For Doc

I don't even know what the word mentor means anymore. Now that I'm all grown up and think I've figured out a majority of life, those who I admire I tend just to call 'friend.' But when I was a wee lad I was influenced by many good people, most of them were family and the others were my teachers. And then there was one man and the only man I would call a mentor, William 'Doc' Ballard. He wasn't the family physician but rather a doctor of music ('You can BE that?' queried the 7-year-old), and Doc was the man who taught me to love music. He represented the highest ideals and greatest depth within music during my youth, the Artistic Director of my first boy choir. Doc conducted the top ensemble, and before you had finally graduated through the training choirs and into that ensemble you would sing under him only on the BIG pieces in the BIG concerts, so Doc had this aura about him that was understood. Most of the time you would see him float, rock-like, around the choir headquarters either jovial or angry but always passionately doing something... yet when he saw one of 'his boys' he would grin from ear to ear and call them by name, even if it took him a second for some of the newer kids.

In later years when I moved into that top group I would go to his house and sit in his kitchen with fellow choir studs awaiting my 'passing time' - a harrowing and nerve-wracking twice-weekly 10 minute period in which each of us would stand in front of him and sing from memory the music in our repertoire for that season, and if you 'passed' you would earn a certain amount of points for each song, and the dude with the most points at the end of the season received a medal you could proudly wear as part of your performance attire. One year I was in a competition with Carl Rabun all season long for that medal, and in the last week he beat me by a handful of points. I was cramming my head off trying to learn music - memorize it and sing it well in front of my director - just so I could wear that simple, beautiful symbol of accomplishment. And I lost, yet Doc and his wife Edith decided to give medals to Carl and to me. We had proved our point to his satisfaction, that we knew and loved the music, and that we really loved to wear those sweet ribbons. He didn't know how much that meant to me but in my actions I tried to show him that respect (except when a certain 13-year-old choir vice-president decided it was better to run amok in Rotorua, NZ than obey a simple curfew. He promptly removed me from office. 'Nuff said.)

Doc continues to be a beacon of quality, discipline, self-worth - all filled with the love he modeled and shared with us through music. In a few weekends I will drive back to San Francisco for Doc's memorial service, attended by those who loved him, sang for him, traveled with him, sat in that kitchen or on the tour bus, and were hugged vigorously and scolded even more vigorously by him. We will sing two more pieces for Doc in the cathedral of St. Ignatius where we used to hold those massive annual Spring and Christmas concerts. And there will be stories and tears in our reunions, vigorous hugs and ear-to-ear-grins. While our wives and children (no, not mine) will be in the audience sitting next to our parents, and our voices will resound a shocking three octaves lower, we will all be together as 'Doc's boys' again for the first time in a very, very long time. So I am uplifted and humbled, because I didn't take the initiative to thank my mentor and tell him, 20 years later, how much he meant to me. Doc being who he was, though, surely knew exactly his role in all our lives. Just as Edith said recently of her husband, Doc was truly interested in and really liked people. And I'm one of his boys. 'Nuff said.

Top 5: Cats Under the Stars

A much-needed homage to my favorite felines, simply five of the coolest animals I know, in no particular order except from #1 to #5, but there are no favorites and the list can change here and there, but ladies and gentlemen, as always, please... NO WAGERING! Click on the photos, the bigger the better. And if I sound a little cat crazy, I am, so shoot me. But stay tuned for more Top 5s including dogs, stir fry vegetables, new bands, composers, great lines, etc. My High Fidelity moments, and my admission that Top 5's are not enough to express joy but are necessary for our short-attention-span universe. Mee Owww.

GRETL - A born conversationalist, leaver of loving claw marks on backs and shoulders, she grunts when you sneeze and attacks when you pant. Follows ballet on TV. Signature pose: arms and legs spread in surrender position, full belly exposed, slight curl to body, mewing incessantly.






TOBY - Groomer and kneader of humans' heads only after he has first groomed his private parts; best paired with brother Griffin for maximum sweetness, and has the biggest eyes in Catdom. Signature pose: a single paw-pat gently touching your face as a morning reminder to feed him, then a double-paw-pat a few minutes later when you fail to get up.






MAX - An urban catboy who wears his tuxedo to every occasion, he occupies upper bellies since wider sister Gretl usually takes up all the lap room. Also becoming proficient in the martial arts. Signature pose: on your belly laying facing you, two arms in front of him stretching toward you like he's giving you a hug.






GRIFFIN - Lover. Thinker. Barfer. Will contort body around any shape made by brother Toby; his preferred method of self-heating after direct sunlight basking: microwave. Signature pose: laying with arms tucked under body, head bowed and eyes closed, facing the weirdest direction possible.






SQUEAK - Truly squeaks with each step when running to her food dish, carrier of infectious disease C.O.L. (Cat On Lap), which renders her victims seriously hot and totally immobile. Signature pose: sitting prissily on back legs with right front paw raised and curled up, Karate Kid style.

MT for the Masses

Have I ever told you about Montana? Well, I won't go too deep here, it's a big state with lots of ground to cover. American western writer Wallace Stegner considered the entire state of Montana to be "a very big city with very long streets." With less than a million people it may seem true, but you wouldn't know unless you drove those streets. So, imagine if you took the population of San Francisco and scattered it like seed across an empty state the size of California. That's Montana, complete with college towns and rodeos, hippies and philosophers, musicians and farmers, Republicans and Democrats, and everyone in between, all people combined to be outnumbered each by space, trees, livestock, mountains, sky. A state where the majority of people are still humbled by the land around them, seeing themselves as receivers of a gift few know about, not just as rightful heirs of a land just asking to be overtaken and populated. There is still resistance to that here. Here exists a pleasant unbalance: the land wins and the people are glad for it. That's a Montanan's secret to share at their leisure. I'm lucky to have a permanent bed here to sleep in and my family to live with whenever I want, so the secret is mine to share, too.

Recently a band called the Wayword Sons found their way Montanaward, setting up their folk instruments on the stripped down altar of my brother and sister's church for a concert here in Great Falls, bedding themselves in the house of the preachers and their son and his California uncle, resting their instruments to sleep next to the Christmas tree and atop the foosball table, laying their heads next to the full keg of Montana amber ale with the smell of lasagna and beef ribs and old hands mingling high in the air, and awaking to pots and pots of coffee and homemade waffles followed by the opening of instrument cases and a sit-down pick of strings playing songs you know the tune to and a few verses of but which can't be placed on any CD because they are everywhere songs.

That was a weekend in Great Falls, and as they slipped out of town in a van named Turd we followed them two nights later down to another smaller town. To get there we followed the Missouri River and watched it cross beneath the highway over and over again, meeting it on the other side of mountain passes or several times watching it slowly grow toward us across long and people-less prairies. You have to get out and drive and move around the state to fathom what may keep you in Montana. The "Big Sky" doesn't joke around, it's not just another Show-Me State or Garden State moniker. The land here rolls slightly and often, but as if someone took a rollling-pin to the land and you are a spot on a pizza, the land is pushed away in all directions up to a crust of long mountains which surround you in the distance, mountains which shoot the horizon much farther away than you expect. These mountains, at that distance, containing long rolling prairies within actually stretch your perspective and the sky above about 3X the distance you ordinarily see and expect. Just as an ocean horizon at sunset sends your mind peacefully adrift, Montana's big sky is an endless ocean above you.

This is where I come to get back home, whether in the kitchen with my sister, the studio with my brother, or with my nephew on the floor in Legoland. My lifestyle with them somehow elevates all that is important for a good existence, not a fancy one, but a good one. I usually grow my hair out and my beard gets thick, my belly swells and there is lots of reading to be done when I'm here. This is home, and a river runs through it, or at least to the north and west of it. There is wireless at Cool Beans, and lots of space on the couches. Good beer flows from the taps at Bert and Ernie's, and live music plays there most nights of the week, including a bluegrass roundup on Thursdays for anyone. The train pulls up outside of town but within range of hearing its whistle each day. The streets downtown were built in the 1800s so a horse cart could turn around, and each street has a back alley for your garbage pickup, extra parking, and so a guy like me can walk behind everything especially on snowy quiet days. They sell the best sausages at the Beer Baron grocery store, and the best bread at Great Harvest. There is more to describe, just as there are things to avoid which I won't mention, perhaps elements of small-town rural life in America which thrust some stereotypical images into your head, and which of course are true. But there are other truths about small towns like this which you can only uncover for yourself, and that's all I have to say about that, for now.