This is a failed photo, but a successful test of the new light tent. The yellowish background is a combination of tungsten lighting and weak white balance on the camera. You can see the lack of close focus, I’ve tried every setting and it’s the camera that needs replacing. Intermittent daylight showers kept me off the eBike so it was another day of getting things done around the old homestead.
A brief conversation at the bakery this morning posed the question, why did I never become a PhD? The answer is basically that one just does not “become” a PhD. The fantasy that you can become anything you want is rarely borne out in reality. There is probably not a man alive who would not stay in school a few extra years to spare himself a lifetime of drudgery. School costs money that not everybody has or can get.Plus, one needs a head start of some kind, even if only some form of infrastructure, even if it merely allows the speaker to claim he “did it on his own”. I have yet to see or meet such a person, but I’ve met plenty who made the claim. Remember “Just Once Mark”? Imagine parents that send you to college to draw cartoons, not for a job, but as a hobby. Just once.
The secondary answer is money. I learned student loans were enough for books, rent, and tuition—and if you are poor like I was, absolutely nothing else. A common mistake, which I made, was to borrow just a little extra for clothes, and bus fare, and a beer on Friday night. But by the time you hit the ripe age of twenty, you realize those are the most expensive beers you’ll ever drink. I bought my first new shirt with student loan money when I was 21. A black knit t-shirt, kind of nice, but nothing fancy.
It would be tough to convince me anyone really went through university without some kind support that others did not have. Remember Warren? He claimed school was cheap, but rarely mentioned his parent’s house was walking distance from the student cafeteria. (He drove a sports car, but could have walked.) Or Donnie, whose parents got him scholarships and bursaries the rest of us never heard of (they filled out an average of 60 applications every semester for him because Donnie’d never heard of them either). Then that Snake, whose (civil servant) parents funded his entire bill so he could use his loan money to speculate and graduated owning a $100,000 house tax free. Technically, each of these people made it on their own.
In the end, I was 33 before I got a meaningful degree (in computer programming), but by then I was working in a field where that degree was never used. At the phone place, they only regard the presence or absence of a degree, not what you studied. Lynn Anderson, who got the job I wanted, was the daughter of the man on the hiring committee. Also, don’t forget that in my day at age 28, you were the grandfather on campus and they made you very aware you’d missed the early boat. Your income is eventually higher, but you still fall behind others with the same degree who are using 100% of their pay to get ahead in a world where expensive cologne gets the promotion.
I jammed some blues with Trent’s guitar, still staying in the key of A. I’m finding it better to learn the forms rather than follow even a straightforward Blues pattern. Once more, nothing sounds right when I’m doing it but seems to me I went through that stage on bass. But once I got it, once it clicked, I could play all the music I liked. Will this happen with the lead?
There is still an association in my mind with playing riffs that match the music, something I find Clapton rarely did. He composes a great little lick but then manufactures a mediocre song around it, like “Layla”. Great intros, lousy music. He plays BB King at super speed without any meaningful lyrics. Or his lyrics focused on old-guy drug problems instead of youthful themes, never my favorite.
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