PRIVATE PEOPLE, OR JUST HIDING AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH

Private people learn the lesson early. Don’t talk.

But is that good manners, or something more complex.

Call me suspicious, but quiet people need to follow the rules just like everyone else.

Engage, contribute, and make it count. Do that when it’s called for be as quiet as you want the rest of the time.

However, when it engagement and contribution called for?

Mick Jagger had an answer in one interview.

He said being on stage is no place to be shy.

When asked off-stage why he was so quiet and thoughtful, the singer said he saved all of his energy for the shows.

Call it James Brown energy.

Were there any of his stage moves that you, either intentionally or unintentionally, made part of your own persona?

Of course. I copied all his moves. I copied everybody’s moves. I used to do [James’] slide across the stage. I couldn’t do the splits, so I didn’t even bother. Everyone did the microphone trick, where you pushed the microphone, then you put your foot on it and it comes back, and then you catch it. James probably did it best. [Soul singer] Joe Tex did it brilliantly. Prince does it really well. I used to try to do it, but in the end, it hit me in the face too many times and I gave it up. So of course I copied his moves. There was one particular one I used to do a lot, but then I gave up and moved on. You just incorporate everything into your act.

Off-stage, Mick seems about as exciting as Charlie Watts on stage.

The Inconvenient Truth Of A Facade

In modern times like now it’s hard to know if someone is who they say they are.

The groovy guy from college always taking up for the little guy?

Meet them later and they’ve morphed into a right wing nut job, anti-science expert, vote suppression fan. Who insists they are not racist pieces of crap when you meet for coffee.

Maybe yes, maybe no.

From one experience I can tell you it’s no fun being in public with an a-hole.

The disgraced Oregon senator Robert Packwood, the box wine, tongue kissing, former congressman, invited a group to coffee after he donated his papers to the Oregon history museum.

We all walked together to the nearest Starbucks in Portland’s Pearl District.

As a reluctant member of the group I watched for reactions.

Packwood wore his cover of a smiling guy doing the right thing by giving his stuff to the archive of history. He led the way in this troll party.

Inside the noisy coffee house, things got quieter as more people saw who just walked in.

Since it was one of my regular places, I didn’t want to share anything that resemble being okay with Mr. Packwood.

Serial gropers need a moment with the men folk of the women they mashed on. Private people need to speak up.

For a quiet talk. Behind the woodshed.

I would have had a better feeling if the former senator looked like he’d been slapped around by a husband, a brother, or a father. Absent that, I don’t think he had a grasp of what his actions left in their wake.

And I doubt a tune-up would have sunk in.

Private People With Lots Of Guns

With covid19 vaccines rising, and covid deaths dropping, mass shootings have come out of quarantine.

The big ones in the news happened in Atlanta and Colorado, but there were more.

From Gresham Police twitter:

We are investigating a shooting in the 700 block of E Powell. Four victims have been taken to the hospital, lots of police resources are onscene trying to gather information on what happened. Traffic is not affected at this point.

CNN listed seven mass shootings in seven days.

CNN defines a mass shooting as: a shooting incident which results in four or more casualties (dead or wounded) excluding the shooter(s).

They are all followed by thoughts and prayers and calls for gun control, screams about “My rights, my 2nd Amendment rights in the Constitution.”

One question I want answered is how close to the family of one of the blind pro-gun lobby does a shooting have to happen before they wake up? There’s lots of waking up going on in ‘Woke Nation’ but not about gun safety?

Jimmy And The Gun

I taught guitar lessons for middle schoolers when my kids were in middle school. Neither of them took the class, but it was because of them I did it.

One in the class was a singer-songwriter with a nice guitar and a voice and a song. She was an advanced player, like a star before they became a star. Her brother bought her the guitar from prison.

Prison?

Jimmy was a lonely kid who found his clan at an all-age club in downtown Portland. With others like him, he joined a group led by an older guy, maybe twenties.

They migrated from the club to a house where the party continued. Over time they all grew closer in their outcast view, and Jimmy was a favorite. To make it even more outcast, the leader was a gun guy.

One night he took a few out for a drive to an apartment complex. The boss man had a score to settle. He stationed a few out in front of the windows of the apartment building and pointed to the window he wanted them to shoot out on his signal.

He and Jimmy got inside the building and waited in the hallway near the door to the apartment. He handed Jimmy a pistol and told him to shoot through the door. That was the signal for the others to open up.

Jimmy said no. The leader pulled a gun on him and said do it, or die right there. Jimmy shot, the others shot, the police came. Jimmy went to prison on a Measure 11 crime.

His little sister and mom cried telling the story. They were private people telling a hard story of inconvenient truth.

The moral: Know who your friends are.