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A bunch of Anniversary

We celebrated our 4th anniversary a few days ago. So yes, we're older looking than in our picture. I have a beard, circles under my eyes, probably less hair, but I've thought I've been losing that since I was in elementary school, which oddly, Chris Martin of Coldplay has as well.

We cashed out a lot of retirement savings. It's kind of a strange situation. It has to do with the social security administration. That's an odd place. I caught an elderly social security security guard checking out a middle-aged woman's derrière, and then his eye, and he watched me like a hawk the entire time after that. There was a kid there too that smelled up the place, and then we shared an elevator with afterwards. He didn't have to blame it on anything, we're modest people, but he blamed it on a BK Croissandwich anyway.

The long and the short of it is that while all this money is passing through my hands, most of it just going towards our mortgage, Danielle gave me the anniversary present of a Gretsch Double Anniversary. It's a cool guitar. Hopefully you'll hear it soon, as we start a new round of recording a week from tomorrow.

Here's the very guitar, a shiny Cadillac Green 1964 Double Anniversary:

Poverty is sort of the new theme.

I started a photo album about it on myspace, but it's going to take some time.

Cleveland has been named America's poorest major city of the year several times already this century.

I used to teach in the inner-city, I pretty literally went crazy from watching myself become a failure there. The district on a whole only graduates about 1/3rd of it's students.

I taught music. I remember picking up a student who wouldn't otherwise be able to make it to a performance, three kids, no bedrooms for any of them, no beds, no mattresses. They slept on blankets on the floor, maybe towels.

It's a political problem, but the solution doesn't begin with thinking everyone should pull themselves up by their bootstraps because it's the American way. Not every start is equal, or remotely similar in quality.

The American way shouldn't be to allow people to live in projects like this:



We need to do better.