("Misty"), and Sonny Rollins ("Blue Seven").
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I like music by Metallica ("Enter the Sandman") and Megadeath. One song by Megadeath that I have dubbed "Dave's Theme" goes like this:
  "What do you mean I don't believe in God?
    I talk with him every day!
   And what do you mean I don't support the system?
   I go to court when I have to.
   And what do you mean I can't make it to work on time?
   I've got nothing better to do.
   And what do you mean I dont't pay my bills?
  Why do you think I'm broke?


  If there's a new way.
  I'll be the first in line.
  But it better work this time.

  What do you mean I'm not kind?
  Just not your kind!
  And what do you mean I can't be the President of the United States?
  It's still we the people, right?

  If there's a new way
  I'll be the first in line.
  But it better work this time."

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I support Portlannd bands, such as Big Monti Amundson, Quarterflash, and Sharon Jones. I like the Seattle bands too, like Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Soundgarden (now Audioslave). I like Michigan bands, such as the White Stripes ("Seven Nation Army"), the Bob Seger System ("Two plus Two"), Ted Nugent and the Amboy Dukes ("Jouney to the Center of your Mind"), and Grand Funk ("We're an American Band"). I like bands from Texas, such as ZZ Top ("Jesus just Left Chicago"), Johnny Winter (Highway 61"), Stevie Ray Vaughn ("Texas Flood"), and Junior Brown ("My Wife thinks you're Dead"). I like Mississsippi Delta style blues, in the manner of R.L.Burnside and Ry Cooder.
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Music is an important part of my life. I began my study as a musician at the age of fourteen, with a mail order guitar from Sears which cost me all of $20 back then. I still play, and probably always will.

Mr. Charming

Indians!

I grew up with Indians.
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A lot of the kids I went to school with at Pellston, Michigan were Indian kids. These were often from large Catholic familes. They were usually poor kids. I would go to their homes for meals sometimes, after school. You would see cans of Governmet Pork, or blocks of Government Cheese, or Government Peanut Butter. These kids were always very generous to a little white boy like me. I will always remember them.
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When I got older, I went to a couple of Pow-Wows with some of my Indian friends. I saw this as an opportunity to get really drunk, and to dance around some. Later in life I was to discover that all this singing, chanting, and  dancing around was actually Shamanism 101. The Indian elders were using this rhythmic chanting to enter the Spirit World, the home of their Ancestors. It was magical, it was mystical. Give me that old time religion!
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Over the course of my travels I had the opportunity to visit the Hopi tribe in Arizona. They use underground "kivas:, or "sweat lodges" where they go to induce a state of Mysticism. White people are not allowed to attend these ceremonies. So I hired a local Hopi guide, named Jake, to walk me around this place, and to learn something about the culture from him. Jake told me a lot about the Hopi people. They have lived in this one place, called Walpi, for over a thousand years. Walpi is high atop a mesa. At night, you can see the lights of Walpi from miles away.
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The Hopi are a maternal, not paternal tribe. Property tends to get passed down through the woman's bloodline. Having a maternal view of life may have done much to soften the Hopi outlook, which is sprinkled with kindness and spirituality.
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The Hopi are also credited for their Snake Dance Ritual. This amounts to chanting, rythmic drumming, and dancing around with a live rattle snake dangling from your mouth. The snakes are in a trance, and the Hopi rarely, if ever, get bitten. It is Magical.
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The Hopi elders are all predicting the end of the world, as we know it, in the year 2012. We had better get ready. There is not much time left.
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If you want to find out more about the Hopi people, and their neighbors the Navajo, I would recommend reading the popular detective novels written by Tony Hillerman. These books will captivate you with their memorable characters, like Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee. You will learn about some of the places I have seen in Arizona and New Mexico. You will also discover that an important component in the lives of these Native American peoples is Magic, pure and simple. It will give you something to chew on. It will give you something to consider.

Mr. Charming

My Delightful Oncologist Tells a Funny Story

A couple of weeks ago I went in for another of those four hour sessions. I brought a book with me to read. My Delightful Oncologist asked me: "What are you reading, there?" I told her it was a pretty good book, called "Mediatations aand Relaxations." It is good because it puts me right to sleep. I told her it was a lot better than a book I had picked up a couple of years ago."What was that one?", she asks. I told her it was called "Stop Procrastinating Now!". I told her I did not think it was that good, because I never got around to finishing it. She laughed at this.
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My Delightful Oncologist has a blog of her own, which is a food blog. It is patewoem.wordpress.com she told me the funny story.
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For prom night, her Dad hired a limo for her and her friends to ride around in. Her Dad was something of a practical Joker, like I am. He provided the girls with home made pate treats he called patewoem. These were just some crackers with meat on them that you could nibble on while drinving around in the nice limo. Now the girls did not have any of this. They were too careful about staining their gowns. But a boy who was with them gobbled down every single one, they were that good! "Woem " spelled backwords is "Meow".
The pate was actually cat food. Yum!

Mr. Charming