* * Meet Dr. Moon, busker

Chances are if you’ve frequented public spaces in the Blacksburg/Christiansburg area in recent years, you’ve been busked. And the busker, someone who plays music on sidewalks, street corners, and parking lots, has likely been Chris Saunders, AKA “Dr. Moon.”

Chris is a striking figure as he sings, standing with his guitar on the sidewalk, his guitar case open on the concrete in front of him, sprinkled with coins and dollar bills. He’s tall, razor thin, with pale blue eyes and an angular face framed by a long white beard and a white pony-tail down his back. If you took off his ubiquitous multi-colored rainbow hat and gave him a white robe and a staff, he’d look like Moses, ready to lead his people to the Promised Land.

We had much more in common than I realized when we got together the other day to discuss his unusual occupation.

“I was born and raised in Christiansburg,” he told me, in the adjacent neighborhood to mine. His father was in the printing business, as was mine. They worked together for a time.

“I worked in theater in High School and I was in the choir at school and in my church.” He was strongly influenced by the benevolent and pacifistic nature of his Brethren Church. “Brethrens practice foot washing. It’s a lovely old tradition, linked back to Christ, washing his disciples’ feet. It’s an act of humility and service to one another.”

He worked a series of jobs after graduation, in the police department, in the old overall factory, in a nursing home, in retail, and in dining services at Virginia Tech. He worked in the church doing disaster relief.

“We are all brethren,” he said. “We are all brothers and sisters. We all have a commitment to each other and to the greater good. Music has always been part of my life. My mother was instrumental in teaching me to play the guitar. She still plays the harmonica; sometimes we play the streets together.”

Eventually he became self-employed as a candle maker, picture framer, incense maker and musician. At age 50, he enrolled at Radford University and in 2012 he got a performance art degree. “I graduated in May and in June I started street performance. A ‘busker’ is from the Spanish word buscar meaning to seek. A busker is seeking his fortune. Street performance is now what I do. It’s my income. My wife performs tableau vivant, which means a living statue. I think we’re the only buskers in the area. My noms de plume is ‘Dr. Moon,’ came from my candle company, called Waxing Moon Candles. People called me ‘Moon’ from that.

“People should be able to openly express their gifts and talents with each other, to display our art or sing our songs publicly with the community. It is vital to the world that we reach out to each other in a loving, kind way. The arts and art and music spread that kind of joy. We need to open up to each other, to encourage each other to pursue something that never felt comfortable pursuing.

“It’s a job. I go out every day, at least twice per day. I really give it up to the universe. There is no way I can know that you will be walking that sidewalk, that you’ll have money, and that you’ll be generous that moment when I’m singing. It can’t be pre-planned. I have to trust that I’m being used as a tool of the universe and the universe will put me where I need to be.

“You only have so much time in life. You only have so much opportunity to make a difference. I knew my strong point was performance. That was my gift to give, that moment of pleasure and enjoyment to someone passing by.”

We talked at length about the rules street performers face in the towns, rules he’s working to change to increase viability.

“Nobody should need to prove their validity. It’s inhibiting. It’s hard to say what talent we have in the community. If given the opportunity, people would come forward. I encourage other people to come out. I want to have competition. I’d like to have a busker on every corner in our towns. And between them, I’d like to see poets and artists and writers. I would like to see you have a soap-box and you could stand on it and read passages from your new book, with your books for sale.

“When I’m busking, I play for free. I might play for an hour and get nothing (in tips). There is a prominent businessperson who stopped to listen. I was playing ‘You are my Sunshine,” and he gave me $20.00 because his mother used to sing it to him to sleep. Art is about the value to the person.”

* * A workable prescription

I’m sitting impatiently in a pharmacy at a local hospital awaiting a prescription. I’m doing this as a favor for my parents; my dad isn’t well and mom wants to stay with him. So I’m called into duty to run this errand. 

The world of medicine is baffling to me, especially pharmaceuticals. Just from the waiting area chair where I’m sitting I see the following names: Caldyphen, Miconazole nitrate, Povadine, Bacitricin zinc, and Mucinex. I have no idea what they are, and they all seem like they obtained their name by people who threw random syllables at a white-board and watched what stuck. 

Note that these are not even prescription drugs. Anybody can buy them, ingest them, feed them to their pets, whatever. I’m sure they all have inside the brightly colored box not only the hermetically sealed drug itself, in a tiny plastic container under a blob of cotton, but an instruction sheet on a wafer-thin piece of paper that if unfolded would be larger than this newsprint, printed in a 3-point font in 18 languages, explaining how damaging it might be to your health if you actually take the medication.

The reason I’m at this particular pharmacy is that my parents’ local store doesn’t carry this medicine, whatever it is, and can’t get it for six more days. Dad was just released from the hospital two days ago and is still in a lot of pain and yearns for relief.

After fifteen or so minutes, the pharmacist, a nice, empathic middle-aged woman sidles over to inform me that neither dad’s Medicaid nor his supplemental insurance will cover this, and it’s frightfully expensive. The prescription is for 30 dosages, which at three per day is ten days’ worth. The cost is – are you sitting down? -- $1300. We’re talking about over $100 per day, over $35 per dose.

My mind reels. My parents are frugal people and did well in their careers. They haven’t had a house payment since Christiansburg was called Hans Meadow and they’re still in the house I grew up in. This $100 per day for a medication won’t bankrupt them, although it may slash into my inheritance, should there be any. But still…

The mantra replays itself in my head as if on an endless tape, that resounding meme we hear so often, “America has the best health care system in the world.” Harrumph.

I suppose I should be more sanguine. I’m in a spotless hospital, modern and presumably well-equipped, staffed with posses of dedicated, smocked professionals. One of them pushes a wheelchair where sits a man wearing a flannel shirt, a military emblemed baseball-style cap, a bushy white beard, and thick wire-rimmed glasses. He has a vacancy in his eyes that reveals an uncertainty, perhaps a fear of his future and what the rest of his life will bring. I can’t tell whether the wheelchair will be a temporary item of his household furniture or a permanent fixture.

The pharmacist looks at me expectantly, hoping I’ll give approval to proceed. One of us suggests that perhaps given the exorbitance of the cost, a 4-day supply of the drug, “just to see if it works,” might be prudent. We readily agree on this course of action and she vanishes back into the realm of white shelving. I continue to take furtive glances towards the wheelchair-bound ex-military man and read the labels on the boxes on the shelves.

I’m sure it costs pharmaceutical companies unfathomable amounts of money to bring a drug to market, not in production but in the development, the clinical trials, and the governmental certifications. And you can’t fight it; if you’re in pain and have the money, you spend the money. But there are millions of people in this country who cannot afford drugs like this. Or basic medical care. Or catastrophic insurance coverage in the event of an accident. Or dental care. It comes down to a core question: should health care be a birthright of every citizen or a product, like a car or a kiosk-bought coffee, available only to those who can afford it? In the greatest economy the world has ever known, in a country that still latches onto the mythology that we have the greatest health care system in the world, we sure have a lot of people needlessly suffering.

It’s beyond my pay grade to proffer any solutions. The Affordable Care Act allowed for millions of previously uninsured people to get insurance that may or may not cover the medicine they need. But it has failed that millions more still aren’t covered and that costs are still rising, enough to destroy economically anyone who gets really sick. Can’t we find a better prescription?

Meanwhile, I continue waiting, wondering what Miconazole nitrate is and whether I need some.

* * My automotive "Future Shock"

_{“Please say a command,” says an expressionless, accentless female voice, emanating from the dashboard of our new car, a Ford C-Max hybrid. I am in Future Shock.}

_{We bought this pre-owned car the other day from my friend and fellow Rotarian Dewey Rotenberry, sales manager at the Shelor Motor Mile. As he was introducing my wife and me to the manager of the particular dealership, I told them, “I’m every car salesman’s biggest nightmare.”}

_{He replied cheerily, “You don’t seem unpleasant to me.”}

_{“It’s not that I’m unpleasant,” I claimed hopefully, “It’s just that I don’t do this very often.” Indeed, I’m 61 years old and have been in possession of a driver’s license for 45 years, and during this time, I’ve owned three cars, with the Subaru Forester I was now getting as a hand-me-down from my wife being my fourth.}

_{The automotive world is changing at a breathtaking pace. Responding to my C-Max’s kind request, I say back, “Please fix me a nice cup of hot tea.”}

_{She says back, “I do not understand that command. Say for example, ‘climate,’ or ‘navigation.’”}

_{I retort with an attempt at comedy, “Climate! Please solve global warming.”}

_{“I do not understand that command,” she repeats, this time I’m sure with some repressed exasperation, but still the same monotonically pleasant voice.}

_{And so it goes. Meanwhile, I’m distracted enough to have crossed the centerline a couple of times and nearly sideswiped an oncoming car.}

_{Anyway, I bought my first car, a Volkswagen Rabbit, in 1976 after taking my first real job. I drove that little guy for twelve hard years, selling it in 1988. Following that was a four-wheel drive Colt Vista wagon that I kept for twenty years. I sold that for the 2007 Forester that my wife got, and I got her hand-me-down Honda Accord. I’m always getting her hand-me-downs, but that’s another story.}

_{So there you have it, 45 years and three cars, now four. Doing this so infrequently shows the enormous technological innovation overtaking our world. The Rabbit’s innovation was its transverse (across the car, left to right) engine powering the front wheels, as most cars those days were rear-wheel driven. The Colt was more impressive in that regard, as it sent power to all four wheels, as does the Subaru. But otherwise these cars were much the same. Ignitions had progressed from the primitive points and condenser systems to electronics, but most of the controls were analog. From the standpoint of the car/driver interface, not much changed between the 1988 Colt and the 2007 Subaru. Sure, a computerized system in the Subaru keeps the dome lights on for a few moments after you exit the car, but otherwise it was typical in having a dial speedometer, a dial tachometer (All these cars had manual transmissions.), and analog fuel, oil pressure, and other gauges. Simple.}

_{Not the C-Max! This magnificent marvel of modern engineering has an owners manual ¾” inch thick. There is an array of digital displays that would put a space shuttle to shame. The car starts not with a conventional turn of a key, but with the push of a button, activated by the proximity of a simple key fob. Once “started,” it remains eerily silent. When in reverse, it has a camera in the rear that shows a picture on the dashboard of the rear view. It instantaneously calculates fuel economy and mileage until empty and shows this information on the dash. There’s a clever display showing the transfer of energy from the batteries to the motor, or vice versa, and then to the front driving wheels. It has heated seats (which let me tell you are awesome this time of year!), heated outside rear-view windows, interior automatic temperature management, and a state-of-the-art, satellite based navigation system. Heretofore my navigation system consisted of a something called a map.}

_{That this extraordinary technological advancement would appear to the motoring public in a mere blink of a proverbial eye between 2007 and 2013 models makes one wonder what’s next. This very question came up in conversation during a Thanksgiving Eve dinner. My wife’s best friend provided the answer, or at least a seemingly newly plausible answer. This friend, whose name, Robin, I won’t mention publicly for the reason that she is the world’s most inattentive driver, posited, “The next generation of cars will drive themselves.”}

_{If she’s right, while I’ll miss the satisfaction I get from motoring myself around, I have to admit that for some people like Robin, having the car do the work will make us all safer. As my Golden Years come into focus, perhaps the same will be true for me as well.}

_{And maybe my next car will fix me a nice cup of hot tea.}

* * Blowing off some steam

As you may have heard, last Tuesday’s Election Day didn’t go my way.

So a couple of days later, I did the most therapeutic thing I could think of: I took a motorcycle ride. But when I saw those ominous flashing-blue lights in the mirror, it sure didn’t help things.

Here’s how it happened.

I left the house on a mild, mostly sunny afternoon on my venerable 1981 Honda CBX. This is my classic bike that I only ride in the “neighborhood” and only on nice days. I got it a few years ago with only 900 miles on it, and it still looks like new.

I gassed up with non-ethanol gas in Newport and headed northeast to New Castle, on one of my favorite roads, SR-42. I could already feel the bike doing its magic on my psyche, with each passing mile bringing more of a smile to my face. SR-42 has vast vistas of beautiful farmland and is paralleled on both sides by linear, tree-covered ridgelines. Bales of hay wrapped in white plastic resembled oversized marshmallows placed in long rows in the fields. Buzzards circled over a field where an animal must have recently expired. Black and white cows munched grass lazily in the fields. There is a pleasant mix of homes along the way, some new and prosperous, some old – some even pre-dating the Civil War – in both brick and wood shingles. Things looked tidy, orderly, and timeless.

The speed limit is 55mph and on straight stretches I pushed my geriatric bike to 60mph, but not much more. On clear days like this and with clean roads, we’re both capable of more, but I’ve always come to expect the unexpected around the next corner – a smattering of gravel on the turn, kicked up by a prior motorists, or a romping deer or stray dog. Plenty of fun can be had at the margins of the speed limit. I had this notion firmly in mind, on the awesome, swooping curves descending into town.

My plan was to loop back home via SR-311 south, then either Mt. Tabor Road or Catawba Road. There was some new pavement, including paved shoulders (a real rarity on the backroads around here, shamefully) on SR-311 towards Catawba. I began to see signs for a construction roadblock ahead. I finally fell in behind a long row of perhaps 15 cars, stopped by a flagger.

At that point, I executed my first infraction. I saw a couple of motorcyclists maybe 5 or 6 cars ahead. Motorcyclist tend to be herding animals, so thinking I may have known them, I used the pave shoulder to break in line and scooted up to them. They turned out not to be anybody I knew – in fact they were on Harley Davidsons, popping and gurgling loudly even at idle, in stark contrast to my whisper-quiet Honda – and so I turned off my ignition and sat there, waiting like everybody else.

Let’s face it; nobody likes to sit, immobile, on a highway. But in a car, at least you can lean back in your seat, listen to the radio, or call a friend. On a motorcycle, you just sit. And wait.

While waiting, I noticed the car three cars ahead was black with darkened windows and several antennae. Perhaps an unmarked police car? Maybe. But I put it out of my mind.

Finally, we were waved through. A couple of miles later, the black car turned onto Mt. Tabor Road and then so did I. It was a 40-mph zone with some curves and driveways. I followed him closely, then decided to give him some space so as not to be breathing his exhaust. Then I sped up and caught him, and then repeated. Following a slower vehicle through a curvy road isn’t much fun, so I was pleased when he pulled over and let me by. Unfortunately my old-age synapses didn’t fire, and it didn’t again occur to me that it might be a cop. It wasn’t a mile later when he pulled me over.

“You were going a bit fast,” he said, putting on that huge hat they all wear.

I was still struggling to find firm footing for the kickstand on the gravel surface driveway.

“I’m sure I wasn’t going over 55mph. That’s the speed limit, isn’t it?” I pleaded.

“No. It’s still 40 here,” he informed. “May I see your license?”

I dug it out, still struggling to hold up the bike.

“Nice bike,” he said. “What year is it?”

Long story short, he checked my driving record (+4 points, with +5 being perfect), realized that my infractions (driving on the shoulder, erratically speeding up and slowing down, mildly exceeding the speed limit) were minor and I wasn’t hurting myself or anyone else, and let me go. He was unequivocally the nicest cop I’d ever met. I drove on, determined to blow off any remaining steam a bit more slowly.

* * The virtuoso and the luthier

They were an odd pairing, perhaps, the Israeli-born chamber violinist and the Floyd County fiddle maker. Nevertheless, the bond was clearly evident from the moment David Ehrlich greeted Arthur Conner at Conner’s hand-built home in Check, Virginia, with me last week.

Arthur is in his 90s now, and I met him when portrait artist Leslie Roberts Gregg and I included him in our collaboration, Keepers of the Tradition, Portraits of Contemporary Appalachians. I described him as an impish man with a devilish grin. From a modest, country upbringing, he fought in World War II, drove around much of the world, and retired from a career at the N&W shops in Roanoke. Bored, he taught himself how to first repair and then make stringed instruments. His greatest strength is in his knowledge of wood and the physics of acoustic movement of sound through grain structures. He has modeled his instruments after the Italian masters, Stradivari and Guarneri.

David was a child prodigy on the violin, growing up in Israel after World War II where his parents emigrated after surviving the Holocaust. David studied at Tel Aviv University where he was concertmaster and soloist with the Tel Aviv Chamber Orchestra. He moved to the United States to study at Northern Illinois University where he met his wife, Theresa, a pianist. He now teaches students in Arizona, China and the Czech Republic as well as in Blacksburg where he has an appointment at Virginia Tech as a “University Fellow of Fine Arts.”

After re-acquainting, Arthur hobbled to the other room and returned with a bow and put a violin in David’s hands. David plucked the strings and drew the bow across, making minute tuning twists on the string pegs.

David held the instrument before him in his lap as Arthur described the manufacturing. Arthur put his hands together, flat, palms down, index fingers adjacent, illustrating the way he splits a single piece of wood, butting and gluing the edges together, to make the piece that will be the violin’s top. He uses straight-grain wood from the interior of ancient trees, some from the primeval forests of Alaska. The top of the violin has a grain running lengthwise and the bottom crosswise. “All of the fiddles I’ve made are with split-out wood.” He said that the pairing of the two pieces, identical because they’re split from one, gives the sound an equal path where neither side dominates.

Arthur had lost count of the fiddles he’d made, guessing somewhere around 100. “I’ve made four cellos and two bass fiddles, too.”

David was knowledgeable about the history and development of not only violins but horse-hair bows. He mentioned Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume, the 19^th Century French luthier whose bows today can cost upwards of $500,000! Bows can have gold or ivory inlays, which add value. The horse-hairs on a bow are carefully chosen from only male horses. Under a microscope, they reveal tiny barbs or hooks that, when drawn over the strings, cause the vibration that produces sound.

The shape of the instrument impacts the quality of the sound. Earlier violins were rounded on top, producing less volume, suitable for small rooms or “chambers.” Later violins, especially Italian instruments, had flatter tops that produced more volume, better for unamplified orchestras.

David picked up a Conner violin, held the chin-rest tightly against his chin and purposefully drew the bow back and forth across the strings with his right hand while his left fingers danced briskly on the strings, left hand bouncing in vibrato. The sound was loud, clear, and high. His expression remained unchanged. Arthur’s face took on a reverential smile, clearly appreciating the genius of the virtuoso.

Concluding, David gushed, “Wow, it’s amazing.” He held the instrument before him again, admiring its beauty.

And so time marched by as it always does, virtuoso and builder trading knowledge, tips, and ideas, washed in mutual admiration. Each aspect of the instrument, the scroll, peg box, neck, bridge, sound post, bouts, ribs, and more were discussed and debated. “Seems like you know more about violins than anybody I’ve come into contact with,” Arthur complimented David.

As we prepared to depart, David played portions of Vivaldi’s famous Four Seasons, the Allegro from “La primavera,” Spring. It was the Concerto No. 1 in E major, Op. 8, in a country home kitchen, in Check, Virginia. Arthur’s eyes moistened at the thrill of the music; mine did, too.

Later, David told me, “Arthur Conner is a treasure to this area. I know that many local players use his instruments, and some were given the instruments because they couldn’t afford them. It is amazing to me that he is self-taught, a team of one, and was able to learn all aspects of violin making. I wish him long life and good health.”