“Surfing Dogs, Walking in Memphis”
Did you miss me last week? Really? Be honest.
We were visiting with Kris and Cat last Sunday prior to their French adventure, and ended up staying late after dinner. With travel and excitement, I decided to skip the blog and catch up on two weeks today. Do you think I qualify as a “Babe Who Blogs” – I didn’t think so either and so skipped this event at the apartment building.
I spent the first week in Austin, while McD headed to Wisconsin for a few days. Sunrise on Tuesday was described as “crepuscular” by the TV weather guy. It was quite impressive and I looked up what that meant:
Crepuscular Rays: A sunbeam, in meteorological optics, is a ray of sunlight that appears to radiate from the point in the sky where the Sun is located. Shining through openings in clouds or between other objects such as mountains, these columns of sunlit scattering particles are separated by darker shadowed volumes.
I do enjoy waking up with sunrise over downtown Austin. Meanwhile Diana was enjoying what Wisconsin had to offer – much cooler weather, and some good steakhouses (no relation to the New Orleans institution of the same name).
I enjoyed an amazing Chinese Dim Sum meal on Wednesday with Mark and Damon. Lin Dim Sum is one of my new favourite Austin restaurants. We navigated the hard to eat soup dumplings and then enjoyed the stand out of our meal, the seafood basket. All the different seafood offerings were perfectly cooked and presented.
Diana and I regrouped in Dallas on Thursday night at the lovely Neighborhood Services restaurant on Lovers Lane. We love this place and it never disappoints with excellent service and food.
On Saturday morning, we caught a flight to San Francisco for a few days with family. Crosswords are a good way to pass the time, and I always enjoy the view of the Sierras with a small snow cap remaining.
We took Clorinda to Puerto 27, the Peruvian restaurant in Pacifica, for dinner on Saturday night. She enjoyed “sharing” the pisco sour 27 cocktail with me, and was heard to say, “is the rest of this for me?”.
Clorinda thought her “His and Hers” note by the extra coffee maker acquired at a rummage sale was very funny:
Sunday took us down to Santa Clara to visit with Kris and Cat. The fresh produce from their garden led to excellent appetizers and dinner. We laughed as we reviewed the calendar for their three week trip to France, and particularly Kris’ list of outfits, shoes, and accessories to be worn each afternoon and evening
Diana had to work on Monday, so I took Clorinda for lunch at the Cliff House – a classic San Francisco restaurant on the cliffs above Ocean Beach.
Sutro’s at the Cliff House is very fancy and we were able to score a lovely window seat. Clorinda loved every last drop of her red Thai curry bouillabaisse, while I was equally happy with my scallops and shrimp over saffron cous cous.
I gathered some excellent stories: Why it’s so much more difficult to sing opera in French than Russian (who would have expected), the challenges of 
surf boarding behind a ski boat in Lake Tahoe when you can’t float with a life jacket, living in a one bedroom apartment in North Beach with a baby grand and not being able to concentrate on music if the kitchen wasn’t fully organized, and making a 21 layer rice crispie cake for Adamo. For desert we chose a butterscotch pot de creme (yummy). We both enjoyed our 2 hour plus lunch experience.
While in Wisconsin, McD had seen a story on the news about the dog surfing championship in Pacifica. It was funny to read about this in the local Pacifica paper. Here’s the start of the story:
“It was a foggy morning in Pacifica, but the cover burned off as the day went on and it didn’t deter crowds from coming out to see the 4th annual dog surfing championships at Linda Mar beach on Saturday. At least a thousand people showed up to watch.”
Tuesday took us down to Campbell to prepare for our concert at the Saratoga Mountain Winery. We enjoyed dinner at Pacific Fresh in the Campbell Pruneyard and then made the precarious drive up to the winery.
Shemeika Copeland, daughter of blues great Johnny Copeland, opened the show beautifully. Her dialogue between songs really added to the experience.
You can tell from the video that Diana sprung for some amazing seats – front row, right in front of Marc Cohn’s piano. Thanks for the excellent birthday gift!
Marc Cohn and the Blind Boys of Alabama followed Copeland, with a very unique set. The Blind Boys adding excellent gospel harmony to Cohn’s songs. “Walking in Memphis” taking on a whole new meaning with the gospel harmonies. The blind boys have been performing for over 7o years, with one of their member close to 90. What an experience.
Video recording was not permitted at the show, so here’s a sample of what that song sounded like at another performance:
I loved watching Cohn’s smile as he listened to the Blind Boys enhancing his compositions.
We will never forget the Cohn concert at the Kessler a few years ago, when we were first introduced to “True Companion”, our wedding song, and the story of an overseas service members’ wife attending the concert. Here’s a memory from that show:
Taj Mahal finished out the show. While we enjoyed his music and performance, more Marc Cohn would have been great.
I love this video of Taj Mahal riding around New Orleans while performing his classic song, “Queen Bee”:
We flew back to Dallas on Wednesday, fortunately sharing the flight with Kris and Cat heading to France.
Prior to the flight, we enjoyed brunch at Mo’s in downtown Campbell, home to an outstanding Bloody Mary with onion ring and bacon – yummmm.
We both worked most of the day on Thursday and Friday, and then Diana organized an excellent night out on Saturday. We began with dinner at Rye in downtown McKinney. Ownership had changed in the last year and the cocktail list had me on alert, but we ended up having an excellent meal. Four courses of shared tapas – blue cheesecake (very creative), forest floor (almost up there with Manresa presentation) with four kinds of mushrooms, edible flower, and seaweed foam, perfect scallops, and finally pork belly lollipops.
Dinner was followed by the Peterson Brothers band in the downtown McKinney courthouse – quite a change from the Continental Club where we usually see them. Diana had a nice chat with Deana (the boys mother) where we learned that they were just back from opening for Gary Clark Jr. in Virginia – big time! As usual the Brothers delivered high energy, positive vibes with those great smiles and energy.
Sunday began as normal- swim, coffee and crossword, and facetime with Mum and Dad. I laughed at the story of my Dad’s challenges with caulk, only to struggle as I tried to fill in a hole where wasps are gathering around a window on our back patio.
On a completely different note, Will is headed to Burning Man next week and has been excitedly sharing pictures of his camper, outfits and transportation:
I’m excited to hear about Will and Christine’s experiences in the Google village at Burning Man.
I loved the book “Henry, Himself” by Stewart O’Nan. O’Nan is renowned for illuminating the unexpected grace of everyday life and the resilience of ordinary people with humor, intelligence, and compassion. In this book, he offers an unsentimental, moving life story of a twentieth-century everyman.
Soldier, son, lover, husband, breadwinner, churchgoer, Henry Maxwell has spent his whole life trying to live with honor. A native Pittsburgher and engineer, he’s always believed in logic, sacrifice, and hard work. Now, seventy-five and retired, he feels the world has passed him by. It’s 1998, the American century is ending, and nothing is simple anymore. His children are distant, their unhappiness a mystery. Only his wife Emily and dog Rufus stand by him. Once so confident, as Henry’s strength and memory desert him, he weighs his dreams against his regrets and is left with questions he can’t answer: Is he a good man? Has he done right by the people he loves? And with time running out, what, realistically, can he hope for?
The quality of the writing is superb, and I really enjoy the time taken exploring the everyday experiences that make up a life. I look forward to reading the other two books in this trilogy.
This is my favourite Peter Gabriel album, before things got too esoteric, with excellent production by Bob Ezrin, and containing “Here Comes the Flood” – a top 10 song of mine.
Try this piece for an escape from the ratrace – just beautiful and calming:
And if you liked this, then you will probably enjoy this as well, excellent pianist also:
And as the wonderful Monty Python’s Flying Circus would say, “and now for something completely different”. In my estimation, this is the perfect bouncy summer song for relaxing by the pool:
Shemeika Copeland delivered an awesome version of this song by her father on Tuesday night: