June 2018 – Keith Robertson

Week in Review – June 24, 2018

We arrived home from California on Monday just in time for Diana to rest up for the big day – Back to Work! She started as a VP of Operations for NTT Data on Tuesday. Her week was spent meeting her team, peers, and folks that she’ll be working with – a busy week of back to back meetings and trying to keep all the names straight. She seems to be working with a good group of people and will enjoy it once she gets settled back into a routine.

We had been looking forward to our Saturday concert for a while – The Eagles with special guest Chris Stapleton at AT&T Stadium (the Cowboys home stadium) in Arlington. If you ask Diana who her favourite band is, she’ll always answer that it’s the Eagles. We were guests in a suite that included dinner in a nice club and so arrived early to beat the crowd of 75,000 entering the stadium and enjoy a relaxing dinner. This also allowed Diana to select the perfect seat in the box.

Chris Stapleton has an interesting story. He moved to Nashville to be a songwriter and has contributed over 150 songs to albums by such artists as Adele, Luke Bryan, Tim McGraw, George Strait and Brad Paisley. He has won five Grammy awards and seven Academy of Country Music awards. His performing career really took off in 2015 when he sang his cover of the song Tennessee Whiskey from his recently released Traveler album as a duet with Justin Timberlake at the Country Music Awards. A huge audience was introduced to his soulful voice and guitar playing and the album was number one for many weeks.

We both thoroughly enjoyed Stapleton’s show which included all our favourites – “Fire Away”, “Traveler”, “Parachute”, “Broken Halos”, and “Tennessee Whiskey”.

By the time the Eagles took the stage at 9pm on the dot, the stadium had filled to a capacity of close to 75,000. The band included long time members Don Henley, Timothy B. Schmitt, and Joe Walsh with new additions Vince Gill and Deacon Frey (replacing his father and founding Eagle, Glenn Frey, who died in 2016). Do you think Deacon looks anything like his father at the same age?

Timothy B Schmitt – Love Will Keep Us Alive

The new members did a great job as you can see in the video of Vince Gill singing “Take it to the Limit”.

The last time we saw Timothy B. Schmitt was in the small, intimate Granada theater and AT&T stadium is about as far from that as could be imagined.

Here’s Deacon singing one of the songs that his Dad made famous:

The top song of the night for me was a cover of the Tom Waits song “Ole 55”:

The first encore was the song most associated with the Eagles, “Hotel California”. I enjoyed the trumpet introduction – there was a 5 piece brass section on several songs including the James Gang song “Funk 49”.

Of course there were the classic Joe Walsh songs – “Life’s Been Good” and “Rocky Mountain Way”:

And it all came to a close over two and a half hours later with Diana’s favourite, “Desperado”:

We spent the night at a hotel near the airport so that Diana could catch her flight out to California to babysit for John and Maddi, who are enjoying a few days in Hawaii. She’ll enjoy spending time with Alicia before she starts college.

I had a quiet, relaxing Sunday afternoon and finished the book, “The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music” by Steve Lopez. Lopez is a Los Angeles Times journalist and this book is about his experiences in befriending a mentally ill homeless man who he had noticed to be an amazingly gifted musician. As it turned out, the man, Nathaniel Ayers, had been trained in classical music at Juilliard. He attended Juilliard on a full scholarship from 1970 – 1972, when black students were extremely rare – especially ones from lower-middle-class, single-parent families. He did extremely well in that ultra-competitive and stressful environment (straight A’s in music performance classes; and also in other classes until his schizophrenia kicked in and his grades began to fall) until the illness finally forced him out. Ayers had been living on the streets for 33 years and was in his mid-50’s when Lopez met him.

This beautifully empathetic and honest book is as much about Lopez’s efforts to help Ayers as it is about Ayers himself. There are many memorable sections – one of my favourites describes Ayers’ reunion with Yo Yo Ma at Disney Concert Hall – they attended Juilliard at the same time. The book concludes with Ayers finally accepting use of an apartment and music studio in a care facility on Skid Row – he is the musician in residence at the studio.

I highly recommend this book.

Week in Review – June 17, 2018

Diana and I officially became “empty nesters” (not a term that I love especially after hearing it so much in the last week) at 7:08am (precision timing provided by Diana) on Wednesday morning as Alicia drove off to start her long drive to Cuesta college in California. She picked up John at the Dallas airport and they made it all the way to Santa Fe on their first day. From there they spent the night in Sedona and Las Vegas, arriving in Arroyo Grande on Saturday afternoon. It was very strange to go from a totally full house to just the two of us over the course of a few days.

Patty and I took turns keeping Diana busy on Wednesday and Thursday and then we flew to San Francisco on Friday for the triple threat of Fathers’ Day, Finn’s birthday, and our first anniversary.

I met the boys for an early combination Finn’s birthday and Father’s Day celebration at Terun in Palo Alto. This is a Neapolitan style Italian restaurant with the official Italian government approval on the pizza style. The food was delicious – Brussel sprouts, beet gnocchi, and mushroom pizza all amazing.

After lunch we made a quick stop at Will’s apartment so that I could give Finn his birthday gift. It’s a painting that I saw in a McKinney coffee shop and thought Finn would enjoy – a panda done with pastels on suede. Finn has always loved pandas.

Bowling was our next stop at a classic old bowling alley in San Mateo. We had a lot of fun and Will’s crazy spin technique took him to victory in the first frame. Campbell did give him a good challenge.

It was a real treat to spend the afternoon with all three boys and I especially appreciated Campbell making the trip up from San Diego.

Meanwhile back in Pacifica Auntie D was enjoying some time with her nephews, Massimo and Luciano.

We’re amazed at how well coordinated Massimo is for his age. It has to be rare for an eighteen month old to be that adept on a scooter. I found this picture of Diana and her brothers and enjoy it very much. What a lot of work Clorinda had dealing with that gang. I think Amy and Adamo certainly have their hands full with two very active boys. I laughed when Luciano called me Auntie Keith. He’s used to Auntie D and assumed that’s the right title for me too.

On Sunday we celebrated our first wedding anniversary at Manresa restaurant in Los Gatos. The restaurant burned a few years ago and re-opened in 2016 with only a chef driven (i.e. no choices) tasting menu and has received 3 Michelin stars each of the last three years.

We had an amazing four hour dinner with 12 small courses. The menu wasn’t presented until the end of the meal and we enjoyed the surprise of each new plate. The presentation with different plates, glasses and cutlery for each offering was just as impressive as the food itself. The service was so good that it was almost comical – just as you took the last sip of wine from a glass it was scooped up to prepare for the next course. It didn’t seem that waiters were hovering but they just appeared table side at all the right times. The iced oyster with radish and the caviar tart were my two favourites while Diana loved the roasted squab which tasted like a perfectly seared foie gras. The most amazing presentation was the “into the vegetable garden” course which must have taken a huge amount of work to assemble – each vegetable, leaf, and flower seemed to be exactly placed with tweezers.

Our reservation was at 8pm and we didn’t get back to the hotel (a 10 minute walk that we needed) until after midnight. The company was so good that it didn’t feel anything like a four hour meal. It’s good fun to reminisce about what we were doing on this day last year with our family and friends on the beach in Cozumel. We have Diana’s amazing albums to help remember the beautiful day.

Here’s some interesting new music from a band called Gogo Penguin. They are based in Manchester, England and combine jazz, rock, classical and electronic influences in their music. Good relaxing, background music that’s quite different from the norm.

Week in Review – June 10, 2018

The big highlights this week were Alicia’s graduation ceremony on Friday morning and the celebration on Saturday night. More to come on both as the week plays out in this posting.

I had work meetings in New York early on Monday and so did something that I hate to do – flew for work on a Sunday! That used to be a regular occurrence and the good news is that it’s very rare these days. Another rare event these days is me wearing cufflinks and so the penguins were happy to get out and about and to enjoy the view from our fancy conference center looking out on the Brooklyn bridge.

I took my boss to one of our favorite New York restaurants, Batard in Tribeca (a great discovery by McD a few months ago), for dinner. He used to be a professional chef and so has pretty high expectations for food quality and service – he loved everything about Batard.

I started with the mushrooms and cauliflower which was served with raisins, shallots and black sesame. Perhaps the tastiest cauliflower and mushrooms that I’ve had – it’s amazing how good simply prepared, fresh vegetables can taste. That was followed with an excellent rabbit cassoulet. I’m looking forward to eating here again soon.

On Tuesday I went on a walk up to Greenwich village after being cooped up in conference rooms all day. I liked these views of the Freedom Tower and the Oculus. The Oculus is a new $4billion facility that acts as a rail hub for various lines coming together in the financial district and 9/11 memorial area. It’s a very modern juxtaposition with the older buildings in the Wall Street district. I also came across this church of some kind in Greenwich village and liked the lighting as the sun began to set.

It turns out the meal at Batard was my last with my boss as my boss – he and most of my peers left the company unexpectedly on Wednesday. This was a very disconcerting day and it was really tough to concentrate on what needed to be done for the rest of the afternoon. Some of us met up with him after work to say our goodbyes. Just when you have a good team going, everything has to change again.

I arrived home around 8pm on Thursday night after enjoying the movie “The 15:17 to Paris”. This was a good distraction after the work week. I’m not sure Clint Eastwood’s decision to use the real heroes of the train attack worked too well, but it passed the time well.

The graduation fiesta soon began with Kris and Cat arriving after midnight and John, Maddi, Lily and Ben showing up around 3am. After a few hours of sleep, it was time to head over to the Allen Event Center for Alicia’s high school graduation.

The ceremony was very well orchestrated and 600 plus kids graduated in around 2 hours. Poor Lily and Ben were very tired with short attention spans and fortunately graduation was in alphabetical order so that they could leave before getting too grumpy.

Diana organized a graduation get together on Friday night at Zin Zen for family, Kris, Cat, Patty and Brent. We enjoyed the walk to and from Zin Zen although it’s already starting to get very hot all day long. Here are Diana and Brent in a serious strategy session about who knows what while Patty relaxes.

Most of Saturday was spent working through D’s action lists to prepare for the party. If you didn’t keep moving and looking busy you very quickly got another task from the list. Fortunately, John was a workhorse and handled all the big jobs like cooking three kinds of pasta sauce from scratch. You can see the flowers that had to be distributed to just the right location – wait a minute, that might look better over here. With so many helpers, everything was ready in plenty of time for the 7pm start. I forgot to mention that Clorinda and Adamo arrived in the middle of the afternoon to add to the excitement.

The party was a big success with a pretty full house of both adults and graduates. The graduates seemed quieter than normal – maybe they’re growing up or more likely just worn out. Various airport trips started on Sunday while the remaining crew cleaned up, relaxed, and enjoyed my special pulled pork Benedict.

We had organized a trip to the Kessler with John and Maddi a few months ago when we knew they would be visiting. We thought Alicia could babysit and it would be a nice night out. Sunday evening rolled around and everyone was pretty tired but decided to go for it. We started with a lovely dinner at Bolsa and then saw the Bacon Brothers in concert. This is the actor Kevin Bacon and his older brother Michael. I anticipated the two of them strumming acoustic guitars and was pleasantly surprised by a very talented full band.

McD was just a few feet from the stage and had direct line of sight to Kevin – she had that same look on her face that she gets when Hugh Jackman shows up on our TV screen. Here are a couple of clips from the show.

A late night but very enjoyable company, food, and music.

Whew – I’m almost exhausted recapping the week as I was living it.

Throughout the week, the Ogans were taunting us with pictures from their visits to France, Portugal and Spain. Here’s D’s station in Portugal.

Here’s a relaxing song that I enjoyed this week to finish up.

Week in Review – June 3, 2018

Both birthdays are behind us and now it’s time for a Memorial Day celebration! We started with a late afternoon snack at The Keeper, one of our favourite local restaurants with the best calamari we think we’ve tasted. I chuckled at the mermaid handles on the door as one of my funny birthday gifts from the Ogans involved a picture of Diana’s head on top of a mermaid body purchased on Denny’s birthday trip to San Miguel de Allende. The lobster sliders are quite yummy as well.

Later in the evening, Diana and I walked up to the charity concert at Adriatica that happens every year and stayed to watch the fireworks after the show. The concert was held in an open piece of land behind the new developments that is shaped like an amphitheater. The sound was not very amphitheater like and McD commented that the sound crew needed to go and take lessons from the folks at the New Orleans jazzfest. Very true.

The musical headliner was Joe Nichols, a country artist that I’m not familiar with but Diana knew a couple of his songs. Pleasant background music for enjoying a nice early summer evening but nothing memorable at all. The fireworks after the show were set up on a raft in the middle of the manmade lake beside Harry’s restaurant and were quite impressive. In previous years, we’ve watched from Alicia’s balcony while she attended the festivities – this was the first year we’d been up close and Alicia decided to stay at home.

The magnolia trees in our back garden seem to be quite happy this year and celebrating Memorial Day in style with larger flowers than we remember and some good new growth.

It was back to New York again for me on Tuesday and an opportunity to meet up with my boss on Tuesday evening. We were headed to Barbounia at 20th and Park for dinner (a place that caught my eye on a walk back to the subway from the Jazz Standard) but made a quick stop at the “Library of Distilled Spirits” beforehand. This was a lovely new find with a great cocktail list and beautiful surroundings.

Barbounia is a Mediterranean restaurant with an Israeli/Middle Eastern concentration. We liked everything about it – the appetizers and mains were delicious with great ambience. So many things sounded good that it was really hard to choose. I ended up having duck “Shawarma” which was served over black rice, wild mushrooms, pearl onions, tahini and pine nuts – I loved the dish! My boss had short ribs Tajine that I sampled and they were equally delicious. I’m looking forward to visiting Barbounia again the next time Diana is with me.

It wasn’t too late when we finished dinner and so I suggested a stop at the Jazz Standard which is just a few blocks from the restaurant. We saw the Sachal Vasandani quintet. Sachal is a young jazz singer and a favourite of Wynton Marsalis. His voice and style have a little bit too much of the Michael Franks smooth approach for me but the band was excellent. James Francies was the stand out on piano – his sound, touch and improvisation were beautiful. Francies grew up in Houston and moved to New York in 2013. He’s in his early twenties, has won numerous awards and appears regularly on the Tonight Show playing with the Roots. He has composed music and movie soundtracks with Questlove. I had a brief chat with James after the show and found him to be very humble and charming. Here’s a video from the show. Obed Calvaire on the drums was also excellent and another up and coming young New York based jazz musician.

I met up with my friend Andrew (used to work with me at EDS/HP as a sales executive) on Wednesday night for dinner. He had suggested one of the fancy Wall Street steak houses but I was easily able to divert him to the Jazz Standard for barbecue and music. We enjoyed the same band and James Francies was even more impressive on the piano the second time around. Here’s a video of Francies with his own band and composition.

A pleasant schedule change at work allowed me to get back to Dallas in the early afternoon rather than close to midnight. Patty and Brent were planning to bring over Thai food to celebrate Diana’s employment before I got home and so I was able to crash that party and enjoy some yummy food.

I enjoyed the movie “Lucky”, starring Harry Dean Stanton as Lucky, on the flight to New York. Another quiet, unassuming movie about a retired man who lives alone in a very rural desert town. Much of the movie follows Lucky as he goes about his daily routine in a somewhat lackadaisical manner. About half way through he meets a new friend and the movie very cleverly shows his mood improving through subtle changes in his routine. I’m hoping for some new movies on the American Airlines system in June as I’ve now definitely watched everything that interests me at all.

The music channel on the plane surprised me with Blue Spirits by the jazz trumpeter Freddie Hubbard as a “new release”. This music was recorded in 1967 and has been re-mastered and released a few more times since. One of the interesting aspects of the recording is that there are three different pianists on the various tracks – Harold Mabern, McCoy Tyner and Herbie Hancock. The rhythm piano playing on the first song, Soul Surge, caught my attention (it’s Harold Mabern) and I was surprised when the style changed a lot on the next track – now I understand why.

Friday evening and a portion of Saturday were spent working my way through my “Honey Do List” which has become a bit lengthy with the upcoming visitors and graduation party. I’m happy to report that the bed relocation project has been completed since this picture was snapped. “Fix up misters” is the only remaining task and is awaiting some mounting hardware. Patty wondered if this was some fixing up I was doing on myself – Mister Robertson. The “feels like” temperature (adjusted for humidity impact) was 104 degrees on Friday which made for an ideal time to replace the filters in the attic – good exercise.

I finally finished John Irving’s “A Prayer for Owen Meany” this week and don’t remember a book that took quite as long to complete. I enjoyed the book but wasn’t dragged back into it whenever I had some spare time. This is apparently Irving’s novel that is most often referred to as “an American classic”, ahead of his better know novels “The World According to Garp” and “The Cider House Rules”. The story portrays the enduring friendship between the narrator and Owen Meany during the time when the Vietnam War was having its most divisive effect on the United States. English teachers apparently often reference the first sentence of this book as one of the best – mainly because it contains the essence of the entire story. Here it is: “I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice – not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.”

As I write this post the Miles Davis recording of “It Never Entered My Mind” is playing and I think this may be the best and fullest trumpet sound I’ve heard on any of his recordings.