Books – Page 26 – Keith Robertson

Week in Review – August 16, 2020

“103 Years Old”

Hello again. Not much happening here in McKinney this week. Just working from home, reading, eating, exercising and sleeping. I’m pleased to announce that with all this time eating at home, McD has become an accomplished outdoor griller. Burgers, steak, salmon, shrimp and veggies are all cooked perfectly these days. Here’s some perfectly cooked shrimp and a lovely salad that I enjoyed:

My annual physical (personal M.O.T.) rolled around again this week. ECG, prostate, and most blood tests (still waiting on a few) all show positive and healthy results. Maybe I’ll be brave enough to go for the day long full battery of tests that my company offers next year. In addition to this torture, I also had my weekly Physical Therapy appointment. It really wasn’t too bad but certainly stretches the limits of what my leg and hip can do.

I loved receiving this picture from my sister-in-law, Amy, this week. That’s our newest niece, Frankie, our nephew Massimo, and their Great-Grammie. I love the looks on both of their faces. And the best part, Grammie turned 103 yesterday. She’s still walks unassisted and had cooked an apple pie for the visit. Truly amazing!

The New York Times crossword puzzle was kind to me today. The Sunday puzzle usually takes me about an hour – it’s easier but much larger than Friday and Saturday. Today was my best time by far. You’ll notice that I finished this at 7:34 am – courtesy of Diana’s early morning weight training and walk – she likes to get them in before the weather becomes too oppressive. The theme was “Alternative Cinema” – I really like the clue that I highlighted here:

With so little excitement these days, I’ve been wondering how to add something interesting to the blog. So… here goes with a new segment. I’m going to share my exploits in learning new songs on the piano and guitar. First I’ll tackle “Racing in the Street” by Bruce Springsteen – a long time favourite:

Let’s talk about those lyrics:

“I got a 69 Chevy with a 396,

Fuelie heads and a Hurst on the floor,

She’s waiting for me tonight,

in the parking lot,

of the Seven-Eleven store”

Other than the “69 Chevy”, it’s a bunch of Greek to a Scotsman. We don’t have souped up muscle cars and drag racing in Scotland – at least that I’m aware of. The Anglo/American cross culture flow may have changed that by now. To break it down, “Fuelie heads” are defined in my Google search like this:

“The 461 head is more popularly referred to as the “Fuelie” head, because it was introduced as standard equipment on the 1962 327ci Corvette engine that was fed by a mechanical Rochester fuel-injection system. In some bench-racing circles, all double-hump heads are classified as Fuelie heads.” Got it?

“Hurst” is basically a gear lever: “Hurst proudly maintains a wide variety of exceptional shifter products for the performance enthusiast including automatic shifters, legendary Hurst manual …”

I hadn’t heard of 7-11s until I was in training in Fort Worth and frequented the 24 hour convenience store just across from the apartment complex where we were housed. Apparently 7-11 parking lots are a gathering place for street drag racing competitions. I remember going to my first amateur drag racing event many years ago with some friends from Gearhart. Quite an experience to witness the strategy of amateur racers going through the heats with a wide variety of vehicles.

Back to the practicing – and for the guitar, I’m very early (1 day) into learning “Pride and Joy” by Stevie Ray Vaughan. When I first visited Dallas for training with the oil logging company in 1985, Stevie’s song “Change It” was all over the radio. The first riff caught my attention and had me cranking up the radio every time.

Hearing him live in Dallas in 1986 was a musical highlight. I remember being a huge fan of the live version of “Pride and Joy”.

On our Executive Committee meeting this week, I was presenting a request for some capital spend, and one of the members said he wouldn’t approve unless I played something on the guitar that he spotted in the background. He specifically requested some Stevie Ray. I managed to dodge that request but it did give me the idea for this new segment. Here’s my attempt at the first few bars. The song only gets more difficult from here. Going to take some hard work:

I listened to a short story called “Climbing with Mollie” by Bill Finnegan on a couple of my swims this week. A small MP3 player that clips onto the strap of my goggles and some waterproof earphones made this possible. Those and a bit of patience deciphering how to find an Audible book download file, convert it to MP3 format, and load it onto the player. Then some trial and error with different sized earphone end pieces and “fitgoo earbud insertion helper”. Now I’m all set to listen to books while swimming.

Finnegan won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for his memoir “Barbarian Days” which is about his fascination with surfing while he grew up in Hawaii. The book that I listened to is about his adolescent daughter, Mollie’s, passion toward rock climbing. She had been a bored non-participant in group sports – counting daisies on the soccer field and rejecting swim team – but took to rock climbing immediately. Mollie proves to be a natural-born climber and Finnegan gets hooked as well.

As Mollie progresses in the sport, the descriptions of her activities get more detailed and technical. I really enjoyed learning so much about how climbing “problems” are rated and named. The duo travel from indoor gyms to rock faces in Central Park, Mexico and Canada. I was interested to hear about their time near Queretero in Mexico – that’s where our corporate office for Mexico and Latin America is located – and one of the last places I traveled to before lock down. The descriptions of the nearby town of Bernal have me looking forward to a return visit. Pena de Bernal is the name of the monolith that dominates the skyline.

I ordered “Nashville, scenes from the new American south” with text by Ann Patchett (author of “Commonwealth” and “The Dutch House” and one of my very favourite current authors) and photographs by Heidi Ross, expecting a series of short stories about the city. Instead it turns out to be mostly a photography book with short notes from Patchett. I have enjoyed flicking through the beautiful photos for places that we’ve visited, and places that we should visit on our next trip. Here are a few of the pictures that I enjoyed. “The iconic Delbert McLinton at the iconic Union Station hotel”:

My favourite Delbert tune:

He’s clearly traveled a few miles since recording this song. The second night that I spent in the United States, I saw a Delbert McClinton concert. I convinced a few of my oilfield logging classmates, including a couple of Argentinians, to accompany me to the Caravan of Dreams music club in Fort Worth and really didn’t know what to expect. I can still remember how much I enjoyed that show and the feeling of being right at home with great blues and R&B music that wasn’t going to be easily found in Scotland. Isn’t it fun when a photograph can bring back so many memories?

Here’s a look inside the Parnassus bookstore that Ann Patchett owns with her husband:

The shop appears to have quite a nice music section.

And finally, a weekly lunch date that Sturgill Simpson and John Prine (famous Nashville based singer songwriters) enjoyed at Big Al’s Diner prior to Prine’s passing from Covid a few weeks ago:

I read the book “Silver Sparrow” by Tayari Jones this week. Sometimes I really can’t remember what possessed me to order certain books, and this is certainly one of those. I suppose it popped up on one of those “if you liked this, you’ll love this” lists or on a book review that I trust. Here’s what the Los Angeles Times reviewer had to say:

“Tayari Jones has taken Atlanta for her literary terroir, and like many of our finest novelists, she gives readers a sense of place in a deeply observed way. But more than that, Jones has created in her main characters tour guides of that region: honest, hurt, observant and compelling young women whose voices cannot be ignored . . . Impossible to put down until you find out how these sisters will discover their own versions of family.”
—Los Angeles Times

The book opens with the line, “My father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist.” A unique opener for sure. Silver Sparrow is the story of two young women, Dana and Chaurisse, who are the daughters of a bigamist father. Only Dana is aware that her father has another family and Dana’s existence must be kept a secret from her father’s other family. The first half of the book is told from Dana’s perspective and the second half is told from Chaurisse’s perspective as she slowly begins to realize that something isn’t quite right with her family. The last quarter of the book was certainly the best, as all the threads come together for a somewhat predictable finale. Not sure I’d recommend this one to any of you, but it did keep my attention for a couple of days.

We’ve been working our way through the Hulu series “The Handmaid’s Tale” over the last few weeks. What a truly bizarre and disturbing story. Perhaps mostly because we have the sense that it’s not such a long leap for our society to become something like this. That being said, the acting and directing are excellent. Several episodes have had us on the edge of our seats.

I’ve commented a couple of times on the music in the show. There’s not much of it and the deep selections had me convinced that the musical director was British. When Roy Harper’s “How does it Feel?” showed up in an episode this week I was convinced. What do you think Google revealed? The music is selected by a lady who lives in Austin! The Harper song took me quickly back to an old favourite of his from University days – “When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease”. If you listen you’ll hear one of the things that draws me to this – that’s right, the excellent brass band accompaniment. Coupled with the poignant lyrics, it’s right up K alley.

Now that I think about it, I believe I wrote about discovering this song again quite recently. Apologies for the duplication. Well, not really, it’s a great song.

What’s on deck for the coming week? Well, let’s see: a haircut on Monday; Physical Therapy on Tuesday; 3 swims worked into the calendar (I plan on listening to the audio book version of “American Dirt” for company); reading the new Churchill novel, “The Splendid and the Vile”, by Erik Larson – it covers the years 1940-1941 and the last part of the jacket blurb reads, “this book takes the readers out of today’s political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when – in the face of unrelenting horror- Churchill’s eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together.” We can only wish for a tiny bit of that these days.

Stay positive, calm and kind.

Week in Review – Aug 9, 2020

I’m finally able to get some exercise again. Swimming seems to be the best bet for my leg and I’ve been amazed at all the data my new Apple watch captures from my swims – total laps and yards, average and peak heart rate, yards of breaststroke versus freestyle, active and total calories expended. I did 1400 yards on Tuesday and 1500 on Friday – picking up the pace quite a bit on Friday as I got comfortable that my leg would handle it. All that technology is great and we currently have a week long competition going between Diana, Alicia and me to see who gets the most exercise and burns the most calories. McD is quite upset that she doesn’t burn as many calories for the same amount of effort – as I’ve told her, it takes a lot less effort to move her little body around than it does mine.

I saw this crazy video of Katie Ledecky balancing a glass of milk on her head while she swims a full lap. What amazing body control and balance:

The nagging and prodding all got too much and I succumbed to Physical Therapy on Tuesday. My therapist, Shenpagavadivu Sathiyamoorthy, thankfully goes by Shenda and was very thorough in understanding my situation. She’s probably nowhere close to winning a most vowels in your name contest, but should at least get a bronze star. Taking a baseline of my recovery, she had me walk in the corridor for 2 minutes and noticed that my left foot turns out when I walk and my weight is all on the outside of my foot. I explained that’s the way I’ve always walked since breaking my left ankle in University. She thinks that running in that same way put the strain on my left hip as it tried to compensate for my foot turning out, causing the stress fracture. Interesting. Now we start the exercises to strengthen everything and work on turning that left foot back in.

We’re hoping that the bathroom remodel woes are mostly behind us now. The steam shower installation is complete and all the peripherals appear to be working now. Diana and I had to play a very hands on role in supervising the initial plumber and helping him to correct his mistakes. All that remains is some argy bargy with the plumbing company over how much they would like to charge us for the first plumber that didn’t know what he was doing and spent way too much time redoing and troubleshooting his work. Diana will take the good cop first pass at that and hopefully bad cop K won’t need to make an appearance. The bathtub may be able to come inside from the front porch soon.

Will and Christine moved to a new apartment this week – a penthouse in the same building as his old one. He’s quite excited about the 20 foot vaulted ceilings, the extra bedroom, and the mountain view.

I finished “Blood” by Allison Moorer this week and I can’t remember being as affected by a book since Joan Didion’s “Year of Magical Thinking” and “Blue Nights”, as you’ll be able to tell by the number of quotes and comments that I’m sharing. The way that Moorer conveys her emotions over the years as she continues to deal with her tragic upbringing is beautiful and heartbreaking at the same time.

“I call the B-25 Daddy’s guitar because that’s what it is and always will be. It’s a 1964 Gibson. I’ve played it on every record I’ve ever made.”

A guitar as old as me that’s still going strong. Clearly a very good year.

“I keep it out where I, or anyone who comes into my house, can pick it up and play a tune. Daddy would like that, I think. I don’t treat it like a precious thing, but it is even though it’s so scarred.”

Even after the devastating pain and suffering inflicted on Moorer by her father, she still plays his guitar. A great example of the healing power of music.

“Guitars are mysterious. A person can practice playing one for a lifetime and never really figure out how they work.”

“Music was second nature to Mama, while Daddy had to work hard just to be an average songwriter, singer, and player. He probably had more talent for other things – but the desire to make music was deeply in him, even more than it seemed to be in her. He always looked to her for the right chord when he couldn’t find it and for the harmony parts he couldn’t hear. She was just plainly better and more naturally talented than he was. It made him deeply frustrated because she had something he didn’t but wanted badly. He despised the part of her that didn’t treat her talent for music as the most important thing in life besides, of course, him.”

This is an extreme version of the feeling I have with people who squander a natural music talent and ability. I have to work very hard to make something sound half way decent, while so many others can just sit down and do it with zero effort. And that is quite frustrating.

“Daddy’s main disease was alcoholism. But I don’t think it began and ended there. I have more than a suspicion that there was very likely something else going on, something else that didn’t allow his mind to operate properly. Normally? I don’t know what normal is.”

“Was he bipolar? I know he was depressed. His moods swung violently. He was unpredictable. He did dangerous things. I’m pretty certain he didn’t care if he lived or died. He would come up out of the misery every once in a while and when he did it felt like the sun was shining directly on you and only for you. That’s what his happiness felt like. He’d deliver a sweet “That’s my girl” and a pat on the back or the head when he was pleased with you. But that was only every once in a while.”

“He didn’t like competition. Everyone loved her. So he shrank her. He shrank her until she almost disappeared. She decided that she didn’t want to disappear anymore. Then he disappeared her for good. No more speaking too much, no more personality, no more competition, no more chance that she might possibly have a life outside of the one she had with him.”

Hard to imagine someone who wants to shrink their wife. But there are a lot of them out there. Then the story gets worse, in my opinion:

“What happens when you hit your daughter: First, she will bond to you out of fear, mistakenly thinking she has done something wrong and if she can just manage to not do it again or somehow please you, you might not hit her or anyone else anymore. She will even think you will love her properly if she can earn your approval. She won’t realize this is impossible. Then, she will either do that with every man she comes within a hundred feed of for the rest of her life or until she learns not to (this will take much doing), or she will despise them with such vehemence that she can barely stomach one around. Sometimes she will do a combination of both of those things, working herself into a pattern of push and pull. I love you I hate you, I need you I don’t need anyone, that will drive her a little crazy. She won’t understand at first, if ever, why she only attracts other masochists.”

And then some more positive commentary on music and innate ability:

“I was always a stickler for details even as a girl, and noticed that someone had hit the wrong chord upon first hearing the recording. When I revealed this to my sister, she looked at me like I had three heads. It was true that I was almost missing the point entirely, but the little things meant everything to me. I’d pick out the smallest details on a recording and would often fixate on them, waiting for them to come around every time I’d listen – a faraway harmony part, a double-time strum on a guitar, the acoustic upstrokes between every spelled-out letter on the chorus of “D-I-V-O-R-C-E.” The details always connected me to the ground and reminded me that even if everything else around me was too unpredictable to depend on, I could count on the records to not vary. I could trust them, and not a whole lot else.”

Moorer’s records are always impeccably produced and the paragraph above partially explains why. The only record I remember bugging me every time I listen is “Easy Money” by Rickie Lee Jones. The double bass is alone in the intro and quite out of tune – how does that happen? I love the song but the bass always bugs me.

“That I cannot cancel my love and attachment to them is a testament to the bonds, good or bad, of blood. It’s fascinating to try to figure it out, though, and I have a hunger to do so. It’s medicine, a balm for the wounds still healing. I need a balm. Sorting through it makes me tired in the deepest part of myself.”

Talking about her son, John Henry, who has appeared in the background of some Hayes Carll livestreams, and who has non-verbal autism:

“He is here as an angel. He is sometimes of the sort that tests my patience, fortitude, and endurance, sometimes of the sort that ruptures my heart, sometimes of the sort that makes me feel like every part of me that has any good in it will burst through my skin from the way he makes it increase in size. I am here to learn to allow him to redeem me.”

About making music with her “Sissy”, Shelby Lynne:

“The sound of our voices blending as only those that belong to siblings can buzzed through them just as it did us. Our voices are like two halves of a whole, and when we sing together we make one thing. It was electric. My chest and ribs vibrated in that perfect way that notes coming from my toes can make them do. Sometimes I think I live for that feeling.”

The other siblings that come to mind when reading that paragraph:

“I watch my friends and H. with fascination as they talk about what their folks are up to, how they annoy them, how they love them. I try not to cry when H. speaks to his folks on the phone, and cover up my longing for just one conversation that he’s having. I am jealous and I am sad. I am lonely.”

Sometimes simple phone calls are so precious. We don’t always recognize that at the time.

My last quote from “Blood”:

“Guns: I am farther away from them now than I have ever been. The sight of a gun unnerves me – all that shiny metal clicking and clacking, heavy in a hand. Maybe that’s how much fear weighs. It weighs as much as the gun you tote. you think you can ward off your fear if you have one.

I do not like firearms around me. I will cross the street if I see a copy because they carry them. I don’t like the sounds they make, I don’t like the damage they do, I don’t like the power they possess.”

Continuing on the musical front, I heard this great cover of the Grateful Dead’s “West L.A. Fadeaway” by moe. I love the jazzy elements of their jamband sound.

I heard about this NPR listening test that let’s you see if you can really tell the difference in high quality audio recordings. There are 3 choices for different styles of music and each is at a different audio quality (sampling frequency). I got about 70% correct indicating that I really can’t hear high frequencies well enough any more to be able to tell the difference. Put on some headphones and see what you think:

https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality

Staying with NPR, they put on what they call Tiny Desk concerts – performances at the desk of one of their reporters. Those have obviously gone virtual these days. Here’s one from Lucinda Williams. Such an unabashedly Southern accent and she always has excellent guitar players:

https://www.npr.org/2020/07/27/894685942/lucinda-williams-tiny-desk-home-concert

And here’s the Tiny desk contest winner for this year – Linda Diaz has such a gentle and smooth sound with a good message for now:

This John Hiatt song just popped up on Spotify as I was writing this post. Listen to Ry Cooder’s slide guitar – Wow!

Week in Review – July 12, 2020

“You’ll Never Walk Alone”

Hello again. This will be a brief update since I just posted about the last couple of weeks a few days ago, and we’re not off on any exciting adventures right now.

I love this video of Clorinda, my mother in law, puttering around and singing along to a record, completely oblivious to the fact that Alicia is recording her.

We celebrated my Mum’s birthday on Sunday as we do these days – by gathering on a Zoom call. This was the first time all the cousins had been together, albeit virtually, since the wedding in Cozumel over 3 years ago. Everyone enjoyed chatting and I left thinking that we should do this more often.

I watched the movie “The Trip to Greece” while Diana was sunbathing on Sunday. This is the fourth in the series starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon. The formula is the same as the last three trips – Steve and Rob travel around, enjoying fabulous meals and trying to upstage each other with humour and impressions. The impressions are very funny and well done. The constant fight to one up each other gets a bit tiresome. The scenery and food, often eaten al fresco by some aquamarine seascape, are lovely, particularly in this time when we can neither travel nor eat those fabulous meals.

I left the Susan Sontag in Austin, probably subconsciously ready for a change of reading material. So, I’ve started re-reading “A Confederacy of Dunces” by John Kennedy Toole. I didn’t make it very far through the first time, and I can’t remember why as this is a very funny and readable book.

“A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head. The green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles that grew in the ears themselves, stuck out on either side like turn signals indicating two directions at once. Full, pursed lips protruded beneath the bushy black moustache and, at their corners, sank into little folds filled with disapproval and potato chip crumbs.” Meet Ignatius J. Reilly, the hero of this tragicomic tale. He is 30 years old, lives with his mother, and gets into all sorts of hilarious mishaps throughout the New Orleans French Quarter.

This was Toole’s only published novel. His mother went to great lengths to convince a Tulane University English professor to read it after his death, and that ultimately led to publishing, a very positive public reception and a Pulitzer prize.

I’ve always enjoyed the cartoon contest on the back page of the New Yorker magazine and decided to enter my first caption this week. What do you think?

I had fun with that one and so entered again for the contest this week.

We were watching “Little Voice”, a new series by Sarah Barielles on Apple TV, when one of the characters said, “We all have cracks, that’s how the light gets in.” I said, “That’s a Leonard Cohen quote”, right as the character said, “either Hemingway or Leonard Cohen.” That set me off on a Cohen listening spree. What a poet!

Here’s the song of Cohen’s that first introduced me to him. The finger picked guitar, backing vocals and French verses had me hooked.

And we’ll finish out with one of his last songs, “You Want it Darker?” No thanks. Not right now! I love the Gregorian sounding background vocals.

Please remain calm and kind to everyone.

Week in Review – June 14, 2020

“Road Trip – Week 3”

It was time to head home to McKinney on Monday. Tower 23 (named after the nearest life guard tower) served us very well for overnight accommodation on Sunday – thanks D for organizing such a great room and view. Konos surf bar right next door fixed us up with an amazing breakfast burrito – easily enough for a family – and coffee for the road. We took the southern border route to Flagstaff, Arizona. This gave plenty of opportunity to observe the much touted border wall. The VW Passat did a great job of making the climbs up to 7,000 feet and back down.

We checked into the Flagstaff Marriott Courtyard (looked more like a ski lodge) in the early evening and enjoyed some Grimaldi’s pizza and salad delivered to the hotel.

Tuesday was our long driving day. We had one fun stop just off Interstate 40 and the old Route 66 in Winslow, Arizona. You may have heard the Eagles/Jackson Browne song “Take it Easy”, with the third verse:

“Now I’m a-standin’ on the corner in Winslow, Arizona
With such a fine sight to see
It’s a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford
Slowin’ down to have a look at me”

It turns out that corner is well celebrated with a park, statues, live music and exhibits.

They even have a flat bed Ford parked alongside (no girl inside):

The audio book of “Where the Crawdads Sing” kept us company as we traversed the mountains, mesas, and then wide, flat open spaces to Amarillo. We were most certainly road weary on arrival at the downtown Courtyard – this one is part of the “historic” collection and is a remodeled downtown bank building. It certainly has a lot more character than most. Only in this kind of rural location can you stay in a corner suite with wrap around windows for $102.

Do you see that smoke detector way up there?

With only 5.5 hours of driving left on Wednesday, we were able to enjoy a more leisurely start. The local breakfast taco joint got us set up with breakfast and we were off on the road again. We made it to the house around 6pm to the beeping sound of a smoke detector. Diana located it in my office – the worst possible location as it’s 20 feet up and set back from the wall. Thankfully she’s a lot more stable and agile at the top of the ladder than I am and soon had the battery replaced. I think I read somewhere recently about 10 year life smoke detector batteries – but we didn’t have any of those on hand and would have gone nuts from the beeping before they arrived.

After that excitement, the only chores left were to put water in the pool and replace a broken sprinkler head – all the full joys of home ownership and leaving town for a while.

We had been looking forward to having Wash and Zoe, and their owners Brad and Jocelyn, come and visit us for a while. They arrived on Friday evening and stayed with us overnight, leaving late Saturday afternoon.

You can see Wash and Zoe, named after characters in some sci-fi series, are a couple of gorgeous Irish Wolfhounds. After checking out every room on arrival, they settled right in for the stay. We took them for a walk up to Zin Zen after dinner and can see how much work it is to own such beasts – a constant stream of folks asking what kind of dogs they were. Here’s a couple of shots to give perspective on just how large they are:

Thankfully they are a couple of very sweet and gentle giants. It was so nice to have company for the first time in 4 months. And I think I have clearance to order one up.

Will was busy taking pictures of his car and then “photo sphere dream weaving them” with some fancy AI software to make these great images. Apparently he takes 5 to 10 individual pictures and weaves them together to create these. Quite the artist.

My book on the road trip was “All Adults Here” by Emma Straub. This is a very enjoyable ensemble family drama, set in small town Connecticut. Three generations of Stricks play out their lives in quite different fashions, and it’s all very enjoyable and engaging.

“The older Astrid got, the more she understood that she and her parents and she and her children were as close as people could be, that generations slipped away quickly, and that the twenty-five years in between her and her mother and the thirtyish years in between her and her children were absolutely nothing, that there were still people who had lived through the Holocaust, which had happened less than a decade before she was born, but which her children had read about in their history textbooks. It happened before you could blink. Her children had been children, and now they were adults; they were all adults here, now.”

Some music that I enjoyed on the trip. First a classic Rory Gallagher blues boogie:

Then something completely different from the inimitable Muscle Shoals musicians:

And finally some classic Texas driving music:

Please remain patient and kind with everyone!

Week in Review – June 7, 2020

“Road Trip – Week 2”

The Pacifica Rockaway Beach Holiday Inn Express was our office for calls on Monday. Fortunately our room had a nice balcony overlooking the Pacific Ocean and a changing collection of surfers. That meant that one of us could conduct business from outside with the crashing waves as a backing track, while the other worked from inside. I enjoyed watching the different skill levels and strategies of the surfers. The 60 degree temperature and view were certainly a change from our back patio in McKinney. Just what we needed.

There was an issue with Clorinda’s hot water heater that Marco was in charge of remedying. He tried to enlist friends to assist with the replacement – this was unsuccessful but one friend did recommend the Vietnamese sandwiches from Dinosaur’s. I filed that away and we ordered a variety of those for lunch on Monday. We sat outside and enjoyed these on Amy and Adamo’s patio. My portobello was delicious.

Lunch was a bit boisterous as Luciano and Massimo competed to see who could be the least safe on a new see-saw toy that Any bought for them. What was she thinking? I can’t imagine a worse choice for those two monsters.

A typical Campagna project spun up on Monday afternoon – we need to replace the 20+ year old water heater that has started leaking. Adamo refused to help, reserving just the right to criticize and boss Marco around. Diana and Marco headed off to Home Depot and came back with a new heater, faucet and various other supplies. We left Marco and his supervisor to it and headed up the hill to Andy and Jude’s for Happy Hour.

Here’s an entertaining video of Marco “Sparky” going through his water heater installation checklist:

What a joy to be in a quiet environment with calm people! They were great hosts as usual and showed us videos of the resident mountain lion and cub playing in their fountain. The wildlife on Gypsy Hill has expanded quite a bit over the last year – deer were the main attraction but now we have added bobcats, mountain lions, and wild turkeys. Really, seven wild turkeys were congregated outside Clorinda’s kitchen window on Monday afternoon. I understand they peck at the glass pretty relentlessly – doesn’t seem like very “wild” behaviour.

We enjoyed a lovely sunset from Clorinda’s patio.

It’s always sad to watch the continued decline of Diana’s first car – such a pretty Fiat Spyder. I’m afraid it’s beyond restoration hope at this point.

Diana went up on “The Hill” to supervise the plumber on Tuesday morning – he was reviewing Marco’s water heater installation, installing a new kitchen faucet and fixing a sink. I stayed back at the hotel to get some meetings and work done. It was a warmer morning and so I was able to sit on the balcony and enjoy the surf show during my calls.

Dinner was takeout sushi from Go Sushi. Fortunately they had a chicken curry on the menu for me – it was actually very good. Clorinda and I ate outside with the boys and the see-saw made it’s way into the proceedings again.

I got to babysit Francesca for a while and enjoy the sunset – such a happy baby. Very pleased with her penguin dummy.

The wildlife show continued with a young deer checking out the parked cars.

Adamo shared some of his delicious lobsters with us for dinner on Thursday night and then it was time to get packed up for the continuation of the road trip.

On Friday we drove down to San Luis Obispo (home of Cal Poly where Will studied Mechanical Eng) with a brief stop to see Will at his office in the afternoon. It was entertaining to see his face when one of his co-workers told him “Your Dad’s here” – not what he was expecting at all. Will gave us a tour of the school that he’s remodeling and then we were on our way south.

Alicia brought us dinner to our hotel and we had a nice early night. Diana was up and looking for a running location on Saturday. Alicia suggested Shell beach on the north end of Pismo and that seemed to work out well.

Diana let me know that she could easily live there and had found some nice bungalows just off the beach. Maybe she forgot about California taxes and the elevated prices of absolutely everything. Turns out she was trying to find a compromise in our retirement destination desires – cooler weather for me and a beach for her. Not entirely out of the realm of possibility but a serious long shot.

After D’s morning exercise, we drove to Alicia’s house for breakfast. She made us some amazing Bloody Mary’s with crispy bacon stirrers and avocado toast – definitely becoming quite the hostess.

Saturday afternoon was spent with John and Madi at their home in Arroyo Grande. Ben and Lilly provided some great entertainment – they’re such good kids. Ben is an excellent baseball player for a 3 year old. Can you see the focus on his face as Mama D pitches to him?

John grilled up brisket and ribs and we had a lovely meal outside. I sat down inside to relax after dinner and was quickly joined by the kids looking for me to read some stories. Ben was almost asleep by book number three. Overall a very pleasant day on the California central coast.

Sunday took us on down the coast to Pacific Beach in San Diego to meet up with Campbell and Molly. Diana found an excellent hotel room for us on the beach at a boutique hotel called Tower 23. The balcony had a great view of all the action on the beach.

Campbell and Molly came over and joined us on the balcony for a while before we went downstairs for dinner at the Jordan restaurant in the hotel. Then they came back upstairs to watch the last of the sunset. I really enjoyed Molly telling us that, having to much time listening to Campbell’s sales pitches and follow up, she could easily tell the story for him. I particularly enjoyed her rendition of “and what have you” – something I say quite a bit.

As Molly’s sister was arriving to drive them home, we experienced our first live protest march. All very peaceful.

Whew! Another busy week but so nice to spend time with everyone.

Week in Review – May 31, 2020

“Road Trip!”

My fancy new kettle arrived on Monday. It allows me to heat water to the perfect temperature for my fancy new cafetiere – 96 degrees, and also features a “goose-neck” spout for precision pouring. I know people in Guatemala who take the art of preparing coffee way more seriously than this – they have three different setups for different styles of coffee. So I’m not that nuts at least.

Damon managed to send my gifts to himself and so the replacements arrived on Monday. Very funny.

I read today that the New York Public Library has published a Spotify playlist of New York sounds. Apparently residents are getting increasingly anxious because of the lack of street noise. It’s called “Missing Sounds of New York” and here’s “Romancing Rush Hour”:

My rescheduled dental cleaning was on Tuesday. I got a full set of x-rays and a very good report out. The hygienist said I was her easiest patient of the morning. Don’t think I’ve heard that before and good to hear at least some small part of me is holding up well.

We passed Tuesday evening in typical fashion with live streams from Hayes Carll and the Band of Heathens. Check out the “Big Lebowski” movie inspired version of Dylan’s “The Man in Me” that they put together – excellent stuff.

The album featured on the Supper Club this week was Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue”. This choice was inspired by the death of Jimmy Cobb, the drummer and last surviving member from the group that recorded this 1957 classic – one of my very favourites and an album that never gets old after hundreds of playings. It was also mentioned that Levon Helm celebrated his birthday on Tuesday. I texted with Denny about that and he reminded me of us seeing him together at Jazzfest – that was when I first heard Stanton Moore on drums. Levon left his drum kit to sing up front and I asked Denny who the excellent drummer was that took over. It was nice to see the musicians again after my private birthday show. Gordy did another great take on “Hurricane” by Levon Helm:

Alicia turned 20 on Wednesday and we hosted a Zoom call for friends and family to celebrate. PCD, Lisa and Renee all joined from Australia, along with family and friends from around the US. The call was lovely with everyone sharing stories and thoughts about Alicia. In the aftermath of all that love, Diana was quite depressed about not seeing her Mum or daughter any time soon. In a weak moment I suggested that we could always drive to visit them. This suggestion was well received and a few minutes later McD indicated that she could be ready to leave at 9:40am on Thursday morning. Yes – that is a very precise time. Apparently calculated from the time a meeting ended plus a few minutes to get organized. And the road trip was on!

As you can see, this is no short Sunday drive. We planned to take about 2.5 days and arrive in time for a barbecue being hosted in Pacifica for Alicia’s birthday on Saturday afternoon. After a delayed start, we made it to Amarillo for an early dinner. Diana did an excellent job of selecting a restaurant with an outdoor patio. The Drunken Oyster is a relatively new place done up to look like a classic New Orleans joint. We started with a fondue that included andouille sausage and seafood. It was absolutely delicious and well presented. That was followed by a very pretty but chewy and tasteless kale salad (deducted from the bill), and a very tasty steak and scallops special. Who knew Amarillo had such good dining options? Nicely done D!

With our tummies full it was time to embark on the 4 hour leg over to Albuquerque and a bed for the night. We arrived around 10pm and were soon snoozing comfortably.

A reasonably early start on Friday had us on our way to Bakersfield – estimated at 12 hours or so away. The drive was mostly smooth and easy as we traversed the mesas of Arizona and the Mojave desert of California. Temperatures rose to over 110 degrees in the desert. Not a good place to run out of gas or have a flat tire. We passed the time with a long audio book – Liane Moriarty’s “Truly Madly Guilty”. The narration is excellent and the characters kept us entertained. It’s a 17 hour book! We did have a couple of pauses in the book – one for the Space X Dragon launch – an amazing sight. Isn’t it interesting to look at how the rocket consoles have changed over the years:

The second pause was to wish “Good Lord Alex” a happy birthday in New Orleans. As we were chatting with Alex, we arrived at a checkpoint on the CA border that I wasn’t anticipating. The lady asked me, “Where are you coming from?”, and my heart sank at the prospect of being turned around. Not to worry, she just wanted to know if we had any plants, fruits, or firewood in the car. With a “Welcome to California” we were on our way again. Whew!

We arrived in Bakersfield around 9pm and were again ready for a comfortable bed and some sleep. Early Saturday morning I heard something I would not have anticipated a few months ago. “I need to find somewhere to go for a run”. We found a nearby park and I enjoyed my Taco Bell breakfast while Diana ran around the park several times. After showers we were on the road again. While Bakersfield could not be described as a pretty tourist destination, it is known for the musical contribution of “The Bakersfield Sound”. What’s that, you ask?

The Bakersfield sound is a sub-genre of country music developed in the mid-to-late 1950s in and around Bakersfield, California. … Wynn Stewart pioneered the Bakersfield sound, while Buck Owens and the Buckaroos, and Merle Haggard and the Strangers are the two most successful artists of the original Bakersfield era. We stayed just off Buck Owens Blvd and I played a couple of his songs for Diana on the drive.

We were not sure what type of reception to expect from the Campagna crew on arrival in Pacifica on Saturday afternoon. Fortunately everyone was delighted to see us and we enjoyed a fun celebration for Alicia’s birthday. The surprise from all as we pulled up almost made the long drive worth it.

Francesca, the newest Campagna addition, is absolutely gorgeous as her Auntie D continues to remind her. She had a lot of fun attacking Uncle Marco with a birthday balloon.

Sunday was a somewhat relaxing day – as relaxing as hanging out with a loud Italian family can be expected to be.

I finally finished the Robin Williams biography this week. The first half was a bit of a slog but the second half really captured my attention. What a tortured and supremely talented individual. I forgot how many wonderful movies he made in the early 90s – “Good Morning Vietnam” being the first big breakout from stand-up comedy to blockbuster movies, followed by Awakenings, The Fisher King and many others. It seems that a lot of people took advantage of his kindness and generosity. Very sad that he couldn’t ultimately handle his Parkinson’s diagnosis.

I’ll start out the music section with something fun from Buck Owens of Bakersfield fame:

Good Lord Alex turned me on to a new band, the Monophonics, this week. I like the retro-soul sound quite a bit:

I replied with a favourite song from the Stereophonics. Get it? Monophonics to Sterephonics:

And finally something from a new artist, Still Wilson, that I read about this week. Good trumpet and guitar:

Week in Review – May 3, 2020

“You can never have too much New Orleans piano”

The Monday night between the two New Orleans Jazzfest weekends is typically “Piano Night”. This event, an annual fundraiser for the excellent radio station WWOZ, has been going for 32 years and lately is hosted at the House of Blues. All the pianists performed from their homes this year.

The live stream was very well produced and we thoroughly enjoyed the 2 plus hours of New Orleans inspired piano. You can watch the replay here for some amount of time:

https://www.wwoz.org/pianonight

We both commented on the difference between the highly technical pianists and those that really had a “feel” for the New Orleans beats and styles. We’ve seen Joe Krown play at all kinds of venues around New Orleans and he can make any beat up, old upright piano sound amazing. He’s one of the folks that has a tremendous feel for the music, coupled with ridiculous dexterity. I get exhausted just watching how hard his left hand is working. Joe started with “Classified” by the legendary New Orleans player James Booker. It sounds and looks to me like an incredibly difficult piece to play well. The credits at the end of the show indicated that Joe had a large part in organizing and producing the show.

Jon Cleary, an Englishman who plays piano like he’s a 3rd generation New Orleanian, is another one with a great feel for the music. Jojo Herman, of the jam band Widespread Panic, was a revelation – he clearly has spent a huge amount of time listening to James Booker and Professor Longhair. He had spent some time learning from Dr. John, who passed away earlier this year, and shared a personal video of Mac performing “Tipitina” at the end of the show. “What is a tipitina?”, asked Jojo of the Dr. “Fess (Professor Longhair) told me it was some kind of bird, but I never heard of such a thing.”

The show finished up with my all time favourite, Long Tall Marcia Ball. Excellent as always with a rare performance on a grand piano – we typically see her with her electric keyboard, legs kicking in time to her beat.

Thanks to WWOZ for producing such a great evening of music.

A loud thunderstorm woke us early at 4:30am Tuesday morning. We were fortunate to miss the brunt of the storm, which treated South Dallas to ping pong ball sized hail and very strong winds. We were up and ready in plenty of time for the window washer/pressure washer guy (Vincente) making his annual visit to clean things up for outside living weather. This excellent Van Morrison tune just popped into my head:

I forgot to talk about these murals when I was mentioning Dr. John earlier. Denny and Anne ventured out around town to take pictures of some of the musician murals that have been popping up. Here we have Dr. John, Professor Longhair, and Jimi Hendrix. I think these are really well done – the artists really took some time on the details.

Penelope needed some repair work done and was ready to be picked up from Auto Hans on Tuesday afternoon. Diana drove me down there at 5pm and we were amazed at the “rush hour” traffic on the Dallas North Tollway. Easy to drive 80 mph on a route that would typically average 15 mph at that time of the day. I’m not looking forward to everyone getting back on the roads again.

The remains of the yummy Rye rib-eye tacos and elote made for a very pleasant Tuesday dinner. Team Robertson was like a machine in the kitchen putting it all together. Maybe there’s a taco food truck by a sandy beach in our future. We attempted to finish watching “Ford versus Ferrari” after dinner. One of us finished and the other only made it for a few minutes. I really enjoyed this movie and found Christian Bale and Matt Damon to be excellent – particularly Damon as Carroll Shelby – quite different than some of his more typical roles. The tug of war between the GM “suits” and the entrepreneurial and freewheeling Shelby/Ken Miles collaboration was well depicted. What beautiful cars Shelby made.

Tuesday night brought more severe thunderstorms overnight. We both slept through them with the only visible signs of their presence being some mulch and leaves strewn about the patio.

Wednesday morning brought one of the work activities that I find the least exciting and inspiring – the quarterly meeting of our Board of Directors Audit Committee. Three solid hours of hearing about inspections of our operations to point out everything that could be done better. Much more positive than it has been in the past, but still a bit of a chore. Oh well, it still earns a paycheck, and I should be very grateful for that right now.

I received this article on Wednesday evening. “Irvine’s super grandad who beat coronavirus with one lung celebrates birthday.” Interesting sentence structure from the Daily Record – maybe “with one lung” is better positioned right after “grandad” to avoid any confusion? This is my Uncle Scott’s younger brother – what an incredible fighter.

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/ayrshire/irvines-super-grandad-who-beat-21947296

Thursday was the full Board of Directors meeting at work and I had to give a brief update. This was a bit more fun than the Audit Committee but still dragged on for more than 3 hours. Diana laughed when she came to make sure I was doing well, to find me playing the piano in the office. “Don’t you have the Board meeting now?” “Yes, I’m on the call”.

This was the day that I should have been attending Jazzfest and enjoying what we’ve taken to calling “Dad’s day” – the day when the Dads get to enjoy the smaller crowd. I also noticed Friday lunch at Commander’s Palace on my calendar – very sorry to miss that.

I finally had an X-ray taken of my left hip and pelvis to see what’s causing the pain when I walk. Nothing showed, so we’re assuming it’s muscle or tendon related and will schedule an MRI for next week.

Brian was the trivia victim for our team Happy Hour in the evening. His Oklahoma raising did generate some entertaining questions, including showing us tools and implements set up as ornaments in his home and asking what they were. One was a hay bail hook that looked like it would have made my work at the Kennedy’s farm much less damaging to my hands. I remember being in agony picking up those bails by the lacerating twine. Where was the “hook” that Brian used back then?

We had a lazy weekend, “Jazzfesting in Place” out by the pool, reading and enjoying the lovely weather. My New Orleans meat pies, crawfish pies, and mini crab pies arrived just in time on Friday night.

Sunday was a great fest day. John Boutte’s version of Randy Newman’s classic “Louisiana” was excellent – had never heard him do that before. The lyrics have been enhanced to show Boutte’s disgust at President Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina.

And then there was the Bruce Springsteen and the Seeger Sessions band performance from 2006, just 8 months after Katrina and the first ever performance by his new band. This performance is really a completely unique show, catering directly to the New Orleans locals and the pain they’ve endured. I share these two songs from that set:

My first book this week was “Travels with Charley (In Search of America)” by John Steinbeck. I hadn’t heard of this work until it was cited by Stephanie Land as a big reason for her desire to explore Missoula, Montana. I thought maybe the descriptions of that territory may convince McD to give it a try. Or at least that overly optimistic child living inside me thought so.

Steinbeck sets out at the age of fifty eight to find the “real America” on a road-trip across country. Who do you think Charley is? Perhaps a new young girlfriend besotted with the famous author and ready to spend hours on the road in his track and camper top? That may have made an entertaining set of stories, but no, Charley (actual name Charles le Chien) is “an old gentleman poodle.” “He was born on the outskirts of Paris and trained in France, and while he knows a little poodle-English, he responds quickly only to commands in French. Otherwise he has to translate, and that slows him down.” I very much enjoy the way that Steinbeck humanizes Charley throughout. “Now, Charley is a mind-reading dog. There have been many trips in his lifetime, and often he has to be left at home. He knows we are going long before the suitcases come out, and he paces and worries and whines and goes into a state of mild hysteria, old as he is. During the weeks of preparation he was underfoot the whole time and made a damned nuisance of himself. He took to hiding in the truck, creeping in and trying to make himself look small.”

Steinbeck’s descriptions are as on point and original as ever. “At the first lighted roadside restaurant I pulled in and took my seat at a counter. The customers were folder over their coffee cups like ferns.” What an excellent simile.

I enjoyed this commentary on the sameness taking over the country (from back in 1960): “Communications must destroy localness, by a slow, inevitable process. I can remember a time when I could almost pinpoint a man’s place of origin by his speech. That is becoming more difficult now and will in some foreseeable future become impossible. It is a rare house or building that isn’t rigged with spiky combers of the air. Radio and television speech becomes standardized, perhaps better speech than we have ever used. Just as our bread, mixed and baked, packaged and sold without benefit of human frailty, is uniformly good and uniformly tasteless, so will our speech become one speech.” I have to disagree with the “better speech than we have ever used” on television – they don’t know the basic difference between an adjective and an adverb anymore.

The last quote I’ll share is from the section on Montana, and one that I was anxious to share with Diana. I’ve been trying to convince her that this would be a lovely retirement destination, to retorts about too cold in the winter and no beach and ocean. “The next passage in my journey is a love affair. I am in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection, but with Montana it is love, and it’s difficult to analyze love when you’re in it. The scale is huge but not overpowering. The land is rich with grass and colour, and the mountains are the kind that I would create if mountains were ever put on my agenda.”

I highly recommend this book. A really enjoyable read. Has me ready to go back and revisit all those Steinbeck classics set in Central California.

All the time at the pool this weekend allowed me to finish another book – a fast paced mystery set in Paris during World War II. “Three hours in Paris” by Cara Black tells the story of an assassination attempt on Hitler when he pays a quick visit to attend a mass at Sacre Couer in Montmartre. The sniper is actually an American from Oregon who is recruited while living on a UK Army base in Stornoway with her Scottish husband. Her attempt fails but she does kill the leader of the German Navy by accident as Hitler ducks. The cat and mouse pursuit of Kate through various Parisienne neighbourhoods by the German forces is well written and keeps the pages turning fast. I recommend this as a good pool or beach read and a good one for those that have visited Paris to reminisce over.

Let’s finish up with some more New Orleans music. I know I’m probably over doing it for most of you, but I can’t get enough of it. Just stepping off a plane at Louis Armstrong airport and hearing those classic syncopated rhythms brings a smile to my face. First up is some more Joe Krown, this time with the excellent Walter “Wolfman” Washington, and recorded at the iconic Maple Leaf Bar:

Now some of Snooks Eaglin – one of the highlights from “Festing in Place” last week. I recommend anything from this “Rhapsody in Bronze” album.

A little more Joe Krown – I think the best version of “Tipitina” – even better than the original Professor Longhair:

The legendary James Booker, idol of all New Orleans piano players, closes out our music section this week with one of his genre bending offerings:

I leave you this week with some helpful advice on spousal communication during these trying times:

Week in Review – April 26th, 2020

“Jazzfesting in Place”

Hello Quarantiners. Hope you are all staying healthy and getting some exercise. Our exercise program came to a sharp stop on Monday afternoon. After our Week 4 Day 3 run on Saturday I had some muscle pain and didn’t think too much of it. It subsided on Monday and so I did 30 minutes on the elliptical – bad idea. Now it’s pretty painful and as a result I haven’t been able to run or do much exercise this week. Don’t worry – McD has made up for it with very consistent and vigorous workouts. Maybe I should try the universal cure recommended by our Commander in Chief this week:

My Mum sent a poem and some pictures from 1918 (and 1869) that indicate the leadership and information flow over 100 years ago may have been better:

We grilled the rib-eye steak from Rye on Monday evening – the first nice day we’ve had in a while. Diana did a lovely job since I wasn’t up for moving around too much. The perfectly cooked steak and grilled vegetables were a real treat. And we have plenty of leftovers to enjoy all week long.

After dinner we enjoyed some light relief with the Matthew McConaughey movie, “My Crazy Ex-Girlfriends”. This was a recommendation from Alicia and was perfect for our mood – just silly, good fun.

The Tuesday New York Times puzzle made me laugh with a clue “__ Gatos” next to a clue with the answer “Elroy”. How does that happen? I’m always pleased to finish any day of the NYT puzzles in less than 20 minutes.

We had the rest of the quail for dinner and 8 mins in the oven versus 10 from Saturday was the perfect adjustment. What a delicious and somewhat decadent quarantine meal. The regular Band of Heathens Supper Club live stream provided entertainment with dinner. It’s fun to watch the shows get more professional in quality as the weeks pass. Ed’s guitar and harmonica sounded particularly good.

Diana cooked sole on Wednesday, a nice healthy option when not done meuniere style. Do any of you know what meuniere means? Sorry there’s no way to do an accent grave in this blogging tool that I can find. I can think of one particular reader who likely does. It means “miller’s wife” – referencing the dredging in flour prior to cooking. We watched the “Jersey for Jersey” fundraising broadcast with dinner. Stand out performances included Tony Bennett’s “Smile” and Springsteen’s “Jersey Girl”, performed a la Tom Waits at a much slower tempo and with a melancholy feel.

A text from the Ogans on Thursday morning alerted me to “Jazzfesting in Place.” This would have been the first weekend of Jazzfest in New Orleans (canceled for 2020) and the local radio station, WWOZ, put together a line up of broadcasts from prior years in the same schedule format as the real deal. Apparently the food vendors are set up all around town offering to go treats. I wonder where my favourite Mrs. Wheat’s pies is located? Nothing to worry about – they have a website and I’ve ordered up a sampling of pies for weekend 2 of festing in place.

Snooks Eaglin was the stand out for me on Friday. I was reminiscing about seeing him at the original Rock ‘N Bowl with the Ogans and Sean a few weeks before he passed. Those crazy fingers flying over the fretboard. I set up some jazzfest photos on the patio to put us in the mood. Diana enjoyed the show from her “home office”. Anne is setting up a festing in place party on their courtyard. We laughed when she said Denny would only go on Friday or Sunday because Saturday was too busy.

Later in the day, Diana returned from Wallgreens with more excellent pictures of Jazzfests past to enhance the patio experience.

The festival is one of the highlights of our annual calendar and we really miss hanging out with our friends and enjoying great music and food. Here’s a sampling of memories:

Liuzza’s gathering spot prior to entering the fest

First year and the weather did not cooperate

The trio – one of each on the sign – always a go to

We had hoped that a visit from a pair of ducks to our pool on Friday morning was a one-off. They showed back up again on Saturday morning for an extended stay – enjoying a swim, a wander through the bushes, and some posing on top of the waterfall.

Santos came to trim up all of our trees and the ducks were scarce for a while. Diana just came in to report that she had chased them over the fence to the neighbours’ pool this morning. What a difference trimming up the big tree in front of our house has made. You can actually see the front of the house and I’m hopeful the grass will start to fill in under the tree.

Several huge loads of trimmed branches were hauled off.

Dinner on Saturday night was rib-eye tacos and elote (Mexican style street corn) from Rye. I cooked it all outside on the grill and we thoroughly enjoyed the sauce and butter that Rye provided to set it all off. I forgot to snap a picture last night but we have plenty left for another batch next week. We tried to watch the “Ford versus Ferrari” movie, but even with our recently upgraded internet bandwidth, were not able to tolerate all the delays and buffering caused by all the extra demand on our local circuits. I’ll have to download in advance so that we can try again tonight.

We’re packing up now to head out the patio for Sunday Jazzfest. Highlights that we’re looking forward to are the Soul Rebels brass band, Henry Butler, and headliner Trombone Shorty.

My book this week was “Maid” by Stephanie Land. This seemed particularly relevant as we see so many low paid workers struggling to survive in an economy mostly closed down. My eyes were hugely opened by Land’s story of survival as a single parent and house cleaner.

“Being poor, living in poverty, seemed a lot like probation – the crime being a lack of means to survive.”

The writing is excellent and I was thoroughly drawn into the struggle against ever changing government aid programs. It’s amazing that a very small increase in earnings took so many of the programs that Land needed to survive off the table. The dehumanization of hourly paid workers is a constant undercurrent – something that may have changed recently as we all come to understand how vital grocery store and delivery workers really are to society. Land reacts to a house cleaning client who has bought her a couple of lobsters for her birthday dinner:

“I stammered out a thank you. I had never encountered a client being so kind to me, treating me like a human being. I didn’t know how to receive it.”

Land’s description of the way people made her feel guilty and embarrassed for using food stamps in the grocery store are heartbreaking. An online posting that she quotes:

“Today’s lesson in irony: The food stamp program, a part of the Department of Agriculture, is pleased to be distributing the greatest amount of food stamps ever. Meanwhile, the Park Service, also part of the Department of Agriculture, asks us to PLEASE DON’T FEED THE ANIMALS because the animals may become dependent and not learn to take care of themselves.”

Wow! The cruelty on display every day is hard to fathom.

Land’s dream was to attend a writing program at the University of Montana in Missoula. “A River Runs Through It” by Norman MacLean and “Travels with Charley” by Steinbeck had her quite excited about living there. She ultimately accomplishes the dream, and this book is the first result.

On the music front, Bob Dylan continues to amaze with so much new music. This one was released this week and I love the lyrics that describe his wide and varied interests.

From my favourite raspy voiced Southern singer, Lucinda Williams, comes some more new music:

Let’s finish up with some classic Dixieland jazz from Bob French (one of the stars of festing in place yesterday):

Please remain safe and kind!

Week in Review – April 19, 2020

“Settling in for the long haul”

This is the week when I feel like we settled into a regular quarantine routine. I felt myself stopping fighting against things and just relaxing into the flow of the days. Part of our routine is watching live streams of music from some of our favourite artists and bands. Most of the time the technology works pretty well. This would have been such a different experience prior to the internet, wifi, and readily available video conferencing.

Music on Monday night came from Eric Lindell. It was Sheri’s birthday and she and Sean were also watching from California. It felt very vaguely like going to a concert together, as Lindell performed in his bathroom (he noted that, as is typical, that’s the room in his house with the best acoustics). The show was good but not anywhere near as much fun as seeing him at One Eyed Jacks, Carrollton Station, or the Kessler.

Music continued with the regular Tuesday night Band of Heathens Good Times Supper Club show, from their homes in Austin. Gordy and Ed trade off on songs, the rest of the band shares cocktail recipes, favourite albums, a classic Grateful Dead show archive recommendation, and even reads a portion of Shakespeare. Quite the eclectic hour and a half of entertainment.

Earlier on Tuesday, it was my turn to pick the workout routine. I found a core workout for runners (yes, after almost 4 weeks we’re calling ourselves runners) that looked interesting by a Swiss guy. It ended up being way too difficult for us – what the Swiss gentleman made look easy was well nigh impossible for us. We found a much more suitable one, although McD complained that it was a bit too easy.

The routine on Wednesday was from Diana’s trainer Amy, who recommended alternating situps, pushups, and tricep dips after a run. Apparently D is going to add in squats the next time we do this – yahoo!

Since Diana made a lovely dinner, I agreed to watch the new version of Little Women. Not as bad as I anticipated, with Chris Cooper, Laura Dern and Saoirse Ronan (had to check that I spelled her first name correctly) all giving good performances.

My weekly work happy hour on Thursdays is always good fun. Isaac was our trivia victim this week. He had several good questions, one of which was what is his new skill picked up during quarantine? Choices included:

(a) Beer Brewing

(b) Cocktail Creations

You don’t know Isaac, but what do you think? Turns out he’s been digesting YouTube videos on shoe shining, learning techniques and the best products. People have been dropping off boots on his doorstep to give him practice. I’ll have to pick his brain on this new skill.

We added an office tour into the routine this week. Doug showed us all his mementos including artifacts from his Dad’s butcher shop, a Wizard of Oz collection from his stay in Kansas, pictures of grandparents and grandchildren, and lots of other interesting things. One of the benefits of this time is really getting to know people better. Isn’t it strange that when we’re the most disconnected, we take the time to connect in a deeper way?

With all this time on video calls, I decided to spruce up my image with behind camera lighting and an adjustable tripod for my webcam. Diana finds it all quite entertaining.

This came in handy for another happy hour on Friday night. While I was doing that, Diana was on a video call with PCD in Australia, catching up on the last year or so in his life, and getting a video tour of his new apartment.

Week 4 of Couch to 5K concluded on Saturday morning. Diana was really pushing me, pulling ahead on several occasions. I had to wait for a “hill” to catch back up again. The picture of our route is a bit fuzzy, but we covered a solid 2.2 miles – our longest yet.

Later in the afternoon, we made our weekly trip to Rye restaurant to pick up our meal kit. This week we got quail with risotto, green beans and mushrooms, and a ribeye steak that D was begging for. She hasn’t been able to get any decent meat anywhere. The Rye version is dry aged and vacuum sealed and should be delicious.

The quail turned out well. I’ll make a slight adjustment with the next batch to make the quail meat a bit rarer – I think 8 minutes instead of 10 in the oven. The black cherry sauce set off the quail perfectly. The meal kit is for a family of 4 and we always seem to get about 2.5 meals out of it.

Sunday was a dark and gloomy day. And it started earlier than I was expecting. At 7am my wife was spotted coming into the bedroom with her stepping stool over her arm. “What on earth are you doing with that at this time in the morning my love?” Apparently it was an ideal time to do a deep sort and reorganization of her closet. Maybe she’s not relaxing into this routine as much as I had previously thought.

I spent part of the day on an annoying work issue but was able to finish up the NYT crossword in less than an hour in the background while listening to troubleshooting talk. I always have a big sense of accomplishment if I can finish without looking anything up and break the 1 hour barrier.

You can see the last clue I got, “Sign of winter’s end”. Spring? No. Some kind of thaw? No. Ahh, the other kind of sign, an astrological sign, Pisces. Geez.

After the puzzle I made a decent brunch with left over fungi salad, sausage omelet, and grits.

We may have created a monster out of Clorinda, Diana’s Mom, this week. After a few years of trying, she’s now sufficiently bored that FaceTime is appealing to her. She ends the session each day with “See you tomorrow”. We’re practicing patience as she wanders off for several minutes at a time, returning to be surprised that we’re still there. That’s Andy, her amazing neighbour, photo bombing. He was helping Adamo to install a new vanity.

Here are a couple of pictures that I enjoyed this week. A funny one of Wilson virtually herding, and a touching one of a rainbow spanning across the very troubled city of New York.

My book this week was “Deacon King Kong” by James McBride. Set in a public housing project in the late 1950s, this story features a crazy bunch of characters. McBride was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Obama in 2016 “for humanizing the complexities of discussing race in America”. There’s certainly plenty to reflect on in this novel about the struggles of citizens living in public housing and working low income jobs. I enjoyed the story and particularly the development of a number of very interesting characters as the plot unfolded.

This song from Amy Black and the delightful Blind Boys of Alabama caught my ear this week. A good message and sound for these times:

I had one of those mornings earlier in the week where a melody and one line of a song was in my head but I couldn’t for the life of me place it. Was it the Tedeschi Trucks Band? No, too high and reedy of a voice. I worked on it in the back of my head for a couple of hours before giving up. Then just after lunch it popped up. The line about Marlon Brando was the hook that got my brain to pull it up – “Pocahontas” by Neil Young. Of course!

Stay safe and kind!

Fortnight in Review – April 12th, 2020

“Penguin Out”

I’m back.

Did you miss me?

That’s very sweet of you to say.

Yes – with all this staying at home I’m capable of carrying on extended conversations with imaginary friends. With no concerts to attend or restaurants to visit, I wanted to wait until I had something interesting to report before writing this report. You can be the judge if there’s actually anything in here or not.

Let’s start out with some humour. I agree, something we all need just now. I received a package with a card reading “Thought you could penguin out while in quarantine. Love you from A, A, L, M, & F”. Those initials are Amy, Adamo, Luciano, Massimo, and Francesca, and we know now that Amy was behind this. She had a great giggle at this picture, as did Diana.

And then… another package showed up in the evening. Guess what? Yes – a smaller version.

That has to be one of the more ridiculous sights in a while. Anybody have an entertaining onesie picture they’d like to share with us?

Our couch to 5K running program continues. I’d like to say it’s going well and it’s pretty hard work at the same time. McD continues to join me and is doing very well. We finished week 3 and are nervous about the jump up involved in transitioning to week 4.

In retaliation (maybe too strong a word) for running, Diana has me doing Zumba (who knew there were so many different salsa, sambas and the like?) and Yoga with her. I’m enjoying the variety and she’s getting a kick out of how silly I look doing it.

We enjoyed Easter Sunday video calls with both sides of the family. My Mum and Dad, Will and Christine, Campbell, and Alicia were first. The technology worked well and it was really nice to virtually see everyone. Then we had the extensive Campagna clan joining Clorinda. It took a while to get Grammie’s video working and then she had a great time chatting with all the grand kids. Marco started with a virtual treasure hunt, shared a video of Olivia’s choir group all performing together virtually, Giancarlo read a recent poem of his, and then we heard from each grand child. The lower IQ group joined from Puerto Rico, and had to leave the call to go and pack in hopes of catching the last flight off the island in the morning.

I’ve been using some of my extra time to take an online piano course. It’s by Willie Myette and I’m working my way through the Blues piano section. I highly recommend this course – it’s great to be able to start and stop and learn at your own pace. I’m working on “Frank’s Blues” just now and maybe I’ll post a video when I get it down. That reminds me – I had to come up with the trivia for our team virtual Happy Hour on Thursday, and decided to play the intros to some songs on the piano and guitar and see who could guess the song and artist first. Here’s some of the silliness on the guitar. I need to get back to online guitar lessons next.

It’s fun to meet families and pets on the video calls. Brad has two Irish wolfhounds – I’m very jealous. Here they are recovering from Happy Hour.

Rye, our wonderful little downtown McKinney restaurant, continues to keep us well fed with their meal kits. We enjoyed some redfish ponchatrain – an excellent New Orleans style sauce – and the best asparagus I remember tasting, last week, and then steamed buns (bao) with pork belly and all the fixings this week. It’s really nice to be able to support this great restaurant this way.

Here are a couple of pictures that I enjoyed recently – my Dad’s garden planter and a view that one of our neighbours took from our apartment building – I like what the Fairmont hotel is doing in the distance with the heart of Texas.

And here’s a wee funny about the stress that isolation can put on relationships:

I really enjoyed “The Adventurer’s Son” by Roman Dial. This is a true story of Dial’s search for his son who goes missing hiking solo in the Costa Rican rain forest. The book starts with great stories about Dial’s adventure exploits prior to kids, continues into describing the trips and activities that he completed with his son, and ends with his search for his son. There are a lot of twists in the search with a great amount of misinformation and story telling from the Costa Rican authorities. I have recommended this to the “Manly Book Club” in Austin. The descriptions of hiking in the jungles of Guatemala and South America were really interesting. It’s amazing what some folks are willing to undertake.

We lost three amazing musicians over the last 2 weeks. Ellis Marsalis, patriarch of the most famous New Orleans music family that includes Wynton and Brandford passed away from pneumonia caused by Covid-19. Marsalis contributions to music are huge – particularly as a teacher. Here he is in the jazz tent at the New Orleans Jazzfest:

Bill Withers death was not related to the virus. He retired from music many years ago but a few of his songs have lived on – “Lean on Me” seems to be everywhere these days. Here’s “Ain’t no Sunshine” from the excellent Old Grey Whistle Test series:

Finally, and having the most impact on me this week, John Prine passed away from the virus as well. He is one of my all time favourite singer songwriters. Best known for “Angel from Montgomery” and the Bonnie Raitt cover, he has penned and performed numerous haunting and deeply insightful songs. There is an excellent show that he did for the Sessions at West 54th series several years ago – highly recommended. My favourite is “Hello in There”:

I also love the NPR Tiny Desk concert that Prine did recently:

Be safe and kind!