Man With Sign, June 17, 02026
I wake before the alarm to a newly repopulated house; my wife, jet-lagged into early waking, has already made coffee! I head out into the morning, arriving at Roosevelt Circle a little late, at 7:33, greeting Craige, and setting up my various. Today's hand-held sign is the relatively wordy SCIENTIFIC IGNORANCE IS A POOR FOUNDATION FOR PUBLIC POLICY.
1/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAiPK9X8Z_8
#ClimateChaos #GlobalWarming #HindustaniMusic #CitizenActivism
The air is cool, in the mid-60s F, with a clear sky and a very light breeze. Traffic is heavy and generally friendly, though a youngish guy in a shiny black pickup truck tells each of us in turn to "Get a real job." Does he think we're panhandling? I forget that many people *can* read, but don't. Aside from this chucklehead, and the other, older, get-a-job guy, everyone else is nice to us.
2/
My voice is tired and a little hoarse, and it takes me quite a while to get warmed up and relaxed to the point of comfort. There are intermittent bouts of dysphonia and/or sudden vocal fatigue for the first 25 minutes or so. My musical mind is also not functioning particularly well; my focus is intermittent and I feel groggy. This fog, too, finally lifts, but it's no fun while it lasts.
3/
Because of this, my singing this morning is not particularly rigorous; I wish I could write up particular ideas or strategies that stretched my mind, my muscles, my memory, or some combination of these three...but instead I'm mostly just generating melody lines at various levels of speed, working to keep intonation secure and the raga chalan intact.
4/
My wife arrives to greet us both; she's taken the dog out for a walk and they've decided to join us. We chat briefly but I'm still trying to stay focused on the song and the singing. Holly the poodle demands her share of attention, requests I cannot defer. In the last few minutes of practice I finally feel like I've located a point of interest, so I put a pin in it for tomorrow.
5/
I make a video at 8:23, then stand with Craige for a rendition of "Underneath The Pines." By the time we're done, it's 8:30, so the three of us (me, she, dog) head homeward in one direction while Craige moves in the other. It's a full day today, with lots of students, some video editing, some resistance chores, and a couple of meetings. Bring em on!
6/
My bachelor fortnight has ended, the house neatened and in minor ways improved, and once again I'm living a life with actual human interactions in it. Now I have a podcast to finish editing in the next ten days or so; I've been putting it off to handle all these various domestic exigencies, so now a deadline looms. Life would be awesome if it weren't for these damned fascists!
See you tomorrow.
Man With Sign
end/
Warren Senders