The Train of Pain

Hey family!

As most of you know, I am embarking on a 500 mile bike trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles May 19th. I'm so excited and I have been training vigorously. Last Saturday I did a 60 mile ride and the Saturday before I completed a brutal 71 mile trek through the outskirts of Alpine Valley. I wanted to share with you all the logo I created for the trip though. We're putting it on t-shirts and all that jazz. Right now there are 15 other riders on the roster. Carter, the guy responsible for putting the trip together, appropriately named our insane journey "The Train of Pain". He also commissioned me to do the logo. So here she is!

The Best Things in Life

Not long ago, Neill and I met each other in our little hallway. Neill said "How about a hug?" We both said "Why not, it's free." That got me to thinking about that saying: the best things in life are free.

What are some of these best things? For me, one is walking past someone's garden and seeing beautiful flowers. Not better than hugs, but one of life's little bonuses. Being told you are a cool grandmother, having a cat snuggle close, seeing a rainbow or a beautiful sunset. What would you add to that?

Part 2

"David, Jim Messina for you"

I think Dan and Matt will be able to relate to this, maybe Cody. Czech people? Mom or Neill???

I remember well when the Loggins & Messina "Sittin' In" album came out in 1969. I loved it, for both the music and the sound quality. There were many nights that Jay Perel and I listened to that album, not saying a word, just focussed on the words and music. We'd talk about the sogs after listening to them but not during. We didn't want to interrupt the music.

The "Sittin' In" album led me to the Poco records, which had come earlier. That great band, with Jim Messina as producer/singer/guitarist and Timothy Schmidt, was a forerunner of the Eagles. Jim also engineered and played on the Buffalo Springfield albums -- another groundbreaking lyric oriented country-rock band that ushered in the Eagles and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young supergroups.

Anyway, I loved Loggins & Messina and Poco and played those records more times than I could ever count. Back when 8-track players were the big thing for car sound systems, I made my own Poco 8-track tapes with the EQ adjusted just right for the acoustics of the Pontiac Tempest that I bought from Uncle Leo.

All those songs burned themselves not just into my consciousness, but America's and truly, the world's. Danny's Song, Watching The River Run, House At Pooh Corner, Angry Eyes...all those others. They were a very real part of the fabric of the 70's and 80's, inextricably linked to so many memories and events back then.

So imagine my surprise when Joe answered a call in the shop and shouted "David, Jim Messina for you". He was phoning about having some older tube gear serviced, and wanted to know if I might like to buy some gear he was phasing out. Many long conversations resulted, must involving stories about the old days and discussions about gear and recording techniques. It was an incredible thrill to ask Jim questions about the old records and hear his enthusiastic answers.

Yesterday morning a Fedex truck pulled up with a package. We weren't expecting any overnight shipments so it was a little puzzling. Inside the box was a copy of the "The Best of Loggins & Messina, Sittin' In Again", along with a very nice cover letter.

Listening to L&M and Poco in the 70's, I would never imagined that Jim Messina himself would one day be phoning me and telling me the stories behind those albums, much less sending copies of his records to me. It amazes me, and is a great honor that I wanted to pass on to my family.

Thanks Jim - you made my week, and maybe my whole year.

an idea

Hey Uncle Matt - could you add the link for the pictures sites made so far to the right hand screen menu?

Unclematt made the comment that in the corporate world ther are no mistakes, just :"opportunities". That struck me as an ineresting topic to open. What mistake have you made that truly turned into an opportunity.
What springs to mind for me is way back when i first began teaching. I mentioned somewhere else how I had gotten to be a music teacher, the dream job of my life. I left out an important piece. When I graduated from UCLA, I was offered a job with LA City Schools, and with Burbank City Schools. I chose the second, as it was a much smaller district and would, I felt, be easier to fit into. I began my teaching in September of 1950 (talk about ancient history!) I was assigned to a first grade class. The principal seemed to feel I was doing OK, even though he had to point out some things that I needed to do better. Unfortunately my class was small, so small, in fact, that in the middle of the year I was assigned to a different school, and my former class distributed among other first grade classes.
In the new school, I was assigned to a class directly across from the office. It had been taught by a beginning teacher like myself. She was, however, pregnant when she began, and it was time for her to leave. At that time, the first graders had been assigned to classes according to their ages, and this was the youngest bunch. I found they did things like skipping on a row of table tops, ineracting whether it was appropriate or not. It was a huge chore to get them to get into a line and walk somewhere. In short, I was not up to the task. I began making mistakes in trying to teach them. I got a few notes from the office staff asking me to close my door because they were disturbed by the noise in my classroom. I did not teach well. At the end of the year, I was asked to resign.
Ever since I had been in the 4th grade, I had wanted to be a teacher. Well, actually, a music teacher in a school, but at least a teacher. Now I had failed. I could not even apply for a position in another district, because I would get such a poor recommendation from the Burbank principal.
After sloughing in despair for a time, I finally had the courage to try to think of a way out. That's when I realized that I had been accepted by the LA District. With some apprehension, I decided to call them and see if my name was still active on the list. It was! So I let them know that I was now available. Within a few weeks I got that call from a music supervisor, asking if I would like to be a music teacher. I was absolutely filled with joy.

ånd to think that if I hadn't made so many mistakes teaching in Burbank, where of course there were no music teachers, I would never have become the happy, confident, successful teacher that I did. Thanks be to God.

Candid Camera

Hello everyone - in case anyone is interested, I just opened a "flickr" account. In case some of you don't know what that is - flickr is being called the "photographic revolution" when it comes to photographers networking and sharing their work with the world. Anyone can join - and as a matter a fact - it's free! It's a great way to share your photos with everyone you know, all the while avoiding the pain of emailing them out to individuals. The great thing is too, if you like any the photos -you can simply download or drag them to your desktop - high res and everything - free! It's so awesome. I highly recommend that we all open up flickr accounts so we can share or photographic lives with eachother. Or we could even open a "Kulka" flickr photo account. Anyways - here is the link to mine and emily's:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/codysglasseye/

(side note - you don't have to be a member to view the photos - which is great too - it's completely open to the public, unless you mark the pictures private - in which they will can only be accessed via password.)

Enjoy!

Hey, check out this low quality screen shot. I just recently noticed something interesting: Notice in this picture how some topic titles are highlighted? I think that's how blogger signifies that new-ish comments exist.

I haven't figured out what exactly sets off the highlight, but I added a comment to an ancient topic, and it changed from dark to bright the next time I loaded the page.

Will wonders never cease?

What I learned at camp

In another topic, Western Sage notes:

"I can tell you right now that my mother went to work at a laundry, ironing shirts. I still use what she taught me about how best to do that, even though I have amended it a little. I can remember her starting me out ironing my dad's handkerchiefs, and how proud it made me to tell him that I had done that for him. Obviously it took few steps before we got to shirts.
An interesting follow-up to this would be for the rest of you to tell us something you remember learning how to do from your parents or someone else in the family. Any takers?"

I thought this was better as a whole new topic, so I moved it here. I'll copy eesmall's comment in here and add mine. Then, let's humor the old girl and add some more comments, eh?

A Question for Grandmama

Sasha and I were chatting about the family tree. And there was one important fact - okay two - that I can't remember. Okay, there's lots of stuff I don't remember, but you can only put so much in a blog topic before people start getting up for a sandwich midway, stop to feed the cat and then forget they were here reading this thing at all. In fact, see what I mean?

So anyway, we were talking about the family tree, and not that these are the two most important things about that branch, but it was what we were chatting about. And since I didn't know, I'm going to ask for our resident historian to fill in the blanks.

First off, what was Western Sage's mother's name?

Second, how did Herman meet Nanny?

if it ain't broke, don't fix it

I can't say I agree with the change over to the forum. I think you will find that with these multiple folders/topics going on, it's going to get more complicated to follow what's where and what is most current. What I love about the blog is everything is centralized ( prettier ) and linear, as opposed to folders inside of folders inside of folders. I don't think that the forum has any organization, everything is all over the place. Anywayz I suppose I'm a minimalist and always sway towards "less is more".

Kulka Forum (again)

It's gotten eerily quiet in here. Is there a boycott I'm not aware of?

There has been a thought to move this away from "weblog" software to "forum" software. I like the idea a lot, because the latter is designed to show you what new topics or comments came along since you last logged in. It also has some organization to it. That is, we can divide the topics up into categories as we see fit.

In case you missed it, click this link to Kulkablog, The Forum. Create an account, kick the tires, take it for a test drive. Then either post a comment over there or back here and let us know what you think.

And hurry it up for cryin' in the rain. I have an idea for a new topic, but I'm waiting to see which place I should post it in.

Ciao,
Matt