DevelopingStorm

It's been an amazing couple of years. I say this without hyperbole, learning guitar has been the best thing I've done for myself in decades.   Not only have I learned to play a cool instrument,  the process has forced me to develop new ways of listening to music; both in developing an ear for pitch and understanding the way music is constructed.   I've also discovered that the discipline of practicing with a metronome has very similar effects to what I've experienced with meditation.  The repetitive click-click-click and the concentration on small hand movements has been wonderful for stress relief and developing focus.  Finally, leaning to play guitar has also expanded my circle of friends to include some wonderful new folks. Guitars have always excited me.  When I was a teen I wanted to be Jimmy Page or Neil Young.  I was just too afraid to actually try.  Sure, I had other excuses too but it really boils down to fear.  I was afrai...

Just a quick post to plug my awesome guitar teacher Liz Lawrence of Root Note Studio in Lowell.   I've been taking lessons from Liz now for around 6 months and I've had a lot of fun and I've learned so much.  I'm just a beginner so I can't comment on her musical abilities much beyond that they seem magical to me but I can tell you she's a great teacher who makes learning fun and who constantly challenges me in ways that invariably improve my playing. I take lessons once a week down at her teaching space in Whitesett Guitar Works on Market Street.  It's a cool and funky old industrial space that defies description.  Parking is easy enough, just make sure you have some change for the meters. Highly recommended.

The guitar playing is sloppy, the rhythm is bad and the singing would send a dog scurrying for cover but considering I'm a complete beginner I'm pretty excited by it.   It took me a few takes to get through even this single verse and chorus so it's still a work in progress but I really wanted to get this working for St. Patrick's day.   I used these chords and lyrics . A big thanks to FlynnerFolkSongs for his great tutorial on YouTube .

Rhythm.  I don't have it.  Yet, anyway.  At times it feels like my inner clock has sprung a spring.   I'm not dissuaded however.  I'm working under the assumption that the rhythm guiding part of brain just needs some exercise and that, like anything else, it will come with practice. It's the practice that I really wanted to post about.   Or rather how it so much it reminds me of  meditation.   I don't recall whether I've posted about meditation in the past but I use it for stress relief.  The meditation technique I've used calls for you to focus your mind on your breathing and then work to remain focused on that and that alone.  When a random thought intrudes you notice it, categorize it and then go back to focusing on your breathing.   It's one of the many things in life that takes only minutes to learn but you can spend a lifetime trying to master. Guitar rhythm practice is very similar.   Rather, instead of bre...

Personally, 2011 was an good year. I had all sorts of new experiences. Most of them were fun and those that weren't I at least found interesting and educational. Top of my 2011 list had to be my trip to Ireland, with Jayne and our friends the Lizottes. It wasn't a relaxing trip but we saw a lot.  Since I'm picking superlatives, I would have to pick getting off the paved roads and exploring the Burren as my favorite activity.  It felt like being on a different planet.  The fact that the rock were formed from the limestone sediment of the ocean floor 350 million years ago just made it that much cooler. I also learned a couple of new words: "grikes" and "clints". The "grikes" are the cracks between the rocks while the "clints" are the sections of rock. I don't know what it says about me that on a green island, with all it's wonderful coastline and it's population of music loving, stout drinkers, I'd pic...

I hiked the Cardigan Loop last weekend.  I did the Manning trail up Firescrew and then over Cardigan and down the Clarke to the Clark/Holt cutoff.  It was a great hike.  It was also the first time I've done that route.  For all the times I've climbed Cardigan I've never had a trail map before.  My first few times hiking it were with my old trail crew friends and they all knew the mountain.  Subsequently I've just hiked the paths I knew.    I finally went looking for map though and I found this PDF version using Google.  It was hosted at the NH division of Forests and Lands but with no apparent linking page so who knows when some file clean up might delete it.  I've taken a snapshot for safe keeping.  If you're looking for a not-too-difficult day hike this is a great one.

Over the years I've bought a lot of albums.  According to iTunes I have 536 albums and this doesn't count the music I've deleted nor the records, tapes and CDs that never made the move to digital. Within this collection of albums there are a lot of memories.  I can still remember flipping through albums at the record store in the Village Street plaza in Marblehead, looking at the endless possibilities and wondering what to buy.  With a little luck and the help of a school friend who played in a band I made some good choices that have stood the test of time. American Beauty, Physical Graffiti, Decade, Exodus. I've also bought my share of stinkers.  I'm not immune to the fashion of the day.  I bought a Loverboy album once.  I had a couple of Fog Hat albums.  I've also bought music to impress girlfriends and I freely admit I've bought more than one album just because the artwork looked cool. But this post wasn't inspired by albums that fit either ...

R.I.P. Ryan Dunn (Actor/Stuntman from Jackass, etc) but honestly I'm not surprised you're dead.  I'm more surprised that A. You lived as long as you did and B. More of your cohorts didn't precede you to the grave. Don't take me wrong.  I like risk takers.  They are a fun group.  I wish I had more guts to do some of the crap they do.  I'm just not surprised when they die. I can't even mourn that much for their friends and families.  A Daredevil seldom dies a tragic death.  It would have to be something really ironic for it to be tragic - like slipping on a banana peel.   A drunken, speeding car crash is not ironic.  On a scale of tragic deaths I'd say a Daredevil's (non ironic) falls somewhere between that of a Volunteer Soldier's and a Mercenary's. People had to have seen this coming - at least as a distinct possibility  They were delusional if they didn't.   When a loved one is living the lifestyle of an adrenaline junky you ...

In honor of Father's Day I sat down too write a post about my father, John Francis Lyons, who died in 1997 at the age of 78.  I figured it would be easy since he had such a strong impact on me; but I find I'm struggling.  In my memories the things that made him such a awesome Dad stretch across the years into a web that defines the shape of my youth but is made of such fine thread I can't find any single anecdote or story that does the man justice. I can tell you this.   Everyone called him Jack.  I don't think I ever heard someone call him John, my mother included. He was whip smart, a lot smarter than me.  He was a poor Cambridge kid who got a full boat  R.O.T.C. scholarship to M.I.T.  Graduated class of 41. He spent WWII in Panama defending the canal.   Even at a young age he had white/gray hair piercing blue eyes.  Women always commented that he looked like Henry Fonda. He loved to sail, hike and ski and dragged the family ...

Have you seen the Paul Verhoeven movie Starship Trooper?  In the movie the heroes fight bug aliens that attack in waves of chitinous clicking and mandible drooling mayhem.  If the movie wasn't so silly it would be horrifying. We are in the end game of my project at work and the thought struck me that at this stage in the development cycle my reality has a lot in common with the soldiers in that movie.  I'm a bug hunter.  The bugs come at me and I kill them; but no matter how many I kill it seems there is always another one behind it.   As in the movie, most are easy to kill,  but every so often there's a boss bug that's a little harder to get your blaster zeroed in on.  In the end it's a loud and messy affair with blood and guts spraying everywhere. This isn't to say I think our project is buggy.  I think we've done a great job but the reality is that everyone on the greater team is now looking for the flaws.  It's a time of focused negat...

I just returned home from a wonderful trip to Ireland.  It was my first visit and fulfilled a life long dream.  Even so I was unprepared for how much the country appealed to me.   It really got under my skin.   It was like it fit my DNA.  From the culture to the landscape it felt very homey.  I've heard other people express similar emotions after visiting their ancestral countries.  I wonder if there's something beyond the psychological involved?  Were my eyes really tuned by evolution to prefer the light and the colors of the landscape of that country? Other thoughts: The food is great.   The smoked Salmon is fantastic and the rustic brown breads hearty and delicious but even more so there's an pervasive attention to providing quality ingredients.  Even in humble pubs there were always nice greens provided with a meal.  I never saw the equivalent of the shitty Iceberg lettuce salad with hothouse to...

I spent the weekend getting ready for my annual Hermit Island camping trip.  Yesterday I needed to stock up on beer and pick up a couple of bottles of good tequila for our traditional tequila alter (pictured above).   There are a couple of very good liquor stores near my home (Harrington Wine and Spirits in Chelmsford and Acton Liquors) and I'm familiar with both their selections but I was looking to find something special and different so I decided to go on a little field trip to Julios.  I'd seen Julio's mentioned on a couple of blogs as having a great beer selection and I recalled I'd actually been there a few times 15 years or so ago when my parents where living at the Willows senior care facility in Westborough.  I figured I'd take a trip out that way and check the place out again. It was well worth the trip.   The beer selection was superior to either of my local places and I'd venture to say the best I've seen.  There were ...

 Ikiru After suffering through Avatar I felt the need to watch something with potentially more redeeming value.  I recorded Ikiru a couple of months ago when AMC was honoring Kurosawa with a movie marathon to coincide with what would have been his 100th birthday.  Today seemed like as good a time as any to watch it. Going in I knew only two pieces of information about this film.  First, I knew it was directed by Kurosawa and second that it involved an old man facing his mortality.  What I didn't know was that it stared the same awesome actor who played the lead Samurai in Kurosawa's arguably most famous film 'The Seven Samurai' and that rather than being a medieval period piece (as have been all the Kurosawa films I've seen)  this one took place in 1950s Japan. The plot is simple.  The protagonist, Kanji Watanabe, a senior government bureaucrat learns he has stomach cancer and only months to live.  The news of his impending death forces hi...

While surfing around on the internet this morning I landed on something I thought was interesting and was considering mentioning it on my blog or on Facebook when it occurred to me that perhaps the more interesting story was how I came to be reading the particular story in the first place. This in turn reminded me of one of my favorite series from the late 70 early 80; Connection s, the BBC series hosted by James Burke and shown on PBS.   The series was fascinating because it took the unusual approach of showing history in cross section, like a cut-away diagram of a complex machine, and showed viewers all the interesting tidbits that preceded and ultimately led to an important historical event. Of course, I'm not comparing my link discovery to an important historic event.  I mention the show because it exemplifies how the back-story and some seemingly innocuous events can all lead up to something unexpected. My personal connection story went like this:  As I s...