Author: keith.robertson@aig.com

“Whew!  Glad that’s all over.”

I drove down to Lower Greenville Avenue (just north of downtown Dallas) for lunch with my boss on Monday.  It was a beautiful day and we enjoyed the Blue Goose patio.  The sour-cream chicken enchiladas were just how I remembered them – best in Dallas for sure.  It was very sad to see the empty building that used to house the fantastic Grape restaurant across the street.  The Lushers sold it just prior to COVID.  Diana and I (and many others with us) have enjoyed so many fabulous meals at this French bistro, including our first dinner together in Dallas.  The chicken liver pate, homemade Boursin cheese, charcuterie, lamb tartines, mushroom soup, best burger in Dallas at Sunday brunch, steak frites, mussels, and so many more delicious flavours are no more.

There was a loud blowing noise overhead as I sat on the patio on Tuesday that had me a bit spooked.  Then I realized there was a hot-air balloon trying to land in the back yard.

We were warned that election results could take a while (maybe weeks) and things were certainly too close to call in many states when we went to bed on election day (Tuesday).  On Saturday I went out for a walk with Diana in the morning, then we worked in the front garden, gathering leaves from our massive oak tree.  By the time we headed back inside the result had been declared with Joe Biden as President-elect.  This is certainly not a political blog at all but I can’t help sharing a few artifacts from this week.  First, here’s James Corden recapping the four years of Trump in 3 minutes.  I think this is exceptionally well done:

This poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, San Francisco beat poet, owner of the excellent City Lights Bookstore in North Beach, and father-in-law to an interesting character that worked for me at AIG, has a direct and timely message:

And finally a cartoon that I couldn’t resist posting:

That’s the last of the political content.  My only other comment is that I’m relieved that Diana isn’t moving us off to the Virgin Islands for a few months to avoid the fall out from a different result.

Saturday continued with the removal of the family room curtains and rods.  We’ve never really liked them and decided to see what the room looks like without them – very bright and open but lacking something at the top of the windows.  The sconces look even more ornate and outdated without the curtains – that’ll be the next project.  I was just informed about the best website to shop for replacements.

Meanwhile, in California, Will was celebrating his 32nd birthday.  Is it even possible that he could be that age?  What would you guess would be his chosen way to celebrate?  If you’ve listened to him wax on about his racing BMW then you’ll have a good idea.  Yes, he took the race car to the racetrack.  Seems to know what he’s doing as he posted the fastest laps of the group he was with.  Of course if you’re going to the track you have to look the part – including a custom made helmet that matches the colour scheme of your car (shown here in a photo shoot in some fancy video recording studio).

Sunday started with hanging all the art and pictures that we brought back from the Austin apartment.  You are correct – it has taken us just over 3 months to get around to this project – we had ruminate on all the possible locations for the pictures.  We found a good home for all the pieces and they are all perfectly level.  Diana had some excellent mounting tools that made the task quiet pleasant.

The wind picked up in the afternoon, blowing mountains of leaves from the tree in our neighbours’ yard into the pool .  Not to worry – pool girl D has been busy scooping out leaves and emptying the skimmer baskets all day.

As I post this, the Cowboys (2-6) are beating the undefeated Pittsburg Steelers (7-0) with their fourth string quarterback who is playing his first NFL game.  Hard to believe and likely won’t last – but one can dream.

I watched a BBC documentary on the original Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield.  This was really enjoyable with Oldfield demonstrating various bass, guitar and keyboard parts.  Tubular Bells was the album that started Richard Branson on his way to creating the Virgin empire.

The commentary on how the initial theme changes from 7 beats to 8 beats per bar in alternating bars, capturing our brains as they work to figure out the difference versus a constant 7 or 8 beats per bar which would become monotonous, was quite interesting.  I can remember listening to this album in high school and being sucked in right away – something completely different and original.

I haven’t quite finished “Anxious People” by Fredrik Backman yet.  Last week I raved about how much I was enjoying this creative book.  This week I’m not quite as enthusiastic – still really enjoying the writing and the development of the crazy cast of characters, but things are starting to drag a tiny bit.  I’m looking forward to the ending and will have more to say about this next week.

In the music department here’s a tune from Tubular Bells III that I enjoyed revisiting this week – really good guitar that sounds great in the new shower:

I watched the first episode of “Long Way Up”, a new documentary where Ewan McGregor plans an electric motorcycle expedition from the southern tip of South America to Los Angeles.  The trip is expected to take 3 months and I’m interested to see how things unfold with brand new model electric Harley Davidson motorcycles and all that could wrong with that.  The show started with this song from the Stereophonics – a very underappreciated band:

And finally, a Dylan song from the “Infidels” album, produced by Mark Knopfler in 1983 (apparently one of Joni Mitchell’s top 15 songs):

“Same Old Routine”

Another week in the books and nothing very exciting to report – working from home on Teams video calls from my office most of the day every day.  Auntie D did get invited to join Luciano’s Zoom school call before we left Pacifica.  The forty degree temperatures on arrival in Dallas were a bit of a shock after the gorgeous California weather.  The puffer jackets are out again.

Our major non-work activity was swapping out internet providers and ditching cable television.  We made the switch to all internet with YouTube TV and should have done it a while ago – much better speed and quality at a lower price, and available on any device anywhere there’s internet.  I know I sound like a commercial but we have a great picture on our outside television for the first time.  Diana wrestled with getting the new internet service set up and I handled switching the older televisions over to Amazon firesticks.  The thing that irritated her most was the $10 fee that Spectrum tried to charge us for doing a “self-installation”.  That is a bit nuts.

Our only outing was to downtown McKinney for coffee on Saturday morning.  Filtered coffee shop has a new outdoor seating area that’s set up to look like a beer garden – I think they plan to serve beer outside from a new counter area.  There’s a new Cuban restaurant next door that we’re looking forward to trying – I’m hoping they have good empanadas.  Diana commented that she doesn’t expect to see the kiddie seesaws that were set up on the concrete next time we visit.  They’re just waiting for a kid to tumble off and bump their head on the unforgiving concrete.

Our friends Wash and Zoe, the Irish wolfhounds, made a trip to Colorado for Wash to have some specialized surgery.  Here they are seeing snow for the first time:

And here’s Zoe bouncing through the snow at high speed:

Wash’s surgery went well and he should be back home to Austin soon.

Halloween was a non-event and we didn’t see any kids out at all.  Coal Porter did make an appearance in New Orleans.

I started reading “Anxious People” by Fredrik Backman and am loving it so far.  Such creative story telling and a unique approach to language.  Backman became famous a few years ago with “A Man Called Ove” and I think I’m enjoying this book even more.  The humour and clever language are all the more impressive when you consider that everything is translated from Swedish.

The story starts with a bank robbery gone awry and police interviews with each of the witnesses.  Jim and Jack are father and son on the local police force who get frustrated when a special hostage negotiator from Stockholm is engaged:

“After talking to the negotiator Jack was even angrier than he’d been the last time he’d had to speak to a customer service representative at his Internet provider.”

I think Diana and most of you can probably relate to that feeling.

Two icons of the Texas music scene passed away this week – Jerry Jeff Walker and Billy Joe Shaver.  Born Ronald Clyde Crosby and raised in Oneonta, New York, Walker cut his teeth busking and hitchhiking through the American South after going AWOL from the National Guard. He took the stage name Jerry Jeff Walker in 1966, and released 36 albums through his career, including his best known, “Mr. Bojangles”.

Jerry Jeff is considered a Texas musician although he originally hailed from New York and was a big part of the Austin music scene that centered around the Armadillo World Headquarters.  Here’s one of my favourites:

Billy Joe Shaver is known as the grandfather of “outlaw country music” and his songs were covered by the Allman Brothers, Bobby Bare, Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Jerry Lee Lewis, Willie Nelson, Elvis Presley and, of course, Waylon Jennings.

Here’s the late great Bugs Henderson singing “Why Can’t I Write Like Billy Joe” – I remember him playing that at Dan’s Silverleaf many years ago.

And here’s my favourite Shaver cover – Joe Ely doing “Live Forever”.

I discovered a new band that I like very much – The Greyboy Allstars.  What a great rhythmic feel – similar to The Meters.  I read that they were formed in San Diego and include the amazing Karl Denson on saxophone – once saw him in the tiny back room of Le Bons Temps bar in New Orleans.  I’m looking forward to listening to much more of their music.

Stay calm and patient whatever this crazy week ahead brings us.

Sunday was a bad day for football with both the Cowboys and Saints losing pretty close games.  I had anticipated a more severe Cowboys beating by the Seattle Seahawks, and as usual us battered fans were treated to moments of brilliance amidst the overall error prone performance.  This was the first football Sunday with the new TV unit and all the audio components fully installed and functional.  I’m really happy with Diana’s design and how it all turned out.

While I was enjoying football, McD was hacking away at bushes with her new power tool – please keep a safe distance!  That’s actually the neighbours’ side yard beside our driveway that’s she’s attacking.

I watched the movie “Youth” during elliptical exercise time.  Starring Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel, the movie tells the story of two friends on the verge of turning eighty, vacationing at a resort in the Alps, and looking to each other for support as they face momentous career landmarks, realizing that time is no longer on their side.  Directed by Paolo Sorrentino, to say this is a quirky movie would be quite an understatement – just flat out weird in some places.  It was a pleasant distraction from the boredom of aerobic exercise.

On Friday we loaded up and made the all day drive from McKinney to New Orleans to visit the Ogans for a few days, prior to all caravanning over to the Florida panhandle for a week by the beach.  The drive was relatively leisurely with a stop at Athena in Shreveport for some fantastic Mediterranean cuisine.  We were amazed at the quality of everything we ordered in this unassuming restaurant.  The hummus was some of the best we’ve had.  Our second stop was in Opelousas for coffee prior to arrival on Webster Street around 7pm.

Saturday began with two laps around Audobon Park for Diana and me – the weather was gorgeous and perfect for a nice long walk.  This is the least humidity I remember experiencing in New Orleans.  In the afternoon we made a short visit to the French Quarter with a stop into Cuban Creations for a cigar and a drink.  Bourbon Street was very quiet with the majority of bars and clubs shut down and all boarded up.

Dinner on Saturday was at Patois – a short walk from Chez Ogan.  We’ve been here several times over the years and always loved the food and ambience.  This is the restaurant that was featured on the Treme HBO series with the female chef inspired by Susan Spicer.  Even with very few tables, due to density restrictions, the menu was still pretty extensive.  We started with pumpkin and crabmeat soup (bursting with flavour) and chicken liver mousse.  I couldn’t resist a fancy meat pie as well.  Denny and Anne shared some of the crabmeat gnocchi and crab claws they chose with us as well.  It would be easy to have a good meal of a couple of appetizers.

Denny and I both had the beef short rib special – so much amazing flavour again.  I made an omelet with my leftovers this morning.

We’re currently debating where to go for brunch and Saints game watching.  No firm conclusions have been reached.  It’s a process with Anne involved.

I finished “The Beekeeper of Aleppo” by Christy Lefteri this week – a recommendation from my Mum.

Lefteri was brought up in London and is the child of Cypriot refugees.  The Beekeeper of Aleppo was born out of her time working as a volunteer at a UNICEF supported refugee center in Athens.

The book begins with the violence of the Syrian war starting to ramp up and destroy normal life  in Aleppo:

“Things will get bad.  We all know it, don’t we?  But we’re trying to continue living like we did before.  He stuffed a dough ball in his mouth as if to prove his point.  It was late June, and in March of that year the civil war had just begun with protests in Damascus, bringing unrest and violence to Syria.  I must have looked down at this point, and maybe he saw the worry on my face, for, when I glanced up again, he was smiling.”

Nuri and his wife Afra resist leaving Syria when it would have been dramatically easier than their escape ended up being:

“When the trouble first started, Dahab and Aya left.  Mustafa convinced them to go without him.  As his fears began to be confirmed, he very quickly made plans, but he needed to stay a while longer to see the bees.  At the time I thought he was being too hasty.”

A description of a simple act of kindness that says so much more about the horror than any description of conflict could:

“A middle-aged woman knelt on the floor next to another bucket, full of water.  She was going to clean the faces of the dead men, she said, so that the women who loved them would recognize them when they came searching.  If I had been one of the dead men in the river, Afra  would have climbed mountains to find me.  She would have swum to the bottom of that river, but that was before they blinded her.”

Both main couples in the book lose children through the conflict and much of the story is dedicated to showing their differing reactions to the loss:

“sitting down at his desk, he opened the black book and wrote:

Name – My beautiful boy.

Cause of death – This broken world.

And that was the very last time Mustafa recorded the names of the dead.”

Finally, and almost too late, Afra agrees to leave Syria with Nuri:

“‘Nuri,’ Afra said, breaking the silence, ‘I’m done.  Please.  Take me away from here.’  And she stood there with her eyes moving about the room as if she could see it all.”

In an email from Mustafa to Nuri:

“Spend your money wisely – the smugglers will try to get as much out of you as they can, but keep in mind that there is a longer journey ahead.  You must learn to haggle.  People are not like bees.  We do not work together, we have no real sense of a greater good – I’ve come to realize this now.”

Mustafa adjusting to British behaviours:

“Apparently queuing is important here.  People actually form a single line in a shop.  It’s advisable to take your place in the queue and not try to push your way to the front, as this usually pisses people off!  This is what the woman in Tesco told me last week.”

Nuri enjoying the simple pleasure of a cup of coffee during his journey to England:

“and when my coffee was brought out I savored it, sip by sip.  I never thought I would be sitting down somewhere, next to other families, drinking coffee, without the sound of bombs, without the fear of snipers.  It was as this time, when the chaos stopped, that I thought of Sami.  Then there was guilt, for being able to taste the coffee.”

“‘You’re lucky you’re rich,’ he said.  His eyes in the mirror were smiling now.  ‘Most people have to make a terrible journey through the whole of Europe to reach England.  Money gets you everywhere.  This is what I always say.  Without it you live your entire life traveling, trying to get to where you think you need to go.”

As I was reading a passage where Nuri finds a bee in the English boarding house garden that has a genetic defect and no wings, my Spotify playlist was serving up “Beeswing” by Richard Thompson with the lyric:

She was a rare thing
Fine as a beeswing
So fine a breath of wind might blow her away

Weird how coincidences like that happen – or are they really coincidental and not something more?

“I know that Mohammed will not be coming – I understand that I created him, but the wind picks up and leaves rustle and there is a chill in the air that gets beneath my skin, and I imagine his tiny figure in the shadows of the garden.  The memory of him lives on, as if somehow, in some dark corner of my heart, he had a life of his own.  When I come to this realization, it is Sami who fills my mind.”

Mustafa and Nuri finally reunite in England:

“In my pajamas and with bare feet, I go down the stairs, and standing there, with the full light of the morning sun behind him, is Mustafa.  And the memories flash before my eyes – Yuanfen, the mysterious force that causes two lives to cross paths – and our apiaries, the open field full of light, thousands of bees, employees smoking the colonies, the meals beneath the canopies.  It all flashes before my eyes as if I am about to take my last breath.”

“And there we both stand, battered by life, two men, brothers, finally reunited in a world that is not our home.”

In the Author’s Note at the end of the book:

“I met Dr. Ryad Alsous, a refugee living in the north of England, who had once been a beekeeper in Syria.  He taught me a lot about the life of bees and how they are a symbol of vulnerability and life and hope.”

“The Beekeeper of Aleppo is a piece of fiction.  But Nuri and Afra developed as a result of every step I had taken beside the children and the families who made it to Greece.  I wanted to explore the internal conflicts, the way memory is affected, the way were are with the people we care about most in the world when we have suffered so much loss that we are broken.  I wanted to set forth the idea that among profound, unspeakable loss, humans can still find love and light  – and see one another.”

Yusuf/Cat Stevens has just re-recorded his classic 70s album “Tea For the Tillerman”.  I’m not really sure why – the original is wonderful and I don’t hear anything meaningfully better in the new version.  Take a listen on this video of  “Where Do the Children Play”.

I got a bit optimistic in my piano piece  for this week.  Always having enjoyed the chromatic sound and triplet rhythm of “Firth of Fifth” by Genesis, from the 1973 album “Selling England by the Pound”, I thought I could tackle the introduction.

I don’t even have the first page really down yet, so will spare you my performance.  Here is an amazing performance of what it could sound like:

In other music news this week, the Band of Heathens were all together in Austin for the first time in months and broadcast a great sounding show:

“Bathroom Completion!”

I just watched the the craziest Cowboy’s game against the Atlanta Falcons.  They fumbled 4 times in the first quarter and were losing by a large margin – a completely futile performance.  I was watching while doing my elliptical workout, otherwise the hour would have been a total loss.  Then, amazingly, they got it together and started making circus plays like this Amari Cooper catch:

A last minute touchdown, recovered onside kick, and successful field goal led to a 40-39 win.  The Cowboys never win close games like this.  Wow!

On an even more positive and important front, we received a picture of our Australian friend Stan’s new grandson on Monday – Henry Stanley.  Stan used to work with us at AIG and moved back home several years ago.  A couple of years ago they found several large tumors in his brain and he was diagnosed with 6 months to live.  The doctors involved in that diagnosis clearly didn’t know Stan like we do.  We had a FaceTime with Stan on Saturday night and weren’t sure what to expect.  He popped right up and recognized me straight away.  Full of his usual kindness, positive energy, and humour, he participated in a delightful conversation with us for over 30 minutes.  What a treat to see him in such good spirits after a long battle that he appears to be winning.  His short term memory is compromised but he still has all of his older memories.  As we discussed the impact of COVID on schools and universities, Stan used the term “staccato learning” to describe the starts and stops of online versus in school learning – not a term you would hear from someone who’s brain isn’t alive and very active.

Diana completed her first official 5K running distance this morning – actually over-achieved at 3.25 miles.  Even after that she still had a lot of pent up energy and decided to start consolidating all CDs, cassettes, and DVDs from their various locations in the house to the newly redesigned family room TV/stereo wall unit.  I installed shelves that she couldn’t reach and dutifully retrieved mounds of CDs from my office closet.

Out in smoky California, Finn was out and about in downtown San Jose with his new girlfriend, Amanda, and sent me this picture with some Panda art.  He’s a huge fan of pandas and also still too skinny for my liking.

This was the week that we lost Ruth Bader Ginsberg, the Notorious RBG.  What a huge loss that is for the nation at this trying time.  There are a couple of great documentaries readily available on her contributions to the Supreme Court, and I enjoyed the interview with Bill Clinton on CBS this morning as he remembered the reasons that he nominated her:

The “Good Time Supper Club” with Band of Heathens on Tuesday evening included a video of them covering “My Sweet Lord” by George Harrison, with special guest Raul Malo of The Mavericks.  Ed was playing the slide intro part and I thought to myself, “Self, I might quite like to have a try at that.” So I purchased a Dunlop bottle top slide overnight from Amazon and started to give it a try.  The Might Orq slide that I have  doesn’t work well for getting way up high on the neck – 21st fret and beyond.  I hope to have some video on the guitar to share next week.

Oopsy!  I almost forgot to include some of the most exciting news from the week.  After 9 weeks and 2 days, the bathroom remodel is essentially complete.  We’re waiting on one last piece of glass to seal in the steam shower area – but can use the regular shower now.  The master bedroom was reoccupied on Friday night and we’ve used the new shower, with fancy sound system and lighting, a couple of times now.  It’s excellent!  Here are the long awaited pictures:

We’re both exceptionally relieved that the project is complete and very pleased with the results.

I’ve had the sheet music for Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” around for a while but for some reason have never given it a try.  That was remedied this week as I worked on the first couple of sections.  I’m going to need a break for a week or two to work on something else, and will try the remaining sections after that.  Here’s my attempt.  Do you like the new elevated camera angle?

I finished reading two books this week, and my reactions to them are almost polar opposites.  The multi-week slog to complete Erik Larson’s “The Splendid and the Vile” left me tired and frustrated.  On the other hand Phuc Tran’s “Sigh, Gone” (he’s a Vietnamese refugee who escaped Sai Gon in 1975) left me in awe of a beautifully crafted and written biography.  Warning – now I’m going to go on a bit of an extended ramble about the two books with some quotes that I particularly enjoyed (or didn’t in Larson’s case).

My first big question on meeting Erik  Larson would be, “Do you nae ken that Scotland and Glasgow are not part of England?”

“Over the next two nights the Luftwaffe struck Clydeside, the region encompassing Glasgow, killing 1,085.

Joseph Goebbels, writing in his diary on Saturday, March 15, exulted.  “our fliers are talking of two new Coventrys.  We shall see how long England can put up with this.””

Ok, you’re right, that’s a quote from Goebbels, but there are a number of other passages where Larson uses “England” when he means the “United Kingdom” or “Britain”.  One wonders why he thinks much of what he is describing in this 500 page slog is called “The Battle of Britain” and not “The Battle of England”.  In the over 50 pages dedicated to sources and references, Larson talks about many visits to the National archives and other sources but apparently didn’t have time to master the high level geography of the country he was visiting.

This is a typically disconnected paragraph.  Larson apparently enjoyed this fact and quote, and was determined to include it in the book, whether or not it fit in with the progress of the plot or not.

“In Bloomsbury, flares began to fall, flooding the streets with brilliant light.  Author Graham Green, whose novel “The Power and the Glory” had been published the previous year, was just finishing dinner with his mistress, writer Dorothy Glover.  Both were about to go on duty, he as an air-raid warden, she as a fire watcher.  Greene accompanied her to her assigned lookout.  “Standing on the roof of a garage we saw the flares come slowly floating down, dribbling their flames,” Greene wrote in his journal.  “They drift like great yellow peonies.”

Here’s a quote that my brother in law, David, would appreciate (the Bond aficionado):

“Clarissa Spencer-Churchill was accompanied by Captain Alan Hillgarth, a raffishly handsome novelist and self-styled adventurer now serving as naval attache in Madrid, where he ran intelligence operations; some of these were engineered with the help of a lieutenant on his staff, Ian Fleming, who later credited Captain Hillgarth as being one of the inspirations for James Bond.”

One of the more interesting things I learned was about Rudolph Hess, Hitler’s number two, flying a solo trip to Scotland to visit the Duke of Hamilton.  He was spotted by folks in West Kilbride and Eaglesham – both short drives from Stewarton, where I grew up from the age of 6.  In typical disconnected fashion, Larson talks about his capture and initial imprisonment, and then leaves the entire topic there.

“As they spoke, Donald studied the prisoner.  Something about his face struck a chord.  A few beats later, Donald realized who the man was, though his conclusion seemed too incredible to be true.  “I am not expecting to be believed immediately, that our prisoner is actually No. 3 in the Nazi hierarchy.”

I do not recommend this book at all.  500 pages of loose history, chock full of incongruous anecdotes and gossip.  People magazine of the 1940s meets a lightweight biography of Churchill and his family meets an even lighter weight chronicle of the Battle of Britain.

On the other hand, “Sigh, Gone” by Phuc Tran was a delightful read and I highly recommend it.  Tran’s family escaped Vietnam in 1975, just as Saigon was falling.  They ended up as refugees in Carlisle, a small town in Pennsylvania.  The book tracks his life from arrival until graduation from high school.

Let’s begin at the end with his description of the typical high school make up:

“Carlisle High School stocked its seats and bleachers with a familiar cast form the eighties:  the athletes who towered above the rest of us; the cheerleaders who lay supine beneath them; the geeks with their physics books under their arms; the preps with their Tretorns, Swatches, and impeccable Benetton sweaters; a handful of black kids with MC Hammer pants and tall, square Afros, tightly faded; punks and skaters with their leather jackets and black Converse; a few swirly hippies; the rednecks with their oily palms and cigarettes and trucks.  Carlisle High School was another cultural cul-de-sac built with the craftsman blueprint of John Hughes, the Frank Lloyd Wright of teen malaise.”

“From what I gleaned from television, Carlisle seemed like a slice of American apple pie a la mode.  We bottled lightning bugs on summer nights.  Trucks flew Confederate flags.  We loitered at 7-Elevens and truck stops.  We shopped at flea markets and shot pellet guns.  My high school provided a day care for girls who had gotten pregnant but were still attending classes.  We stirred up marching band pride and fomented football rivalries.  The auto shop kids rattled by in muscle cars and smoked in ashen cabals before the first-period bell.  We were rural royalty: Dairy Queens and Burger Kings.

This was small-town PA.  Poorly read.  Very white.  Collar blue.”

Tran discovers the advantages of reading in middle school – way ahead of 99% of the population:

“Then I hit the jackpot.  Triple cherries.  Working at my town’s public library as a library page, I bought a discarded copy of Clifton Fadiman’s The Lifetime Reading Plan.”

There are so many paragraphs with perfect descriptions:

“Our apartment’s kitchen, my ersatz O.K. Corral, was a twelve-by-nine rectangular combo eat-in kitchen – the apogee of postwar efficiency and the nadir of seventies style – a kitchen into which my parents had shoved a secondhand white-and-gold-flecked Formica kitchen table and four matching chrome seats with squeaky patched vinyl upholstery.”

As Tran struggles with whether to be offended by the racial insults hurled his way on a regular basis:

“if we want to loose whatever words fly into our minds- then we render words powerless, ineffectual, and meaningless, like the playground bromide of “sticks and stones.”  That childhood logic leads you to believe that suffering corporal trauma is worse than verbal trauma.

Nathaniel Hawthorne would beg to differ.”

“But if I allowed myself to be harmed by words, I was showing them that I belonged at least by virtue of understanding their language.  And all I wanted was to belong.”

Here’s one of my favourite descriptions – “like angry origami” – perfect:

“After mass, we piled into our red Ford LTD (which had replaced the green Pontiac), Lou and I anticipating some repercussions of our misbehavior in mass.  My father’s brow was creased, symmetrically folded and ruddy, like angry origami.  His chin, flecked with the weekend’s stubble, bent an unmoving frown.  Trouble was up ahead.  Lou and I were relieved when, in the car ride home, my father announced, “I’m not going to spank you.””

An interesting perspective from a young Vietnamese immigrant taken by his father to watch “Chariots of Fire”:

“An eternity passed.  Still more running on the beach and through town.  There were long close-ups of faces and even more running.  The time period was not a mythical era with Medusas or Krakens.  It was twentieth-century England.  There were no swords, sandals, or togas.  It was just supercilious Englishmen, talking and running against the synthetic willing ch-ch-ch-ch-ch of Vangelis’s theme song.  At least that sounded cool.”

Well, I called out Erik Larson for lumping Scotland in as part of England, and so can’t let Tran away with a free pass on this paragraph either.  Much of “Chariots of Fire” was filmed in Scotland and at least one of the runners was Scottish.  A more forgivable error from a Vietnamese kid than from a biographer who has conducted deep research in England.

Here’s an excellent paragraph on the mindset of elementary school students moving up to middle school, though I’m quite sure none of them are thinking of it in these eloquent terms:

“My small worries about changing schools were eclipsed by my opportunism:  I had hopes for my new school.  At Wilson Middle School, I could break free from the chains of nerditude.  Eighth grade in 1986 was the middle arc of adolescent Darwinism.  We were amoebae in elementary school, gradually growing some spines when we entered middle school.  But now it was going to be eighth grade.  Everyone’s genus and species in the natural pecking order was ossifying, evolving for high school’s law of the jungle.  Jocks.  Preps.  Freaks.  Geeks.  Rednecks.  I was determined to make an evolutionary jump – if not into a cool kingdom, at least our from the nerd phylum.”

A father and son’s shared love for the library:

“My father loved the library because it was a safe haven for him – no missed cultural clues, no bigoted insults from his coworkers, no glaring reminders of what was lost.  All patrons of the library were pilgrims to the oracle, all seeking the same thing: knowledge.  And in their pursuit of the same thing, they were all equals.”

An awakening that you could be a cool skate/punk kid and also a good student:

“Could you love reading and still love punk?  I had assumed that you couldn’t be a skate punk and geek out on books, but Philip had changed that perspective.  I had wanted to ensure that I would fit in, and suppressed my nerdiness as an anathema to punk rock.  But Philip had obliterated that premise in an instant with a copy of The Stranger.”

Here’s a transformation that happened to Tran in high school, not to me until much later in life:

“I savored the academic clout that reading a book gave me in school, and beyond that, I discovered that I actually liked the books my teachers recommended to me.  My perceived need to read changed, slowly and surprisingly, into a desire to read – a desire that I didn’t fight.”

A sad reflection on Tran’s home life, after attending “The Importance of Being Earnest” with a high school English teacher:

“Mrs. Krebs listened to what I had to say, and she replied with thoughtfulness and care as if she were speaking to an equal.  In her tone and engagement with me, I was uplifted from the lowly caste of teenagers and felt for a moment like a valued, adult counterpart.  I wasn’t relegated to the back seat, as I often was in my parents’ car.”

On receiving his ideal college acceptance:

“But then I got a large white envelope from NYU the next week.  It was after school, and I tore it open, and I saw the words:  Congratulations, I had gotten into NYU.  I called everyone, did a crazy dance – that whole celebratory montage that you see on TV when someone hits the jackpot.”

“Sigh, Gone” has been added to the section of my library that contains the books that I enjoyed reading the very most:

These days Tran is a high school Latin teacher – has been for 20 years.  Interestingly, he also owns and operates a tattoo parlor in Portland and is apparently highly sought after.  Here’s some of his work:

Some music that I’ve enjoyed while working this week:

The excellent gentle touch of Bill Evans:

An interesting cover of Randy Newman’s “I Think It’s Gonna Rain Today”.  I haven’t had a chance to investigate these artists.  Swedish perhaps?

And finally for this week, a sad tribute to his father, that I heard Tommy Malone of the Subdudes play on Anders Osborne’s Friday livestream:

Have I told you my Tommy Malone stories?  No… well let’s see:

Story #1:  We were attending an oyster bake at Macon’s baturre (a house on stilts on the wrong side of the New Orleans Mississippi river levee).  I was underneath the house watching Denny very dangerously shucking a huge sack of oysters without a glove.  Macon was telling a story about his friend, saxophone player Derek Houston, who was attending the Grammy awards in Los Angeles.  On checking into the Beverly Hills hotel, he noticed that the font for “Coat Check” looked remarkably like “Goat Check” and called to report this to Macon, who keeps a couple of goats out in front of the batture.  I asked Macon what kind of music the Grammy nominated band (Roddy Romero) played.  He said something about swamp rock and I asked if that was like Tommy Malone’s band (I couldn’t remember the Subdudes – old age).  He thought I was kidding because Tommy was standing right behind him.  I hadn’t registered that was him.  I know – a rambling story and you kinda had to be there, but I like it.

Story #2:  Not as much a story as a fond memory.  We attended a Subdudes concert at Poor David’s Pub in south Dallas – a great place to see them play acoustically with the amazing sound in that venue.  At the end of the show, Tommy said they wanted to get closer to the audience and so they formed a circle and asked everyone to gather round and join in as they performed a few more songs.  A real treat.

Stay kind and patient amid the craziness of these times!

“Hello in There”

It’s been two weeks again – just not that much to post about.  The same old routine here – work, swimming, and elliptical for me and work, running, early morning walks, and elliptical for Diana.

The bathroom remodel continues and should be completely finished by the next post here.  The original contractor quit after hiring a tile guy that made a complete mess of 256 square feet of glass wall tiles.  He realized he was too far in the hole and was going to lose a lot of money on the job.  We now have the original contractor back (he was too busy to do it on our previous timeline) and he will finish up, with some different wall tiles, in a week or so.  Meanwhile we have to decide what to do about recovering money from the guy who quit on us.  We’ve learned a lot of lessons through this process.

My leg is doing well – I can do the elliptical or swim for an hour at a time with no ill effects.  The orthopedist checks it out on Tuesday and I’m hoping this is my last visit.

In addition to continuing to plow through my Winston Churchill book, I read “Normal People” by Sally Rooney this week.  It was a quick and reasonably light read, contrasting with the dense detail of the World War II history.

The story is set in Ireland and revolves around two friends who meet in high school and then attend Trinity College together.  At school Connell and Marianne pretend not to know each other. He’s popular and well-adjusted, star of the school football team, while she is lonely, proud, and intensely private. But when Connell comes to pick his mother up from her job at Marianne’s house, a strange and indelible connection grows between the two teenagers—one they are determined to conceal.

A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years at university, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. And as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.

I started the new Stewart O’Nan book yesterday and should finish that up today – it’s only 175 pages long.  If you’ve been reading here for a while, you know that O’Nan is one of my favourite authors – more on this novel next week.

This week I’ve been working on the chorus to John Prine’s “Hello in There” on the piano.  Here’s what John Prine had to say about this song, one that he composed in his head while walking his mail delivery route in his early twenties:

“I heard the John Lennon song “Across the Universe,” and he had a lot of reverb on his voice. I was thinking about hollering into a hollow log, trying to get through to somebody—“Hello in there.” That was the beginning thought, then it went to old people

I’ve always had an affinity for old people. I used to help a buddy with his newspaper route, and I delivered to a Baptist old peoples home where we’d have to go room-to-room. And some of the patients would kind of pretend that you were a grandchild or nephew that had come to visit, instead of the guy delivering papers. That always stuck in my head.

It was all that stuff together, along with that pretty melody. I don’t think I’ve done a show without singing “Hello in There.” Nothing in it wears on me.”

It’s amazing to me that someone that young can write such a mature and indelible song.  Here’s a bit of the wonderful chorus on my piano:

Certainly one of my top five all time songs!

On the guitar I decided to try and learn some of “Sweet Child Of Mine” by Guns & Roses.  I don’t have the echo and other pedals that Slash uses to get this sound on the introduction, but gave it my best shot.  I’m working on the solos and may have one of those in rough form for the next post.

Practicing this inspired me to finally put some new strings on my guitar.  It must be close to 10 years since I changed them.  Not too much of an operation but it does take a little work.  And then there’s the constant tuning until the strings settle down – I rarely had to tune with the ancient strings. Here’s my weak attempt – I enjoyed trying it if nothing else:

Continuing the guitar theme, The Allman Betts Band have a new album out.  This is the band made up of sons of Greg Allman and Dickey Betts.  We loved their show at the Kessler a year or so ago – back when live music was a big part of our lives.  Here’s my early favourite from their new stuff:

From a completely different genre, Yo-Yo Ma and a few friends have an eclectic new album out.  Here’s “Waltz Whitman” – Ma is certainly one of those musicians you can pick out almost immediately from his sound – absolutely gorgeous:

And finally, some female folk rock from the early seventies, courtesy of Sandy Denny.  Denny was the lead singer for the epochal English folk group Fairport Convention (Richard Thompson on guitar).  This one caught my attention on a play list – something about the sound just grabbed my ears, maybe the key change right before the vocals start, and the sound of Thompson’s guitar:

A pretty severe storm rolled through on Sunday evening after I published the blog last week.  The forecast had said this would miss us completely, so Diana had to scramble to get the sunbathing area all covered up.

My Best Man Denny’s Mum passed away this week after a lengthy battle with cancer.  We enjoyed so many laughs, often at Denny’s expense,  and meals with Diann over the years, and will really miss her kindness and her smile.

I watched an episode of “Mediterranean Living” on television that showed an American family moving to Almunecar on the Spanish Andalusian coast.  The weather was much nicer there and the town looked perfect.  I had Diana watch it and she was as shocked as me at how inexpensive the rent was on some gorgeous villas.  Should we start learning Spanish?  Might be worth a visit when we can travel again.

The calendar for August is completely open.  We remember when it was a complicated tracker of me going one direction, Diana going another, and trying to figure out when we would go to Austin rather than staying in McKinney.  All that as well as concerts and restaurant reservations.  I did have three outings this week – a haircut on Monday, physical therapy on Tuesday, and a trip to Filtered in downtown McKinney for coffee with Penelope and Diana – those and four trips to the gym for swims.

Saturday was a lovely, cooler morning to sit outside and enjoy that coffee.  There was only one fly in the ointment – McD beat me at the crossword by a full minute plus.  She completed the puzzle in 7:03 with me straggling behind at 8:08.

Prior to the coffee excursion, we enjoyed a fast paced 3 mile walk.  The Apple watch refuses to count Diana’s walks unless she gets her heart rate up above 100 eats per minute – a big source of annoyance.  No matter how fast she walks, her heart rate doesn’t get there.  So…she’s taken to doing regular runs to boost her rate – she runs away from me and then turns around to rejoin me.  Speaking of running McD – she did run a 5K distance this week – effectively fully completing the couch to 5K program.

It happened again on Sunday.  We went to Duino for coffee and the crossword.  I lost again!  McD finished in 7 minutes again, besting me by at least 30 seconds.  All that running has got her brain firing on all cylinders.  I’m going to have to up my speed solving abilities.  Losing two days in a row is a non-starter for sure.

The “memories” feature of the iPhone showed me these excellent memories of August 20, 2019.  The Marc Cohn and Blind Boys of Alabama concert form the wonderful Saratoga Mountain Winery.  What a great memory indeed.

We had Laureano, a new colleague from our Guatemala Technology Center, join our Happy Hour on Thursday evening.  We started talking about traveling and he shared a story from his honeymoon a few years ago – he and his new bride had toured the Vatican and asked about a special service for newly weds.  It was a couple of days out and would disrupt their travel plans, but his wife convinced Laureano that they should try to attend.  Do you think it was worth staying?:

Laureano couldn’t find the picture on his computer and I was quite impressed as he navigated through the Vatican website (all Italian) to find this shot.

Another work friend had a bit of a scary experience this week.  His son was crouched down by a river on their deer lease at night and he noticed a coiled up rattlesnake less than 2 feet away from his bottom.  Dad took care of the issue as a native Texan would:

I’ve started reading the “Splendid and the Vile” by Erik Larson.  It’s about Churchill, his family, and the years 1940 and 1941 when Britain stood strong against a potential invasion by Germany.  Reading about Churchill brought to mind an old Supertramp song that I first heard on the “Paris” double live album (remember those?).  I believe that “Fool’s Overture” is largely about World War II and the lessons to be learned about ignoring growing threats.  Here’s the first verse:

“History recalls how great the fall can be
While everybody’s sleeping, the boats put out to sea
Borne on the wings of time
It seemed the answers were so easy to find
“Too late, ” the prophets cry
The island’s sinking, let’s take to the sky”

Here’s the live version:

The song first appeared on the album “Even in the Quietest Moments”, released in 1977.  Supertramp is often referred to as an English group, although their bass player, Dougie Thompson, is Scottish – as evidenced by the Glasgow Herald he’s reading in the diner picture on the back of the “Breakfast in America” album.  I like the album cover art with the snow covered grand piano in the mountains.  Some research revealed that the group recorded the album in Colorado and put the piano (which doesn’t have any insides) on a ski slope one evening, photographing it the next morning after a snow storm had cleared.  The small details really make their album covers.  What’s the music on the piano?  It’s titled “Fool’s Overture” but is actually “The Star Spangled Banner”.

I decided to try and learn the introduction to “Fool’s Overture” for my piano tune this week.  It’s a bit challenging as you can see in this video of my efforts:

More work required.  I can play it through just fine without the video recording going.  No, really!

I don’t have a guitar song to share this week – the piano one occupied all of my free time.  Back to the book now.

Here’s an interesting picture from the inside front cover.  Look at the men selecting books from library shelves that are still standing in the rubble:

I’m 125 pages in at this point and here are some interesting passages from what I’ve read:

“Mine is an intimate account that delves into how Churchill and his circle went about surviving on a daily basis:  the dark moments and the light, the romantic entanglements and debacles, the sorrows and laughter, and the odd little episodes that reveal how life was really lived under Hitler’s tempest of steel.  This was the year in which Churchill became Churchill, the cigar-smoking bulldog we all think we know, when he made his greatest speeches and showed the world what courage and leadership looked like.”

“Coveting power for power’s sake was a “base” pursuit, he wrote, adding, “But power in a national crisis, when a man believes he knows what orders should be given, is a blessing.”  He felt great relief.  “At last I had the authority to give directions over the whole scene.  I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial…”

“With a German victory in France nearly certain, British intelligence now forecast that Germany might invade England immediately, without waiting for a formal French surrender.  The British expected that an invasion would begin with a titanic onslaught by the German air force, potentially a “knock out” blow – or, as Churchill called it, and aerial “banquet” – with as many as fourteen thousand aircraft darkening the sky.”

“But fighter production lagged.  England’s aircraft plants operated on a prewar schedule that did not take into account the new reality of having a hostile force based just across the channel.  Production, though increasing, was suppressed by the fusty practices of a peacetime bureaucracy.”

I love the picture painted by the word fusty, and remember my parents asking me why I had such a “fusty face” going.

“Goring harbored a distorted perception of what by now was unfolding off the coast of Dunkirk, as British soldiers – nicknamed Tommies – prepared to evacuate.  “Only a few fishing boats are coming across,” he said on Monday, May 27.  “One hopes that the Tommies know how to swim.”

“The Tommies did not, after all, have to swim.  In the end, 887 vessels carried out the Dunkirk evacuation, of which only a quarter belonged to the Royal Navy.  Another 91 were passenger ships, the rest an armada of fishing boats, yachts, and other small craft.  In all, 338, 226 men got away.”

His most famous speech:

“As he neared the conclusion of the speech, he fired his boilers.  “We shall go on to the end,” he said, in a crescendo of ferocity and confidence.  “We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and the oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be.   We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”

“To watch him compose some telegram or minute for dictation is to make one feel that one is present at the birth of a child, so tense is his expression, so restless his turnings from side to side, so curious the noises he emits under his breath.”

I’m reminded of the bomb shelters that were in back gardens of the big cities in Britain during this time – about 2 million were distributed.  My Dad was a kid living in Glasgow and so was the potential target of bombing raids.  My Mum lived in the country and so was less at risk.  I think I remember a bomb shelter out behind where my Grandpa Robertson lived.  Not sure if I’m imagining that or not.  These days, many of the shelters remain in gardens and are often used as garden sheds.  Here’s a link to an interesting article in The Guardian about these:

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/21/how-britains-abandoned-anderson-shelters-are-being-brought-back-to-life

I’ve been listening to “American Dirt” by Jeanine Cummins during my swims this week.  It’s a story about Lydia and her son, who try to escape Acapulco and Mexico after her husband and most of her family are killed by a drug cartel.  An initial twist is that Lydia is a bookstore owner and one of her best and favourite customers is the head of the cartel that carried out the killings.  She is devastated when she discovers this and thus begins an attempted escape to Colorado.  It’s still early in the story but I suspect her escape exploits are about to become quite harrowing.

What’s happening in the week ahead?  Absolutely nothing exciting that I can think of, other than exercise, physical therapy and a busy week of work.  We’re hopeful that the bathroom will be usable next weekend.  I’m contemplating trying John Prine’s “Hello in There” on the piano and will search for something good for the guitar.

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