IDYLLOPUS PRESS IS A VALIANT LITTLE ROWBOAT

We were down at Shorty’s Saturday for  blues guitarist Geoff Atchison.  Have you ever heard of him?  Huh?  No?  He was voted one of the Top Ten Hottest New Guitarists (Guitar Player 2008).  Which is kind of odd, being “newest” except perhaps newest in that he’s totally unknown in the United States.  You see, he picked up, in 1996, the Albert King Award for most promising guitarist  at the W. C. Handy awards, and for eleven years was a guest instructor at Jorma Kaukonen’s Fur Peace Ranch.

Marty played with Geoff for several years in the early part of this decade. He had a cult following in the west and during that time developed a cult audience in the south but his main staple loyal followers remained in Australia.   About a year to two years ago, Geoff moved to the states to make a dedicated push to building his audience and now is about to move back to Australia, a lot of hard work not succeeding in breaking him out of that cult following.

Which is really–and I mean REALLY–too bad.  Because he’s blossomed as a musician during the past few years.  And when I say blossomed I mean instead that he’s taken one of those huge leaps that you hope to see a promising talent make, but rarely see happen.

When Marty was playing with Geoff, yes, he was great, he was an exceptional guitar talent, but it felt a restrained talent.  A balance hadn’t yet been found between the technician and the heart.

But he’s since found that balance and loosed the restraints–and it was wonderful to sit at our little table the other night and watch him in that small restaurant/club, just a few feet away, playing on a stage barely large enough for four musicians (the kind of stage where the keyboardist always ends up playing off stage in the audience).   At the same time it felt peculiar that we would be sitting there in that small a restaurant watching him play and that it wasn’t a spill-over crowd.

It’s a pleasure to watch him play as he focuses on some far-away spot just above the audience; one has the sense of a secret two-way tractor beam, a strong reciprocal relationship between inspiration and creativity at work. And yet he’s not disconnected from the audience. He’s got the door wide open and is sharing it all with you.

That unleashing the restraints, in the way he manages it, takes quite a bit of maturity.

But now it all sounds very serious when in fact it’s a lot of serious musicianship in friendly combination with a very at ease stage persona. He regaled us with a story of his recently jamming on stage with the legendary Les Paul, who at the age of 92 is playing once a week at the Iridium in New York.

I had my little recorder in my bag and I thought of pulling it out because I wanted to keep some of this and take it home with me.

Even better…

On the way home afterward, Marty played for me the recordings of Geoff he’d recently done in the studio.

Wow. Marty has done an incredible job recording Geoff.

“Give me a CD of this,” I said. “I want a CD of this.”

So he burned a CD for me and I waited until today to put up this post so that I could have some music to go with it. And I hope you’ll take the time to listen because I simply like people to enjoy themselves and even though it’ll be a compressed mp3 on lousy computer speakers I’ll be surprised if you don’t find yourself thinking, “Who is this guy? I would really like to see this guy play.”

“Rule the World” is the name of the song I’m choosing to put up.

Rule the World

Since we began our homeschooling year at the end of August/beginning of September, I’ve just not had the time for much of anything but homeschool, which means projects like the UFO interviews have gone back burner for now.

We are especially deep into math right now.

Gotta tell you, last year we got Timez Attack to try to help with memorization of the times tables, and H.o.p. really enjoyed it the first few weeks, then fell out of love because memorization just isn’t there for him. He’s dyslexic and it’s not going to happen. But I’m more interested in getting him to understand concepts anyway.

I’m not saying Timez Attack isn’t good. I still think for kids for whom memorization comes fairly easily, it is a real fun way of doing interactive drill. Because, believe me, decent gaming programs are almost absent in the education department. Someone will say, “Oh, there’s a great computer game here!” or a website will say they have good games but they’re nothing but your regular old non-interactive drills.

Math became a real sore spot for H.o.p. last year. I tried and tried and didn’t find anything that would help, an approach that didn’t send him screaming, and eventually I decided, don’t fight it, wait until he’s a little more mature and try again.

Then it was August and we would be starting the more organized part of homeschooling up again and I had found nothing to use for math. I just knew what wouldn’t work.

Around the middle of August a post on one of the homeschooling lists caught my eye mentioning a series of math books called Life of Fred. Agh, math problems presented as word problems in story form. Aaron hates those! Even I hate those! I always failed story problems as a kid. BUT this sounded different. In these books we have a little five-year-old educator, named Fred, who teaches math, but the stories are more about Fred and his life so (for example) in the first five chapters of the Fractions book we cover everything from Fred’s height and his salary and where he lives and how he lives under a desk and how he wants a bike and whether he’ll be able to afford it based on his salary to contemplating millions and billions of things and how to not get freaked out by the sheer enormity of those millions and billions of things as related to math.

How do we know what was in the first five chapters of the “Life of Fred - Fractions” book?

Because I ordered it. The first book offered is “Life of Fred - Fractions”, followed by books on decimals and percents, different levels of algebra, geometry, trig and calculus. So the books carry one up through high school. The fractions book is intended for about the 5th or 6th grade level and assumes that a child knows their addition and multiplication tables and long division.

Does H.o.p. know his multiplication tables? Even his addition tables? Memorization of numbers just doesn’t happen for him. Which is one reason I’m so intent on getting him to understand process and concepts. And tools. To not wildly guess but try to reason it out with tools–and I don’t mean the calculator. So, if he has to, he counts on his fingers and does a version of a paper abacus or counts by doing groupings of 5. (And in this way he’s able to do 1,897,583 plus 4,435,412, and 212 times 334 and so on and so forth. And it’s all right. But I’m getting ahead of myself…)

Some people will think this is horrible that he doesn’t have all this memorized.

But it’s all right.

I’m dyslexic as well. I know what this is like. I just want to teach him not to give up at first brush. I want him to gain a little patience and realize he has tools with which he can work.

Doing his paper abacus on his work sheet he was able to pass his third grade math standardized test. But, as I was saying, last year he had no use for any kind of math. He didn’t like “living math”. He didn’t want any kind of math. Say a number and he would run away. I was happy even if he would count his allowance.

Anyway, it was August and I found H.o.p. had forgotten anything he’d learned thus far between the end of last year and the beginning of this. Everything. I asked him to write down a billion and he wrote down 100.

And even though I’m dyslexic and know what this is like, it can be frustrating even for me.

He threatened hari kari.

That is exasperating.

Plus, he knew nothing about long division. Last year was so crappy math-wise we never got to long division.

But I had a really good feeling about Fred.

I went ahead and ordered the fractions book.

Despite the fact that it’s primarily word problems.

But not senseless story problems. Not, “you have this many apples and that many bushels of hay so how many truckloads of manure did you move by midnight if you took time out to watch your favorite television show at eight”?

They’re all stories hinged on Fred.

Anyway, I ordered “Life of Fred - Fractions”, and talk about service, the book got here in about two days. Wow!

It’s autographed. How fun!

Seriously. It was fun to open the book and find the autograph of the author.

I showed H.o.p. the picture of Fred. That was the first make or break point. If H.o.p. (an artist) didn’t like how Fred was drawn, he would never again look at the book and he wouldn’t want anything to do with it.

H.o.p. loved the picture of Fred.

H.o.p. and I began exploring math with Fred.

And he loves it. He loves it so much that I can make up about 10 to 20 more math problems to do with H.o.p. for each chapter, and he still loves it.

No, you don’t know how amazing this is, that H.o.p. was sitting at the table with me for an hour or two hours working on reasoning out math and he was happy (elated even!) and not threatening hari kari.

Fred even covered the hari kari. He brought up hyperbole somewhere in the first five chapters.

H.o.p. can relate to hyperbole.

At the end of every five chapters you have to cross a “bridge” to get to the next chapter. You have five tests, or opportunities, to cross that bridge. If you don’t get the first test right (9 questions out of 10 need to be correctly answered) then you do the second test, and so on and so forth.

H.o.p. did his fifth test last Thursday, crossing the first bridge, and got 9 out of 10 right. Yes, it took doing all five tests and my making up all kinds of extra Fred stories for practice problems between the tests…but on Thursday he did it, he got 9 out of 10 right and on Friday we began the 6th chapter.

Time will tell if “Life of Fred” will keep H.o.p.’s interest, but I have a good feeling about Fred. On Friday we learned Fred, who is at the point of buying a bike, was about to be cheated by a ruthless, scummy bike dealer who, in response to Fred’s innocence, kept jacking up the price of the bike. H.o.p. felt for poor Fred and was so involved in the drama of the story that he had no complaint doing a lot of big number multiplication for such problems as finding out just how badly poor Fred could possibly be cheated and how long it would take for him to save his money to pay for an outrageously overpriced bike.

Next…will Fred buy the bike from the unscrupulous dealer? Will there even be a bike in the box when the dealer delivers it? And if there isn’t, then what will poor Fred do??? Four chapters worth of fractions and other problems await before we cross the next bridge, and I know from glancing ahead that the suspense is only going to keep on building.

H.o.p. should love it.

You know, we even begin every day with math. Can you imagine THAT???? H.o.p. keeps the pencil sharpener at his side and happily keeps sharpening his pencil. The first one, on Friday, was finally sharpened down to a nub and H.o.p. was quite proud and considered it a kind of honor.

Hanford Nuclear Monument slide show at the NY Times.

Tuesday was Homeschool day at Zoo Atlanta and they have a brand new program called Homeschool Academy.

Join Zoo Atlanta for an afternoon of learning and discovery designed specifically for home school students. The HomeSchool Academy is a unique program allowing students to explore animal and science concepts in a fun, interactive environment. Programs are grade-appropriate and include games, activities, Zoo tours and animal encounters.

Information on it crossed a list I’m on last week. I checked out the zoo’s website and found one must register and pay seven days in advance. So, I was lucky. One day later would have been too late for this month’s fun.

The 8 to 10 year old group was scheduled to learn about physical adaptations.

Discover the amazing adaptations that help animals survive.

Parents aren’t permitted….and I mourned a little over this as I’ve always wanted to see backstage at the zoo. But as they aren’t permitted and I get precious little time to myself, Marty took H.o.p. down, as he has just finished a big job down at the studio that has had him there 12 hours a day for weeks. (I planned to get some more writing done but then I took a Benadryl and sometimes Benadryl puts me to sleep and sometimes it doesn’t and today it knocked me out.)

H.o.p. promised me photos, taking along his little camera.

There were loads of kids. Marty said it took him 25 minutes to get H.o.p. checked in and they weren’t at the back of the line.

After the program yesterday, H.o.p. related excitedly that he had a great time and took a few photos, including this one of a model of a Panda skull. (His camera did surprisingly poorly at the zoo. Usually it does fairly well but the pictures today are all blurred and very overexposed. H.o.p. and I worked a little on this one in Photoshop.)

Marty says the educator told him, “You have a budding photojournalist.”

In other words, H.o.p. was the only one who took along a camera.

So…the Zoo Atlanta program, part 2.

It wasn’t all fun and games.

The dim spot was H.o.p. said several of the boys bullied him in the bathroom over his long hair, they kept pushing him out, saying, “You’ve got long hair, you’re a girl, you can’t come in here”, and didn’t stop until an older boy came around and got them to lay off.

What is it with all the boys who bully over long hair?

It’s especially weird for H.o.p. because few men in his world have neat little trim haircuts. Many of them have long hair or kind of long hair or are shaven.

H.o.p’s dad has long hair. And H.o.p. likes his long hair and H.o.p. isn’t going to cut it off for anyone. It’s not how he operates. He doesn’t change himself for people. And H.o.p.’s being an artistic, head-in-the-clouds dreamer sort of person, well that doesn’t make it any easier on him.

H.o.p.’s been bullied for his hair. He’s been bullied for his not caring for sports, not liking to play sports. He’s been bullied for being dyslexic. He’s been bullied for being an artist. H.o.p.’s been bullied for being nice. H.o.p.’s been bullied for being himself.

Thank goodness he doesn’t think he has to change himself.

H.o.p. never walks away when he’s bullied. He thinks he should be able to get people to be friends. He smiles and jokes and tries to be friends. Despite the fact he’s hurt.

“It’s like they want to torment my soul,” he says.

And he still tries to be friends because it’s impossible for him to imagine that they all can’t meet on some common friendly ground.

“It reminds me of racism and what it must have been like when African Americans weren’t allowed to use the same bathrooms as white people,” H.o.p. said. “I think they’re practicing hairism.”

I asked him if any of the African American kids bullied him.

“No.”

Which, oddly enough, is the way it tends to be. In fact, when H.o.p. was little, for several years he would only play with African American kids. Why? Because they didn’t bully him and he had gotten so he didn’t trust white boys at all.

So after the older boy had stopped the bullying, H.o.p. tried regaling them with a scary mystery horror story about a haunted bathroom (because they were in the bathroom, after all). He said he was hoping with his telling a scary mystery horror story about a haunted bathroom that they’d accept him as a boy, because boys like scary mystery horror stories, and that they’d stop calling him a girl because he has long hair. And he showed them on his camera some pictures on the memory card of some of the sculptures he’d recently made of an imaginary character (which is sometimes scary and sometimes humorous) and a little movie he’d been making of it.

I don’t think he showed them the film he was making last night of the camera tripod, because it was just a cute robot exploring the apartment and reacting to things with curiosity and surprise. It wasn’t a character with scary, mysterious elements.

H.o.p. says he thinks they liked his story because one of them said it was “creepy” and they didn’t bully him the rest of the time.

Who knows…were they swayed by H.o.p.’s story into accepting him? Or was it just that the older boy was there and then outside the bathroom they were again around the adult guide? H.o.p. seems to think that they liked his story.

I’m just glad the older boy showed up because this could have become a very embarrassing episode for H.o.p. He needed to use the bathroom! They weren’t letting him! And if it had turned embarrassing there would have been no repairing it, he would have never wanted to return to the zoo. Which he loves and of which we’ve been members for almost the full last seven years.

Damn bullies.

Heston is going to be on the Michael Baisden Show tomorrow at 4 o’clock. That’s 102.25, WAMJ here in Atlanta. If you don’t know which station in your area carries Michael Baisden, check it out here and give a listen!

Exciting!!! Baisden has quite a large audience.

Marty recorded Heston’s new CD, Storyteller (CDBaby link there), which recently came out–and, man, you ought to read the liner notes. The thanks he gives to Marty is beyond nice.

The CD is also now available on iTunes.

Here’s a nice shot of Heston below. I didn’t take it. Don’t know who did. I was called upon to Photoshop it some, just shifted the mood in its tones.

I was going to just comment then thought I’d write a post pointing back over to Quasifictional who today talks about her affection for fountain pens.

H.o.p. will only use Sanford Uniball fine pens. I actually settled on the Uniball many years ago, before H.o.p. was born, when I sometimes still wrote with a pen, and for the past several years H.o.p. will draw with nothing but. And there’s a reason I settled on the Stanford Uniball fine. It flows fairly well, doesn’t feel scratchy, and produces a nice line. I loathe scratchy feeling pens or pens that drag or pens that feel too lightweight or too heavy. No…I shouldn’t say I loathe them. Instead it’s a kind of visceral revulsion. Writing with Bics and really cheap freebie type give-away pens is kin to scraping lightly on a chalkboard with one’s fingernails.

But I rarely write with a pen any longer. In fact, many documents I have to sign at home I frequently have the option of signing with my Wacom tablet and emailing them. And I do it. I like it.

I become confused when people stick strange pens in my hand so H.o.p.’s insistence that he can only use one pen comes honestly. I always feel bizarre picking up a strange, cheap, ballpoint pen and most places that’s all they have for signing forms. I feel just plain odd handling a strange pen. I’m just extra sensitive that way (I’m extra sensitive in a lot of ways but we needn’t go there today). Anyway, today at the dental office, after my cleaning (I listened to my iPod the entire time and pretended I was sometimes in a Stanley Kubrick movie and sometimes in a David Lynch film…yes…that’s how I get through things like this in a calm and cool manner), I’m leaving and not feeling disoriented, am in fact feeling quite relieved (any appointment with any kind of specialist or authority, or anything to do with any level of government, really just any appointment in general where anything about me is placed under scrutiny in any manner whatsoever makes me feel like I’m going to die) when they call me back to the receptionist’s window (after telling me to go on as the computers are down and they’ll have to bill me) and hand me a postcard to address which will be sent in six months so I’ll know to schedule another appointment (which will only be done because of H.o.p.) and hand me a very strange pen. It’s not the same pen they handed me for a signature when I earlier entered. I looked at this pen hard and where the writing tip obviously should have been, there simply wasn’t. They kept telling me to take off the cap and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what the cap was. Finally, I threw up my hands in frustration and laughed about how I use a computer, that’s what I do, and pens only confuse me now. And they politely showed me how to uncap the pen. As Marty says, it was like a goddamn camouflage pen because he too tried to figure out where the cap was and the writing tip was and couldn’t.

Several times in my life I have tried to become attached to a fountain pen but it never works. I feel as if I should like them but I don’t. I usually put the pen away long enough that the refill dries out before I use it again and I think, “I should buy refills and use this pen because it seems more eco friendly”, but I never do.

Plus, many years ago for a brief while I worked in an office supply store that prided itself on its fountain pens and that left me with an acute distaste. They said they had people come from Japan to check out their amazing selection of fountain pens–and they did! Japanese tourists would trek in and head directly to the fountain pen section. The people who owned the store (uber-conservative) were so damn obsessed with fountain pens that the fountain pen area of the store was as quiet as a church. Reverential awe was demanded. They should have had kneelers. Only one employee was permitted within ten lengths (of what I don’t know, but lengths because it sounds good) of the fountain pen area. She was the expert on fountain pens and had worked there for years, and when she was ill the store would go into a panic. She had even learned a bit of Japanese in order to be able to converse with the Japanese tourists.

She had health insurance coverage. That’s how high up the food chain this employee was. And she was nice, I liked her well enough, but as she passed through the store a deferential hush would fall, she gently smiling as she floated upon waves of grace to the fountain pen counters. Still, the privileged care with which she handled the pens seemed less for love of the pens than a discreet determination to instill such awe in her specialized knowledge that no other employee might be considered worthy of even apprenticing in pens, thus preserving the exclusivity of her position, and her health insurance coverage.

It was amazing to me that fountain pens were so….involved. I was under the impression you could work at the store for eight years and still not be considered worthy of apprenticing in fountain pens. Ten years, maybe. But no less.

The woman who got me the job at that store (they were her friends) acted as though I should bow in humble thanks the remainder of my life. Because not only were they the grand cathedral of fountain pens, they were the holy empire of D-ring notebooks and expensive leather day planners. When I worked at the office supply store it was the expensive leather day planner that was a respected offensive weapon in the trump-you social status arsenal, and this woman loved their day planners.

Isn’t it interesting that the realm of pen and paper, considered such a democratic medium, can be so elitist?

I hated that damn store. It made me feel suicidal. Life makes me feel suicidal so that’s nothing new. But there are places in this world that are extra special secret gates to infernal fiery lakes of the damned, grottoes of existential hopelessness, and that store was one of them.