J. Ojanpera

   I know; there are a thousand or more churches with the name " New Life ". That's not what I am talking about. I want to talk about what it means to find yourself in a situation that literally makes you feel like an ingredient has been added, and it opens you up to a completely new kind of life.    I'm talking about music in particular. Any time you add new elements to the old, it produces new life; musically. My way of viewing the group setting is through a wide lens. I love to improv (jam) with random people. Achieving something congruent with complete strangers is a feeling that I will describe; maybe.    A group of five people sit down at a conference table. One member puts a piece of paper on the table that has a short line drawn on it in pencil. The others observe the line, then pull their instruments out. One may have a red colored pencil, one a heavy black marker. (some musicians may use this as a muse; for the vapors .) These two turn their g...

This is sad; really sad.

   Gray, in my sense of the word, is not a dull, washed out mixture of boring colors. I imagine it to represent the ground between extremes; the diplomatic center. Although I am not fond of gray shirts, I appreciate the enormous implications of anyone or any organization straying to either side of gray. Left or right doesn't matter. Top or bottom doesn't matter. What matters is that we should all be anchored in the gray.    The song, " The Beauty of Gray ", by the band Live, explains it well, and matches conceptually with what I want to convey. In it, Ed says, "We will all learn to appreciate the beauty of gray".    What do we find in the "gray"? First we find all of the arts, the balance of our government, acceptance of all cultures without bias, basic and intrinsic human rights, tolerant radicals, and many others. There is plenty of room for everyone. The problems begin when we, as a society, rife with cultural diversity, divide ourselves ...

I was sitting thinking about the significance of four, and I identified a few. Lizzie turned four yesterday. I know absolutely nothing about numerology except the 11 thing, so nothing there. What was I doing four years ago? I was workinng for a man who let me work until I bled, until I started dying from the inside, and who did not care about those things. The bottom line was the bottom line for him. I survived the brutal southern heat by smoking copious amounts of Camels, sometimes a fried chicken leg, and numerous carbonated energy drinks -the kind with herbs and stuff. I remember one day in particular, I had been working for 21 days straight in order to pay for our new baby. I had no insurance, and despite the fact that our diet mainly consisted of pb&j sandwiches or grits and eggs, I earned too much to qualify for medicaid; then it all caught up with me. I had a beyond-splitting headache, and felt like I would pass out at any minute. I'm not sure how I made the two hour dri...

The closer I get to my writing, the more I write random notes and introductory notes about things I would like to write about. Sometimes I expound, but most of the time the ideas get lost in the turning of pages and the losing of post-its or receipts . Today I decided to post some of the Titles... 1. Patience And The Lengths We Go To In Order To Circumvent It 2. Multi-Standardized Methods And The Trappings Of Toys 3.Leaving It All Behind To Find More Lively Things 4. Scouring The Pastures Far, Far Away From Camp 5. Evading Trouble, And How The Truth Mingles With Fantasy, And Then Finally Disappears 6. The Wonderment Of Suspision And It's History Back To The Ancient Roots 7. Mexico's Utterly Patient Waging Of Guerilla Warfare On The U.S. To Take Back What We Stole 8. What If We Refuse To Use Transgenic Seeds? 9. A.M. Radio And The T.V. Dinner Revolution Those are just a few ideas that could turn into chapter headings, or something of the like.