jilldomschot

El Tema Más Importante

I wrote several very long paragraphs on the Social Contract and then put it aside in my drafts because I honestly hate preaching about subjects such as this. While I appreciate reading about philosophy, politics, and religion, and how they intermingle, there comes a point where people are preaching and nobody is listening. Furthermore, nobody is changing society at all. Oh, yes, of course, one can change society little by little through the infiltration of ideas in schools and universities; progressives did this throughout the 20th C and are still at work today. But sadly, my post was triggered by irritation at the manipulation behind the phrase social contract…and if I keep going, I might as well just pull out my post from its place in the dreaded wasteland of drafts. Another tantalizing yet frustrating subject I had brought up in that post is my unpopular opinion that lowering the teenage pregnancy rate is not positive progress but negative decline. And on that note…

The most important subject is obviously the Gospel. However, the most important subject to this blog has become music. Accordions. My mind has been dwelling on purchasing a new one. After spending $4K on one, you’d think I wouldn’t buy another one for a long time. What you don’t understand is that accordions are like very expensive harmonicas, and acordeonistas need different keys. The one that died in the traffic accident was a GCF. After reviewing numerous norteño songs, I discovered that most are played on the FBbEb accordion. Hence, I purchased one. However, I would still like to have a GCF again, as that is the second most commonly played instrument. Someday, I will purchase an EAD because that one is also occasionally played in the genre. In fact, the master Ramon Ayala often plays an EAD. This confused me for a long time, as I thought EAD was commonly played, but I was being swayed by the sound of Ayala’s songs.

Apart from desiring a GCF accordion, I would also like an accordion with bass buttons that aren’t dummy buttons. Yes, that’s correct; my expensive Gabbanelli has dummy buttons. I suppose this is so that bass blocks could be added at some point; there are tiny tornillos that can be unscrewed to open up the left-handed bass side of the instrument. I’ve heard it’s difficult to persuade the company to put in bass blocks because it will create a weightier instrument with an altered sound. When norteño as a genre has a familiar sound due to the fact that so many of the musicians play Gabbanellis, it’s a bit risky to make any changes. The only way to have pre-installed bass blocks is to buy a cheaper instrument. Therefore, I’m considering purchasing a Hohner Corona II or Classic, which are quality instruments (made in Germany), in order to practice with the left hand again. Also, if the accordion is the only instrument available, and I’m playing for family or friends, songs would be more complete with their bass parts. Of course, norteño bands have rhythm instruments, so they don’t use the left hand anyway. In fact, one of my favorite online accordion tutorial teachers has a video on how to remove the bass blocks from your instrument for the above stated reason. There is already a bajo sexto y bajo in the group.

But that isn’t to say no norteño acordeonistas use the left hand — Celso Piña, who has now passed away, used his bass buttons in cumbias. I enjoy his songs because they have a different sound. I also really enjoy watching videos of him playing live. It’s exciting, the music infectious. He played a Hohner Corona, by the way. Believe it or not, you will even find musicians who play piano accordions in this genre. One of my favorites is Fidel Rueda. I don’t know how to describe his music, except as “sexy” but that sounds crass and doesn’t quite express what I want to say when his vocals, the accordion, and the brass blend together. I should probably make up a word, instead.

Speaking of word invention, there is a word for that in Spanish. It is jitanjáfora. I learned this word some time ago when I was trying to figure out what El Pávido Návido means. That’s the name of a song, and it disheartened me when I realized one day I had no idea what it meant, and I’m tired of my poor Spanish vocabulary. Don’t get me wrong; I can understand the music tutorials and interviews I listen to because they have necessary context. But then I’m thrown by a catchy song title. As it turns out, the title is a jitanjáfora. That’s either a relief or not, since I don’t know Spanish well enough to recognize nonsense rhyming words. Today, I will post pictures of the two rebel accordion players I mentioned. You can seek out their songs if you choose.

This is an album cover; I hope it’s okay to post. I wanted an image with accordion!

“Mexicano hasta al tope…” and other not so random thoughts

The part in quotes is a line from Corrido de Juanito, which, as you know, I’ve been learning on the accordion. Because I listen to the song on repeat, I have it permanently stuck in my head and consequently sing it all the time, especially the line above. The funny thing is the line ends up sounding like a commercial when sung on repeat, por ejemplo, “The best part of waking up is being Mexican to the top!” I’m sure you can hear the Folgers song in there, no need to spell it out.

Most of the time, I live in my musical fantasy world, my favorite songs filling my head and keeping me going after my three hours of sleep per night. But then I will have moments when reality wakes me out of my sleep-deprived reverie, and I ask myself who exactly I think I am. I’m certainly not Mexicana hasta al tope. Because of that, some old college friends might call my norteño obsession and accordion playing cultural appropriation. Is it, though? Is it really?

The accordion is German in origin; the name comes from the German akkordeon. Mexicans appropriated the instrument from another culture, in other words — from the German immigrants who settled in Texas and Northern Mexico. This is what happens when cultures rub shoulders. They influence each other. It is unavoidable, or should be. When cultures share music, dancing, and food with each other, they tend to get along a lot better than if they stay suspicious and aloof from each other. There is much cultural snobbery and myopia when people get their hackles up over hoarding aspects of their culture.

I will never forget the article I read years ago, in which a Chinese-American woman claimed the bone-broth fad was appropriation of Chinese culture. It didn’t seem to occur to her that cultures all over the world might have been cooking bone broths for millennia. This doesn’t even fall under the category of sharing; it rather signifies our forebears’ mutual necessity to utilize all parts of the animals they slaughtered. The Chinese were not alone in this.

If I were to only play the music of my culture, I would play the fiddle or one of those tiny accordions popular with hillbillies and the Irish. My family was part of Irish dance culture for years, and I distinctly recall hearing the accordion playing the same jigs and reels fifty times over. I mean, it’s not a matter of recall. All those jigs and reels are indelibly printed on my psyche along with big wigs and bling. But alas, the Irish don’t count Americans of Irish ancestry as being Irish, and there goes my culture. Like so many Americans, I simply have a mezcla of cultural parts and pieces, which includes Mexican pieces because I’ve lived around them my entire life.

Is there such a thing as cultural appropriation in America? I’m going to say yes. I was thinking about this at dawn, having been awake for hours. My body was achy and sore and I thought I might like to do some yoga. I don’t do yoga, though. Oh, sure, I used to. I appreciated its efficiency in strengthening and stretching the body at the same time. I also argued with other Christians who claimed it was wrong to participate in another religion’s worship. They argued against it because yoga, after all, means yoked, as in yoked to spirits and gods Christians don’t worship. I’ve always found it a little bizarre when Christian churches offer yoga hours in their fellowship halls, but doing it as exercise in one’s living room, sans spiritual components, I thought was quite all right.

The way Americans practice yoga is areligious to be sure, but it’s hugely disrespectful of another culture’s religious practice. I’m not sure what hyper conservative Hindus, who still believe in modesty, think of Americans who do Yoga Booty while wearing pants so clingy you can see every bump and jiggle on the legs and backside, wearing the pants to show off the effectiveness of the exercise. The way we practice yoga might very well be what people mean when they cry, Cultural appropriation! It’s rude and offensive. That and maybe chintzy plastic Native American dolls and fake moccasins. Marketing off a culture we very nearly wiped out to extinction no doubt leaves a bad taste in the mouth of the extant native tribes.

Speaking of weird activities Christian churches get up to, along with showing off their jiggly booties…no, I don’t think they make moccasins or plastic dolls or even bone broth. At one time, it was standard charity in England for bones to be used multiple times, once at the wealthy person’s house, who supped on the richest broth, of course, until finally the picked-clean bones were ransferred to the poorest of the poor to make broth with. But church food pantries these days are more inclined to collect canned vegetables and beans than spare animal parts. No, the weird activity I was going to mention is doing counseling sessions using the Enneagram personality typing system. In response, Reformed-style Christians are horrified, despite the dubious occultic roots behind Enneagram.

There are no known accusations of cultural appropriation regarding Enneagram; I just find it amusing that Christians have latched onto it AND that more Reformed types are making a fuss of it. I wouldn’t care one way or the other if Christians didn’t have a peculiar problem with lacking self-awareness. They make lofty claims that we shouldn’t be looking to any other source but the Bible for help, but what they really mean is “I don’t want to know anything about what I’m really like inside.” In other words, they don’t want to be faced with their own egos. Obviously, the ones using the Enneagram are busy identifying with their egos, looking straight into them, but that is not to say that there aren’t many Christians who refuse to look.

I took the Enneagram once, at my husband’s insistence, as he found it gave him an accurate description of his personality. Modern Enneagram type descriptions are incredibly detailed, unlike the truly occultic horoscopes. This might be why some people have an aversion to Enneagram. It’s not always pleasant to read that you fit an archetype that isn’t 100% positive. Was the type I tested as an accurate description of me? Sure, it was…at the time. And I really didn’t like it; hence, it motivated me to not be “my type” as much as possible.

Being self aware is a good starting point for making good choices in this life; I suppose one could be self aware and still make wrong choices. For example, a truly invested thief could be a proud criminal. Or maybe in more ordinary circumstances, a person might learn to identify with their negative traits and never seek growth. Well, I admit I still have personality traits I’m working on. I often shut the world out so I can pursue my personal goals, which my Enneagram description predicts. That pattern of behavior is so ingrained I believe it would be difficult to change. Like my pursuit of the accordion, for example… No, no, I have examined my interior and decided playing norteño on the accordion is a good choice. A wonderfully positive choice. It had better be. That norteño style accordion I bought was really expensive. Plus, I love singing in Spanish. Here it comes again. I. Can’t. Stop. Singing… Mexicano hasta al tope. It’s somehow gratifying to sing a song about someone with an intact culture, even though part of the song’s sadness is the subsequent loss of culture in the US, loss brought on by Juanito’s children no longer speaking Spanish.

Always Seeking Goodness

I’ve been attending the 8 a.m. Mass at another parish in town; the earliest Mass at my parish is 9. When you are an early waker, as I am, you tend to get impatient before 9 a.m. Mass. I wait until after Mass to drink my coffee and eat my breakfast. This is certainly not required by the church; I simply prefer it. Also, there is the ever-present problem of being a parish secretary who is already at my parish forty-plus hours a week. Sometimes, I need a break. Maybe next Sunday, I will go to 7:15 a.m. at the Poor Clare’s.

What can I do before Mass if I wait until 9? Read? I suppose. Recently, I discovered an author, Veronica Heley, whose books I would read any time because they are my special crack: they are cozy mysteries that don’t shy away from the darkness of evil. I’m partial to mysteries; most are cerebral and character-focused and use detection to bring about justice. Yet so many have sleazy main characters who are essentially nihilists hopping into bed with whomever, who don’t understand their own drive for godly justice. Heley’s books, while not having an American preachy quality (the author is English), feature protags who aren’t nihilists, albeit they aren’t perfect, either. The author clearly has Christian faith. That was a long diatribe to say that most books I have no desire to read before Mass. So, yes, the earlier the Mass, the better — before I’m distracted by worldly thoughts and cares. By the way, when I say they are crack, I mean it. I read the first four in her Abbot series back to back in about a week’s time. Then I gave myself a break. I will come back to them soon and read more.

Now it’s noon, and I’ve been to Mass and eaten and had my coffee and….watched a Lawrence Welk documentary that Color Storm linked to in my previous post’s comments. It’s an A&E Biography, and it’s worth an hour of your time (less, if you pay for YouTube and don’t have to watch the ads.) Aside from British mysteries and Mexican music, I have a general affinity for all accordion music except perhaps Tango. Tango* is just too pretentious for me. I’m like Lawrence Welk: I like to keep things light, goofy, and joyful. Life is full of darkness and evil with war and rumors of war — the evil one is always crouching at the door. But you know what? Goodness is also part of reality. It is True reality with a capital T, as that is what God represents. If anything, it is the evil one who usurped reality and turned it into a dark and terrible place, right outside the Garden where weeds consume healthy plants and blot out the fruit. And we humans fall for it. We’ve been falling for this illusory reality from the beginning. Yes, of course, I understand that weeds are very real in our world, but the purer reality is that when a garden is nurtured properly, it will produce fruit. And that is a true metaphor, both for inside our souls and outside in the physical world we must currently live in.

Lawrence Welk represents goodness to me, as far as humans can. He had a very public image and no real controversies that I’m aware of. Even his widow said he was an honest man of integrity, and she was the one who had to suffer for his music career that kept him away from his family for great lengths of time. She could have had mixed feelings or bitterness towards him, done a “tell-all, nitty-gritty, shocking bio” about living with a musician, but she did not. Yes, I’m obsessed with the accordion and want to make the case that the accordion is part and parcel with Welk’s desire for goodness. That’s not it, though, is it? If you want to like Mr. Welk, watch the biography, but please be aware that the A&E producers completely left out the reason for Welk’s staunchness about who he was and what his show would be pushing. That doesn’t surprise me — does it you? Lawrence Welk was a very devout Catholic Christian, who grew up in a German settlement of Catholic Christians. The ever-popular Lennon sisters were also from a devout Catholic Christian family. The intriguing part about the Lennon sisters is they are quintessentially American, with a genetic makeup of German, Irish, and Mexican. I understand that in many cases wholesomeness is just a put-on for the camera, especially if it comes from Hollywood. This show was not Hollywood, though. It was Lawrence Welk to a T. He wouldn’t do the show the way the network wanted to, and by God’s grace the network capitulated to him.

*Ja ja ja, sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that Tango is dark and evil. I don’t like it because it’s too serious for my tastes. The accordion is romantic and happy and magical to me, and I play it with all seriousness, but I want it to remain light to my soul…like bubbles in wine.

El Tau Tau

Since this is the year of the accordion, it has suddenly occurred to me that I should be playing El Tau Tau. Why? you ask. Well, it’s one of the greats. It’s played everywhere, at every party. Like most cumbias, it’s highly repetitive, and it might be simple, but the accordion parts are played very rapidly. In other words, it’s easier to pick out the tune than it is to play it with aplomb and adornos. Adornos are what make norteño and tejano accordion distinctive. The trills and noodling are downright magical. No matter that I now know the secrets to the magic tricks; like any apprentice magician, my own sleight of hand could use a great deal more practice.

The song is by one of my longtime favorites, Grupo Control. Their songs give me a thrill of happiness. Funny thing, I caught my son singing El Tao Tao today, and he admitted he had a playlist with Grupo Control on it. Being my son, he’s grown up listening to Mexican music but always professed to dislike it. His cover is now blown. It is funny the synchronous moments life brings us. I generally play my accordion while he is at basketball practice, so he isn’t exposed to my new song obsessions. I had been playing the song like a mad woman, and then I went for my walk-jog-dance through the neighborhood (it’s been below freezing for days, but the old lady dog still needs her walk — this old lady does too). When I returned, my son was home and singing El Tau Tau as if the notes of the accordion were still hanging in the air.

Grupo Control is not just distinctive for their magical cumbias; they also happen to now have that rare breed in norteño, a female accordion player. Her name is Jennifer Degollado; she’s the daughter of the main singer and bass player for the band. Previously, they had a male accordion player, though I’m not sure what he is doing now. Miss Degollado can also sing, which does not surprise me. Musical talents tend to be clustered in families. I’ll post a couple of videos below, one of the titular song, and another with Jennifer Degollado singing and playing.

It’s a Dog’s Life

I mentioned in another post that I’d watched Alpha, a film fictionalizing the domestication of dogs during the Paleolithic period, as the New Year rolled over. I made much of the song I heard as 2022 turned into 2023, but there wasn’t much song and dance about the wonder that is doggy friendship for humans. I think I even declared this the year of the accordion, as if so many years over the last two decades weren’t. Obviously, before I played the accordion, I was obsessed with listening to it.

But what if this is truly the year of the dog? No, it isn’t according to the Chinese calendar. I don’t mean that. I mean that dogs give me and many other humans great joy, and I have three of them, so three times the joy. Of course, as with the accordion, I’m not sure why this particular year would be declared as such, except that I watched a good movie about a wolf-dog to set the tone.

Dog behavior is fascinating to me; we might learn something from observing it. We can’t get into their heads, but we can watch their repeated patterns of reactions and make some good guesses.

First of all, let’s look at their hierarchical system. While I’ve read articles claiming that the concept of one alpha dog in a pack is false, I see a clear hierarchy among my dogs. Putting aside “alpha” for a moment, we definitely have a “queen bee.” You see, we have an elderly female dog, thirteen years old, who is as spry as they come. She’s a Shiba-Inu mix, and a lovely, loyal, and somewhat neurotic pup. In fact, she tripped me on New Year’s Eve because the neighbors were putting off fireworks, and she was certain it was WWIII, so therefore camped out somewhere I didn’t expect her to be, and down I went, falling on my thumb. I didn’t break one of my accordion-playing digits, thankfully, but she scurried off, now fully convinced of our war-torn world. She is a very anxious dog.

When she was almost eleven, we brought home two boy pups, eight weeks old. She put up with them then and still does now, and she actually enjoys rough-housing with them in the yard. She’s like a child who was an only for too long and is trying to recapture her doggy youth. She grew up with cats, I’m sorry to say. My husband likes cats and used to rescue them all the time. Oh, no, I found this poor stray kitty. I don’t much like cats and didn’t appreciate this, but to be fair to him, he was simply being a good firefighter. Naturally, people used to dump their unwanted kittens in front of the fire station or academy, knowing it was a fireman’s job to rescue cats — they didn’t even have to be up in trees.

But let me be absolutely clear: my elderly female dog (Kindle) is 100% in charge. The other dogs defer to her. She enters the house first, gets the first tidbits of food treats, and if one of the boy dogs annoys her too much, she will have him on the ground in a submissive posture even though she is smaller than both. Kindle is amazing. I half believe she will live forever, though I believed that about our longest-owned pet, a gray tabby cat called Frolic. Frolic weathered so many near-death experiences. She seemed invincible. And then she quite suddenly got old and died. She lived a good life, did Frolic (yes, Frolic and I put up with each other).

After Kindle, there is still a hierarchy among the two boys, and it honestly comes down to size. One of them is large, the other more a mid-sized pup. The large furry beast of a dog is clearly the alpha of the bros. These two came from a litter where the father was Australian shepherd, and the mother was a heeler, border collie mix. The big furry dog looks identical to an Australian shepherd, and the other like a collie. I don’t know where the heeler went. They are both black and adorably furry.

So, when all three dogs are crowding at the back door, Kindle enters first, then S’mores (the large dog), and then poor dear little Ryuk last. If I’m on the couch, S’mores will plop on my lap to show everyone he’s boss (Kindle isn’t much of a lapdog). He will luxuriate in my petting his thick fur and then climb down and growl at his brother. We used to view this as aggressive behavior and try to curb it until we realized he was giving permission to Ryuk to climb on my lap. Ryuk always understood, as he’s a dog, and he would peacefully climb up and take his turn cuddling. It was almost as if the poor would-be alpha (if it weren’t for that pesky Kindle) had to show a measure of strength before allowing his brother to take his place.

Have I learned something from my dogs and their behavior, as in, how might I apply it to my life? Well, I do feel like growling at people sometimes. No, that’s not right! No of course not. Instead, I’ve learned that if we don’t respect our elders, they’ll pin us to the ground until we submit. No, I’m sure that’s not the message either. Dogs are loyal, though, and they love their people unconditionally. Yes, I’m sure that’s the lesson.

Two Young Pups, and one Happy Elder, almost two years ago!

Un Rinconcito Soleado

This weekend I took my coffee out to the back porch and sat in the orange school-style chair that’s been sitting there since we moved to this house. It makes a good outdoor chair after all the nicer ones have been stored away for the winter. New Mexico is not easy on outdoor furniture. The sun is brighter here than, say, the Pacific Northwest — literally. It’s the elevation. The sun has less atmosphere to pierce through. It also gets hot, cold, and dry, followed by deluges of rain. Sometimes, the dogs’ water is frozen solid in the morning, but by noon, people are walking their dogs in short-sleeved shirts, which is to say that it vacillates between hot and cold within hours.

The sun was particularly bright this weekend, and I sat in the orange chair in a little corner of the porch, sweating. When I checked the temperature, however, I discovered that it hadn’t even reached forty degrees. I just happened to be sitting in a spot where the south-facing sun collected. The sun is powerful. Solar energy would work well here ninety percent of the time — it’s that ten percent worth of cloud layer that would be inconvenient. Of course, farmers don’t find clouds inconvenient, especially if they bring rain.

Some people are particularly gloomy and find all the dark shade they can. Others are of sunny dispositions and are annoyingly positive all the time. Yet others seek out sunny corners where they can rest for a while. To be honest, I don’t know where I’m going with this. I have a compulsion to write every day, and I’m so low on sleep, another 1000 words towards my ghost story or my memoir isn’t happening. Yes, of course, I’m writing a memoir. I’m always writing one, as the future will be curious about the past and want to know the thoughts of ridiculous secretaries. Unselfishly, I will oblige them.

I really love my ghost story, but I’m afraid it does require some intelligence to write, which I have very little of right now. In its initial version, a widow buys an old, decrepit house that’s haunted and manages to lure the hapless co-owner of a hardware store into helping her solve the mystery of her house. In its current version, I swapped the hardware store owner with a UPS driver…except I call the delivery service the PDex, and him the PDex man. I know, it’s dumb, but the name PDex makes me giggle like a teenage girl. Or guffaw like a teenage boy; I’m not sure which. I changed my male protag to a delivery driver because it occurred to me that delivery drivers in a city like Roswell know everyone’s names and where they live, and their presence on private property goes unquestioned. It didn’t just occur to me, honestly. One of the local drivers noted that she knew where I lived, where my daughter worked, etc., and I still don’t know her name. It wasn’t as creepy as it sounds. I just have an unusual last name, which she recognized after I started signing for the bulletins delivered to the church.

My ghost story ought to be gloomy, but it isn’t. I can’t help it. I want to create little sunny corners even when murdered femme fatales come out to haunt them. If you’re wondering how theologically correct my ghost story is, I’ll try to stifle a yawn…not because I’m bored, though. Oh, no. I’m simply too tired. I already said that. I find these are important questions to ask, as some Christians believe ghosts can only be demons, and not the spirit of the dead walking about, half here, and half there.

I don’t hold to such a rigid perspective, though. I’ve listened to enough question and answer sessions with exorcists to know that the “ghosts are demons” is the predominant position Catholic authorities take, too. But there is room for mystery in Catholicism. There is a willingness to accept that God might allow the spirit of a person in heaven to visit earth for a special purpose. I’ve often contemplated why there are places with weird “energy” to them, as well. I recognize that sounds new-agey. What I mean is, could there be places where the heavenly dimension has bled over into the earthly dimension? I don’t know. I don’t seek out these “energies,” as it were, and I certainly don’t go looking for ghosts with a special purpose. I’m only using the ghost trope because gothic elements in stories work. They work because we know at an inner level there is more to life than meets the eye.

Also, I think my poor widow woman needs help being ushered back to a land of hope where sunny corners can be found on Saturday or Sunday mornings. Whether it’s the spirit of a dead woman who will bring about a powerfully sunny justice, or the PDex man with his Santa Claus vibe (the real St. Nick was, after all, from the sunny Mediterranean world), who am I to deny my poor heroine her sun just because she will get a sunburn?

Año del Acordeón

Well, it’s certainly not the year of social media. I don’t have time for social media. Or I don’t prioritize it, I should say. What I have left is the blog that I’ve had since 2008 or 2009… don’t remember. Sadly, I meant to return to jilldomschot.com after killing it, but it was purchased by an Asian company and is parked with what appear to be Chinese words on it. So, while I’ve been blogging for over ten years, the blog has had peaks and valleys, and I’ve lost a lot of content. Not that I care really. Most of my posts were throwaway, trying to meet post quotas while following my interests at the time. I have some sadness over losing my 18th century historical content, but it does not go deep.

I’ve determined this to be the year of the accordion because it’s what I value at the moment. I don’t mean that I don’t value God, family, work, etc. Those are on another tier of value. When I was in my late thirties, I used to read a blog written by a British lady who had dedicated her forties to learning to play the accordion and to doing the other things she’d put off as a younger person. It was called Rainbows and… I can’t remember. I believe she also gardened and wrote poetry or did photography. I wish I could find her blog again, but alas, I don’t have a blogspot follow widget any longer. How time marches on. Her blog inspired me to dedicate my forties to several goals. Being that I will turn fifty in 2023, I’d like to assess how far I’ve gotten.

My goals were these: learn the accordion, write and publish a science fiction novel, and finish a mechanical engineering degree. Let’s start with the accordion.

When my husband bought me my Hohner, I had just turned forty, and it was therefore our 20th anniversary. We were a little drunk at the local pub, and he bought it from his phone, just like that. At first, I found it a little difficult to learn. The typical norteño accordion is a diatonic, with different notes played squeezing in vs pulling out. I went through the tutorial books that came with the accordion, one of which taught reading music in a handful of lessons before forcing the student to suddenly read it with no help. I have had little formal musical education. While I know the music system, I never learned to read music well enough to use as a guide for songs. I looked for other ways to learn my instrument but ended up leaving the accordion in Socorro when we moved to Roswell. This was no slight toward the accordion. I moved over here before the rest of the family and brought almost nothing with me, not even my books. At some point, I went back for the accordion and still did not play it for some time because I was busy and overwhelmed. Finally, I decided I would dedicate a half hour a day to really learning the instrument. You know the rest of the story, I think. Just as I was familiar and proficient enough to play my instrument sans craning my neck to look at the buttons while I played scales and songs, it was destroyed in a car accident, and I had to learn the feel of a new, slightly bigger Gabbanelli. I’ve since doubled my practice time. Have I learned to play the accordion in my forties? Yes, but there isn’t a magic line to playing an instrument, is there? In a year’s time, I will play it better than I do now. And a year after that…

Did I publish a science fiction book? Sure, a jokey one called The Minäverse and then one about the Roswell aliens called Order of the PenTriagon. I doubled my goal regarding that, and I somehow managed to do it while working full-time. This is where my forties began to blur into desperate attempts at achieving my goals in whatever manner possible. On my days off or before my shifts, I would take classes at the community college and stop at the local coffee shop to work for a while on my books. I did not, however, achieve the degree. There isn’t a full university here, in any case, but I still tried to scrap it all together. I even considered finishing a math associates degree and taking a welding course. But the welding course was very expensive and seemed an impossibility while working. The last attempt I made at this goal was to sign up for online classes in January 2020, but I had a strange feeling in my gut that it would be a bad idea to use my savings on these classes, and I dropped them at the last minute. When the Covid shutdown hit, I lost my work and didn’t have money coming in for months. I was a contract and freelance laborer by that time, and while I’d heard I could go before a hearing to get the Covid unemployment for this kind of work (I had several friends who successfully achieved this), I chose to wait until people stopped being ridiculously afraid and depressed and send work my way again. I could understand the tutoring and substitute teaching disappearing, as schools were closed and parents were afraid to have people come to their houses. But losing the editing I didn’t really understand. I had a number of books scheduled during this time, but the authors couldn’t concentrate to write, I guess. They were depressed and distracted. I tend to throw myself into work to avoid depression, but not everyone operates that way.

The upshot is, people can make all the plans they want, but life throws you the unexpected. For example, when I turned forty, I didn’t expect to move to Roswell, of all places. And while science fiction predictions have often become real, it’s difficult to ascertain which will and which will not turn into reality. The world wasn’t ready for the absolute ridiculousness of 2020 and beyond. So, that’s where I sit. I don’t know that I’m going to make any life goals or dedicate my fifties to anything. I’m just going to keep going and putting work in, as work is what I do; it’s what I’ve always done. Perhaps I will dedicate the coming decade to trying to hear God’s voice better and living in his will. Meanwhile, I’ve been learning a song on the accordion called Corrido de Juanito. It’s a very sad song by Calibre 50. I might or might not have posted the video before.