David Rogers -- Feature Of The Week

FEATURE OF THE WEEK

January 25, 2012

40 days and 40 nights of Rain?
Reads like a normal Oregon weather outlook.

Why did the fish cross the road? Because it can. It's in Oregon.
[photo courtesy of ORCoast NWR Complex, posted on Facebook]

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Two Haiku poems by David Rogers (Me):

You’re the flying saucer,
I’m the daily post-hole digger,
Beam me up for dreams.

Guitar melodies,
A flat-top boulder,
A fresh breeze serenaded.

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David Rogers on guitar at the Eugene Saturday Market
with a very young lady dancer.
[photo by Stephan Livingstone]

On the organic produce circuit,
Dave tries his level best,
To keep the fingerchops dancing
On his musical eclecto-quest..

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A Song-poem by Nathan Moore of Eugene, OR
as posted on Facebook by Mark Ross

EVERY STITCH
by Nathan Moore

...In New York's garment district
A century ago
Flames swept through a sweatshop
Where young women came to sew
They tried to flee to safety
But they found the stairwells locked
Some perished from the smoke and fire
Some fell on the hard sidewalk

Present day in Bangladesh
Eleven stories high
Workers stand before the glass
How they wish that they could fly
Exit doors are locked up tight
The air is full of screams
Twenty six will die today
For the sake of cool blue jeans

Chorus:
For every stitch of clothing
Someone sweats away unseen
While the tangled threads of justice
Unravel at the seams
From the slums of New York City
To the streets of Bangladesh—
One hundred years of struggle
And it ain’t over yet

From the ashes of disaster
New York’s workers rose to fight
For safety on the cutting floor
And basic human rights
They won battle after battle
And it echoed through the land
Change came from the bottom up
Because labor dared to stand.

But the war is hardly over
The enemy took flight
In search of the lowest wages
And people who won’t fight.

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Yet another new CD is soon to be released:

'Celtic and Baroque' :
with: Many new guitar settings in 18th century style with
fully realized harmony and counterpoint~ music of
Turlough O'Carolan, Henry Purcell, James Oswald, the Earl of Kelly,
and traditional tunes.

It should be released when I can do it all...

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Recent CD Releases:

'Songs of the New West'

'The Transcendent Mountaineer'

To listen to samples, download tracks, or buy the CD,

go to: CD Baby

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"I can't see you--I can't see you--(I've got my eyes closed)"
Bigfoot Dave at the Portland (OR) OryCon Festival 2009
photo by: Angelica

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Health Care Reform- Old Dave R on the Soapbox

President Obama is right when he declares that health care reform has nothing to do with him. He and other government leaders, including Congress, have nothing to worry about in this regard; they are covered with the most complete health coverage plan ever devised.
But what about the rest of us? Take, for example, my friend Dave Marston, who supported his family all his life as a choral and orchestral music director until an incurable brain disease carried him away. He had no medical insurance, because after supporting his own family with their basic needs, he of course had no money left over to support them all on expensive private insurance premiums. Expand this example a thousandfold, and you can grasp, like so many of the most creative and hard-working people of our time, that universal health care is patriotic.
To all those who opposed Obama’s public sector health coverage option, because it competed with private health insurance interests: You should be happy now that the only viable alternative is mandated insurance coverage from private health insurance companies-- a Republican invention, with less real freedom of choice. Continuing with this same logic, does this mean we shouldn’t have public schools in this country because they compete with private schools? Or we shouldn’t have national parks and forests because they compete with private cattlemen or trailer parks? Or, we shouldn’t have a post office because it competes with UPS or FedEx?
This is crazy enough to warrant listening to the words of Winston Churchill, when he said, "Americans will always do the right thing, after they have exhausted all other options."

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More music venues are making themselves available. Give me more, more!
I challenge all those out there who think you can overwork me as a musician-- Hire me and try me!
I need enough seed money to get my upcoming CDs mastered-- and still have time left over for my
part time day job as a drop in room monitor at Lane Independent Living Alliance,
with some wonderful people deemed crazy, with whom I seem to fit right in--
I already know what that says about me...

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C heck out my own latest You Tube music videos.
My own are on the videos page on this website.
These, plus some additional ones I posted featuring other artists,
Plus some stunning selected favorites posted by other people,
are on my ever-growing channel: NewDave999

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Dave Rogers ponders for a moment as he haunts his old haunts in Ashland, Oregon:

[photo by Marvin Ratner]

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'Celtic and Baroque' Classical Guitar
Recording Sessions are in Progress for an upcoming
CD of solo guitar works. Lots of Irish and Scottish airs..

From the harp strains of O'Carolan, thru Tara's halls did ring,
Comes the elegant and wonderous legacy these regal tunes still bring,
From bonnie Scotland came Oswald's guitar divertimenti,
To the parlors and chambers of Temple of Apollo cognoscenti,
Now lovingly adapted to the guitar of the western shores,
And re-tempered for the present ears of music connoisseurs!

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"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and the sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men-- go freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and with the mothers of families-- re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body."

--Walt Whitman

"I get weary of people who use pessimism to avoid being responsible for all the problems in our culture. A man who says 'we're on the road to disaster' is seldom trying to wrench the wheel away from the driver. I prefer the troublemaker."

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."