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More reasons to adopt elderly cats…

Despite being a huge cat-fan, I’ve long been concerned about the numbers of birds and tiny mammals killed by domestic cats in the UK. So this article in the guardian, forwarded to me by BDB, was scary in that it puts a figure on it – up to 300 MILLION birds killed a year by domestic cats! That’s a terrifying number, especially when some of our song birds are endangered.

So what to do? Well, there’s some obvious advice in the article about not feeding birds in places where the cats are going to jump on them. It also talks about belling them, but there are counter arguments that it’s pretty distressing for the cat to have a bell tinkling away round its neck all the time (as it would be for us, I’m sure).

The best alternative for cat lovers is to a) get all their cats neutered – there are too many cats around anyway, way more than there are responsible owners – and next time you get a new cat, instead of getting kittens, adopt an older cat, preferably a ‘house cat’ – one that for whatever reason needs to stay in-doors, or is a proper aged feline and thus can’t catch anything anyway. They are harder for the rescue centres to home, but make MUCH better pets than kittens do – more mellow, friendly, cuddly, less skittish, less likely to destroy curtains etc.

While the Fairly Aged Felines do go out, they don’t go out much and certainly don’t go far, and in the year we’ve had them have so far brought in one bird between them, which was most likely dead before they found it. In the winter, when birds are most likely to be feeding in our garden on the bird feeders, the boys stay inside anyway.

So, there you go – aged felines are not only the cat-friendly choice, they’re the bird-friendly choice too…

Soundtrack – Mark Lockheart, ‘Moving Air’.

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A monumental passing…

Rosa Parks has died, aged 92 – she was the woman who on Dec 1st 1955 refused to move on a bus to the black seats, and her actions sparked the bus boycott that galvanised the entire civil rights movement in America. A truly amazing and remarkable action. I’ve no idea if she was a remarkable woman in the rest of her life – all the eulogies will probably say she was either way, though it’s a shame that ordinary people are so rarely allowed to do extraordinary things.

Which is a shame – there’s something in Rosa’s actions that should inspire us all – she was just a regular woman who had had enough. She wasn’t part of a planned assault on the bus boycott, she just wanted to sit down. She acted with strength of character, at considerable personal risk, and the chain of events she set of changed the course of American history. But she was probably just a regular woman. And that’s the magic of it. People like that are what Soren Kierkegaard described as ‘knights of faith’ – ordinary people living extraordinary lives. There’s nothing remarkable about them save the choices they make.

Anyway, Have a read of this Time Magazine article that listed Rosa as one of the 20 most influential people of the 20th Century.

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I really don't get this…

From the BBC news site –

“Defence secretary John Reid is “keeping an open mind” about whether a World War I soldier shot for cowardice should be pardoned, the High Court has been told.”

How can someone be shot for ‘cowardice’???? Apparently the bloke in question refused to fight, was court marshaled, and then executed. The case hangs on whether or not he was shell-shocked.

I’m really really troubled by a world in which someone can be shot for choosing not to kill. I appreciate that the middle of a war is probably not the best place to decide that, but to force someone to fight seems just as barbaric as shooting people in the first place.

I don’t know what he reasoning was, or if he was actually up for a scrap but was indeed shell-shocked. Either way, the lack of a pardon now seems sick in the extreme. That his family were punished by having his pension taken away so they ended up homeless is another injustice.

I’m often amazed at how far the world has come in the last century. Even in the last 10 years. A documentary on last night charted the relationship between the emergence of pop culture in the 50s and the changing attitudes to sex, drugs and gender politics. Some of the thoughts and ideas that were common place in the 60s and 70s seem so bizarre now. Others seem quite attractive. The huge leaps forward in terms of equality for women, gay rights, racial integration etc. are counterbalanced by the way the world has been divided up by the growth of a consumer culture and a transnational business model where entire countries are turned into sweatshops. I doubt the concept of fair-trade was much of an issue back then (though apparently the Salvation Army started a fair trade match factory in London in response to the dreadful treatment of match-makers by Bryant and May in the late 1800s, paying them four times as much and changing the work to protect their health).

Some things about the modern world are frightening – gun crime, the massive rise in teenage pregnancy and STIs, etc. – but on the whole, I’d rather be here now than there then. I’m a modern at heart. I don’t want to live in world where women are oppressed, black people are enslaved and people who refuse to fight in wars are executed. Sadly, all three things still exist. There’s still work to be done.

Soundtrack – Cathy Burton, ‘Speed Your Love’ (a really really lovely album – it’s a strange world where Charlotte Church’s crap attempt at being a popstar results in top 10 hits, but Cathy hasn’t got a deal… Buy this, and feel smug that you’re one of the chosen.)

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One thing to improve your life…

I occasionally get asked by students what the most important skill I’ve learned since I left college and went professional as a musician is. The answer often surprises them – learning to touch-type. I can’t even begin to imagine how long it would take me to do all my admin/web/email/etc. stuff if I couldn’t touch-type. Even keeping a blog would be unfeasible given the length of time it was take to get any thoughts down on the page.

The method I used was Mavis Beacon’s typing course – it’s only $20, and will save you that much in work-hours in the first three days after you’ve finished the course.

Go on, learn to type properly!

Soundtrack – listening through a load of the old duet sessions that inspired the idea for the Recycle Collective – earlier on it was stuff with BJ Cole, now it’s stuff with Andrew Booker.

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Benefit gigs

Went to two benefit gigs this week – one as an audience member and one as a player.

The audience member one was particularly fantastic, not least of all because the main musical attraction was Martin Taylor. The other main great thing about it was that it was for Eric Roche’s family. (I’ve just been booked to play at another benefit gig for them on Dec 4th – Eric’s Birthday – at Haverhill Arts Centre – more on that later…)

The first half of that gig was various friends and musical acquaintances of Eric’s playing and paying tribute. Of particular interest was a genius harmonica player called Steve Lockwood (who’s also playing at the gig in December).

The second of the benefit gigs – the one I played at – was on Friday. The events had little in common. What they did share was ropey compering. Given the huge impact they have on the smooth running of any event, it’s a shame when people can’t find good comperes for events. The guys involved in each of these were well-meaning and friendly, just not very good at keeping things moving and linking events.

At the gig I played – a benefit for the Pitstop Ploughshares – the room was an echoey church hall, and the PA was particularly shabby with no monitors, which meant that extra-special care needed to be taken to make sure people were listening, if only for the sake of the performers. This didn’t happen, and while it didn’t seem to bother the folk-singer/performance poet bloke who was on first, it was clearly going to be a problem for the people afterwards. Fortunately, a well placed ‘SSSHHHHH!!!!’ from someone in the audience quietened things down, and as the quality picked up, the chat level dropped.

I have mixed feelings about these kinds of gigs. The cause is one I support, and when I was asked to play, I was very happy to offer my time to help out, but the overwhelming trend with gigs like this is that while you’re thanked profusely numerous times throughout the evening, you’re still treated like some amateur who should be happy they are getting the chance to play to an audience.

I’m still not sure how to deal with these kinds of things – I obviously don’t want to stop doing gigs for good causes just because of crappy planning, and I’m clearly not about to start charging a fee for such things, but it’s pretty demoralising to play in those kind of conditions. Maybe I should just have a technical rider that has to be met for me to do them. I’ve tried the bending over backwards to make life easy route, and it just doesn’t work. I really do need monitors and a decent PA if what I do is going to come across well…

that said, I did sell a few CDs, and got to hear some other talented but very poorly amplified musicians play.

In other news, I’ve just redone the Solo Bass Network site – when I first set it up, the idea was to develop a little community of people who would chat about solo bass and spread the word about gigs etc. etc. Truth was, I couldn’t really be arsed to manage it. It takes a special kind of resilliance to bother keeping something like that going (see the Extended Range Bassist yahoo group – the founders there post incessantly to keep the discussions going, some of it readable, much of it inane bollocks, but it works, and the list has just about got a life of its own…) So I’ve not just reduced it to what it does best – a compendium of links to solo bassists and solo bass related stuffs on the web. Maybe one day I’ll get round to adding a low maintainance gig guide on there, but to be honest, you’re much better spending your time getting coverage in your local newspaper than faffing about with some website where the chances of anyone within 500 miles of you reading it within the time frame of the gig are so small as to be not really worth the five minutes it’d take you to upload the info…

Oh, and I’ve also been mixing an old duet track that I recorded with BJ Cole last December – sounds lovely, and will hopefully be up on the Recycle Collective site before too long.

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A recycled week!

This has been a busy week of recycled collective stuff – I’ve done the flyers and sen them off to the printers, written the press release, been tweaking the website (no doubt to be tweaked further as I change my mind about how I want to pitch the whole thing), and sent out the first gig date to all the listings people with the press release.

Now I’m trying to get some radio interest, and get the web-promo moving.

the thing I’m most proud of thus far is the look of it all – from the website to the flyers to the press release, there’s definitely a unified look and feel that says what I want it to say. What fun!

Tonight I’m playing a benefit gig for the Pitstop Ploughshares people, who disarmed an american plane that was on the runway at Shannon airport, bound for Iraq, and are in court for it next week. The whole area of civil disobiedience is a fascinating one – what actions are worth breaking the law over? – and I think protest at the illegal invasion and occupation of a country is as good a reason as any.

Hopefully the court case will raise the profile of the anti-war feeling in Ireland, where a lot of people are livid at it being used as a stopping off point for US planes on their way to Iraq. see warontrial.com for more details.

Soundtrack – Jenny Scheinman, ’12 Songs’; Shaun Colvin, ‘Cover Girl’.

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I'm a member and I didn't even know it…

About a month and a half ago, I applied to join the Musicians Union – I’d been meaning to for ages (being the proper leftie that I am, I can’t really justify not being in the union, now can I?) and as it happens, Theo and I were in about to apply for some arts council funding for a tour that required us both to be in the union (Theo, being wiser and more right on than me, has been in the union for years).

So we apply, and are accepted for the grant funding (yay!), but no word from the MU.

Today I ring them up, and apparently, I’ve been a member for a month without even knowing! The letter they sent me didn’t get through… weirdness. Must email them with an address clarification.

anyway, that’s good.

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The recycle collective…

This is an idea I’ve had for ages – a monthly night featuring all the lovely looping people that I play with, trying out new duos/trios etc. and a place to host visiting musicians for special gigs…

And now it’s starting to take shape – The recyclecollective.com website is now up and looking lovely, and the first three nights should be confirmed in the next day or so. So I need to do flyers and posters, and get it all sorted out. V. exciting. :o)

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Religion…

The problem of religion.

Jyoti’s ever marvellous and provocative blog has a huge rant on it about the place of religion in politics. His contention is that religion is irrational and bad things are done in the name of God, and has no place being used to define political life…

The weird thing is that, as a believer, I at least partly agree. Not that all spiritual belief is irrational (clearly, that would be a weird thought for someone who aligns them self with the christian faith), but that the use of one’s faith to solely define one’s view of the world can end up in a very totalitarian view of the world.

This paragraph of Jyoti’s is interesting –

I’m an atheist. More than that, I’m a radical, materialist, proselytising atheist. That means that not only am I opposed to Christianity as an irrational pile of poop, I’m also against Hinduism, Buddhism, paganism, Judaism, Scientology, spiritualism, astrology and, of course, Islam. (I’m obviously not anti-religious people. Some of my best friends are believers, honest guv! Love the believer, abhor the belief, I say.)

Now, the last sentence is clearly an irony, but the strength of opinion expressed in the first half is very close to what I hear from devout thinking people of faith. It’s clearly not raving madness, but it is dogmatic to a slightly scary level.

One of the wonders of post-modernity is that we are now wrestling with the definitions of truth can something be ‘factual’ by untrue, or vice versa? Can two seemingly contradictory accounts of The Way Things Are both be true. We’re now able to wrestle with the concept of abstracting truth from its linguistic strictures, from it’s cultural contexts and examine things for what they point to as much as what they state. We can embrace the concepts of ‘finite’ and ‘infinite’ truth, with infinite truth being essentially unknowable but anything that points to or describes in any way the infinite truth is ‘finite’ truth.

The deconstructionists told us that all language is a metaphor, that words resonate with other words, and within the context of the semantic buildings in which we bring them to life – so the word ‘dad’, on the surface means ‘the guy who impregnated your mother to cause you to be born’ but is on a deeper level going to mean so many different things to different people based on their experiences of father-figures.

However, we still have the tools of history, or literary criticism, of science and biology that can act as boundaries and sign-posts for our discussions, as bridges between our experience and the posited notions of the various religious traditions. So, when Jyoti says,

I don’t believe the stories about Jesus, Thor, Isis, Satan, Apollo, Vishnu, Allah, Buddha, Spiderman or The Great Pumpkin. They’re all lovely stories, and I appreciate the wit and wisdom of the writers but are they true? No. They’re mostly stories written by men to help shape their societies and keep the majority of ordinary people, especially women, oppressed. Apart from Spiderman, of course, that’s very egalitarian.

there’s some pulling apart that needs to take place – which of those stories collapse under scrutiny, and how? What is being brought to bear to cause them to collapse, and is what’s driving that motivation itself substantial

Would you want to live in a country under Scientological Law? Or Odin’s Law? Does either proposition sound like a reasonable way to frame a civilised country’s legal and social system? No? So why does it make sense to run a country according to Christian or Muslim myths? They’re no less ridiculous, random and invented.

Let’s me spell this out: the problem isn’t with fundamentalist Islam or right-wing US Christians or huge churches run by ex-Hitler Youth members.

It’s with religion itself

Enshrining irrationality at the heart of our societies, validating myths and letting them define our human rights is an act of supreme idiocy. We all have the right to live, to love and pursue our dreams and no-one should be able to deprive us of those rights by waving a crumbling sheaf of lies in our faces.

He then goes on to present two stories of people be tortured and killed in the name of religion, and comments –

That news story is from June 2005. That’s what happens when people believe 2000-year-old superstitions to be literal truth.

Look at the Muslim terrorist attacks on Britain and America. Look at the God-steered response by Bush. That’s what happens when old men hear their God’s whispering in their ears.

If religion had its way, we’d all still be cowering in caves, blinking fearfully at the ghosts and goblins in the darkness.

We need to step forward into the light of reason, to embrace the hard truths of our mortality and unimportance rather than the comforting bedtime stories about gods and everlasting life.

That means we must oppose the irrational whoever promotes it and whatever colour their skin happens to be.

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