“More of the same”
This week was quite similar to last week – helping to make Clorinda as comfortable as possible as she regains her strength. The good news is she has a very good appetite and is always so alert and responsiveness when her grandchildren show up:
We did manage to escape for lunch at Puerto 27, a very good local Peruvian restaurant, while Clorinda was at dialysis. Diana went for comfort food and was very happy with her burger, while I chose an avocado and crab sandwich.
I passed some of the time with the new documentary series about Saturday Night Live on Peacock. The episode on “More Cowbell” was hilarious and well researched, the episode on the musical guests, a pleasant walk down memory lane.
We flew home to New Orleans on Saturday and were surprised to see the airport so quiet on our arrival before 8pm. TSA closed, all stores and restaurants closed, so clearly no departing flights. Seemed unusual. It will not be like that next week when the Super Bowl comes to town.
We were getting parade updates for Chewbacchus, a walking parade that we’ve enjoyed in previous years. It has a science fiction geeky theme, and certainly doesn’t take itself too seriously. We were much too tired to venture into the fray and so missed Kara and Debra in their Wonder Women krewe. I think McD should join them next year – what are your thoughts? She just needs a little encouragement and some help with her outfit.
It’s always hard to wind down after a day of travel. We watched a very good movie, “The Peanut Butter Falcon”, to try and relax and it did the trick. Great acting and a nicely understated and calm storyline.
The weather today was the best of the year so far – 70 degrees, blue skies, and, most importantly, no humidity. We celebrated with a couple of laps around Audubon park – always a treat.
I started “Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story” by Bono this week. I’m about half way through just now, and am really enjoying the read. The writing is honest and lacks any of the bombast that you might expect, given his public persona. I’ll share some of my favourite passages next week. Here’s some of the online chatter:
“NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • Bono—artist, activist, and the lead singer of Irish rock band U2—has written a memoir: honest and irreverent, intimate and profound, Surrender is the story of the remarkable life he’s lived, the challenges he’s faced, and the friends and family who have shaped and sustained him. • A VOGUE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
“A brilliant, very funny, very revealing autobiography-through-music. Maybe the best book ever written about being a rockstar.” —Caitlin Moran, award-winning journalist
“When I started to write this book, I was hoping to draw in detail what I’d previously only sketched in songs. The people, places, and possibilities in my life. Surrender is a word freighted with meaning for me. Growing up in Ireland in the seventies with my fists up (musically speaking), it was not a natural concept. A word I only circled until I gathered my thoughts for the book. I am still grappling with this most humbling of commands. In the band, in my marriage, in my faith, in my life as an activist. Surrender is the story of one pilgrim’s lack of progress … With a fair amount of fun along the way.” —Bono
As one of the music world’s most iconic artists and the cofounder of the organizations ONE and (RED), Bono’s career has been written about extensively. But in Surrender, it’s Bono who picks up the pen, writing for the first time about his remarkable life and those he has shared it with. In his unique voice, Bono takes us from his early days growing up in Dublin, including the sudden loss of his mother when he was fourteen, to U2’s unlikely journey to become one of the world’s most influential rock bands, to his more than twenty years of activism dedicated to the fight against AIDS and extreme poverty. Writing with candor, self-reflection, and humor, Bono opens the aperture on his life—and the family, friends, and faith that have sustained, challenged, and shaped him.
Surrender’s subtitle, 40 Songs, One Story, is a nod to the book’s forty chapters, which are each named after a U2 song. Bono has also created forty original drawings for Surrender, which appear throughout the book.”
I didn’t save off any new songs this week – that’s a first. Not sure why. Here’s a classic that was in the soundtrack to a movie I was watching, can’t remember which one:
The wonderful guitarist, Julian Lage, has a new album out with a lot of very varied content:
Coexist peacefully, with kindness and patience for all!