Paint

We spent the weekend in the foot-hills of Tucson visiting my favorite uncle and various cousins, along with exploring the cold-creek lower regions of Sabino Canyon.

He was a math teacher; actually, my math teacher in 7th grade, and I got 96% that year. He made me work for it and my grade was probably about 5th or 6th in the class. Robert Short (real name) topped out. He was a brain. I was merely one who took things in well. He had Ovation and Fender Squier guitars that are probably worth tens of thousands of dollars these days.

My 8th-grade math teacher was also very excellent but later on he lost his teaching license due to his irresistable attraction to young boys. Damn. He was a great teacher. But he fucked himself over, I guess. Anyways I hope that's all he fucked, just himself. I suspect that's the case. He was pretty passive.

I recall that back in 1970 or so he brought in his new Texas Instruments "calculator." He'd just gotten it, and it was the size of two shoe boxes set side-by-side, with a small 2"by 3" display screen on the front left panel. It glowed green, like eggs and ham mini-television. With numbers instead of pictures. That's all, folks.

Now we have calculators the size of a credit card that you get for free when you buy $20 worth of junk at Walgreen's. Light-powered. Anyways, the "old days" of proto-technology are long gone and now we have laptops and lawsuits against gay priests. Gay teachers are of course crucified routinely.

Which basically sucks, as long as they do not troll for partners from their classroom rolls. Who cares what they do with consenting adults? If only that were the case...

My uncle gave me an LP of Glenn Gould playing Beethoven piano variations when I was just in junior highschool, intent upon Cream and B.B. King. It opened things up for me. The following year he gave me Steppenwolf's 7th, and he followed that up by loaning me Miles Davis albums as well as Gerry Mulligan.

He had this LP of Segovia playing the Ponce Sonata Romantica that inspired me to immerse myself in the score, and I worship it to this day. I still have a few problems with the Scherzo but basically it's within my fingers. Thanks to my uncle and Segovia. The whole-measure rests in the first movement just slay me emotionally.

He was trying to tell me something that my own parents, musically inept, could not pass on. Though I still have an undeserved admiration for Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. An admiration that also makes me puke on myself. It's a mixed emotion.

I heard a snort while I was warming my Sabino Creek-cooled toes. It was a 6-pronged buck. We sat on the dam while it watched us and we watched it. A song went by, then it moved up along the creekbed and disappeared into the brush like a spirit. Which it was. Later we saw a Phainopepla pair. That was a treat for me.I just love those birds with their little headcrests.

While we walked out we coincidentally met up with relatives, cousins and aunts/uncles; we'd partied with them the previous day. The Glenn Gould uncle. Small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it.