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memories

Ever wonder about the standardization of screw threading?

“Can I help you with anything?”

I’d been standing in this aisle at the local hardware store for five or six minutes, waiting for someone to come by. It was 10 a.m. There was one other customer in the place. This was, I should point out, one of the two local hardware stores. One seems to have two to four people working at all time, I’ve been in there a few times and haven’t seen the same face twice. I’ve also never been there when anything was going on, which probably means nothing. Also, at that store, if you need a specific thing they have, you’re in luck. But it seems to be a small list of on-the-floor inventory.

I thought about going to the Tractor Supply. I’ve been there once. They had neither tractors, nor the supplies I needed. And that’s the sort of memory that’s hard to overcome.

So I went to the other local place. They’re all fairly equidistant, but I’ve also been to this one and I figured, for today’s obscure search, this would be the best bet.

Which led me to standing there, waiting for this guy to wander over.

I am looking for screws to mount a TV to a wall.

The guy recoiled a bit. It was physical, visceral, and you could tell. But then his customer service brain kicked in and he was happy to try to help. I had a picture of the installation manual, which showed some screws. But what I saw look like the things that go into the wall. I needed the screws that go into the wall mount. The guy said he gets this all the time. People come in, the instructions no help. These things all require precise hardware, it’s never spelled out well, and apparently never included in the box, no matter the brand you buy.

I needed these screws because, in my home office, there’s a great little mount already on the wall. And that mount is in a perfect line of sight of my Zoom angle. (Oh, the modern first world problems.) I’m going to hang a TV there and stream live webcams over my shoulder and see if I can distract anyone in a meeting using various aquarium shots and such.

So the guy helps me find the right screws. I was standing in the right place, he said. Hovering over the correct box. Inside the box are 15 little compartments, of course, of varying sizes, both diameter and length.

“These,” he said, “would be my best bet.” He said that in that way that lets you know, hey, he’s guessing too. Based on the oddly phrased material in the manual he meant.

Hey, we’re all guessing pal.

I picked four screws, noted the price and took them to the cashier. She charged me $.42 per screw, which was fair since they were listed at $.42 cents per screw on the box. On the way to the car I realized the screws I’d picked up didn’t have a flat or Phillips head, but rather a hex head. So I had to think about where all of my tools are, and which one might just maybe have a chance of fitting these little guys.

I took them to the house, wrapped up in the receipt because, it was a best bet, and also because she did not offer me anything with which to carry my four dainty little screws.

I took the screws upstairs and realized a problem: the screws are so small they slip right through the holes on the mounting arms.

Can you take back $1.68 in merchandise?

Can’t worry about that now. I had a meeting to prepare for. A Zoom meeting. There would be no TV monitor over my shoulder, just a mount.

It was a fine meeting though. A new colleague was helping me flesh out a few details of one of the classes I’ll be teaching this term. Classes start next week, this person just returned from a European vacation and she spent an hour chatting away with me. She was very generous with her time, insight and resources. It occurs to me that I need to invest in local coffee house gift cards as a thank you.

And the rest of the day was spent working on that class. In the afternoon, a whole bunch of material came my way for the other two classes I’ll be teaching. Between now and December, I’ll be fine tuning everything.

That’s an exaggeration. I hope to be caught up by Thanksgiving.

While I was having a bowl of soup as a late lunch and digesting some of the information from that meeting it occurred to me: use washers.

So I went into the garage, pulled down the Box Of Random Bits of Assembly Supplies You Must Never Throw Out and, for the first time, understood the genius of those shop workers with jugs of specific types of hardware and sizes. I don’t have a need for that, mind you, but I get it.

And I also got four washers. By some happy accident I found four the same size. (So what tool or furniture is missing four washers around here?) Happily, they all fit today’s need. And so did one of detachable screwdriver tools on the hex head screws. Four screws applied to the wall mount arms, arms and TV stress tested for weight, though the TV is light. And then I put it on the wall.

As I write this, over my shoulder there is a shot from a wildlife cam from somewhere in Europe. There’s a babbling stream in the foreground, and a giant old oak in the center background. Unseen birds are happily chirping away. This flat screen mounted to the wall, streaming a scene from halfway around the world, sits over my 1948 Silvertone radio. I like the technological juxtaposition.

(I think there’s some of this paint in the basement. I wonder if I should try to camouflage the power cord.)

I bought that radio from a retired teacher in 2017. Restoring these had become his retirement hobby.

He showed me this one, which I’d gone over to ask about, and I asked him about his process. He gave me a tour of the ones he was tinkering on in his garage, and the finished radios that held pride of place in his home. I got him to drop his price a bit on the Silvertone he’d advertised, and he helped me load it up in the car. It still powers up, you can hear the tubes hum to life. And, in the old house, you could hear the local AM station. I caught part of a football game.

I seldom turn it on, because I don’t want to wear it out. Part of the ABCs of me.

My plan was to put a Bluetooth speaker, or an under-the-cabinet streaming radio of some sort in there and just play big band music. And one day I’ll do that!

The gentleman I bought it contacted me a few weeks later, and I gave him and his wife a little mini-tour of our new building on campus. On their way out he said he was thinking of selling one of his really, really nice radios. One of the few sorts I’d really want, an early floor radio with station presets, rich with wood and history. I could put some of my old station call letters on the buttons, maybe the buttons work and you could watch the needle slide across the dial. How neat this would be! We’d talked about them for some time in his home, and I knew better than to ask. But when he visited campus he said he was maybe thinking about selling one, one day. He seemed hesitant and nervous about it, like maybe his wife had talked him into saying that. Like maybe he wasn’t really sold on the idea of selling, but he brought it up.

I said to him, with solemnity and a sincere appreciation for the work he does on those radios, If you do, I hope you’ll consider giving me a chance to make you an offer.

I kept checking my Facebook messages for the next six years, but he never wrote me. But that’s OK. He was a nice guy, and his wife was charming and I hope they’re doing well. Which … let me check one more time … nada.

Ah well, new town, new marketplace, new opportunities.

When we moved here, when I started putting my office together, the first thing I did was turn on that Silvertone. The tubes hummed up and then I scrolled the dial. You can get a good handful of AM stations out here.

I wonder about the family that bought that radio from Sears and Roebuck in 1948. What did they listen to on it? Did they marvel at stations they could tune in to from different states? When did this stop being a central focus in their home, and then just another piece of furniture? Were there kids in that house? If they are still with us they’d be in their late 70s by now. Do you think those kids, now old, have grandchildren that some them the wonders of the Internet? Think they’ve ever shown them scenes from the woods in Poland?

You know, that old man, that old woman, they are Boomers, and children of the rocket age, young adults of the space age. Maybe they caught that bug, and never let it go. Maybe their grandchildren showed them how to find the NASA streams.

So many technologies. So surprising how we can get accustomed to them all so quickly. So many wonders. So many screws.

Friday / memories / photo / site / swimming — Comments Off
25
Aug 23

32 gallons can take it right out of you

It is garbage day here on the inner coastal plain. As I’ve mentioned, the garbage people don’t pick up our garbage. They don’t service the area, despite almost all of our customers using the service. Despite them picking up the discards from the previous owners. Despite my having timed this such as to see the garbage truck rumble down the street as I was gathering things together. It’s a weird thing, this small inconvenience. It makes you feel a little vulnerable, somehow.

And it’s a small inconvenience, to be sure. The problem is solved by simply ~~catapulting our refuse into a neighbor’s yard~~ putting a small garbage can or two into the car, sliding a tub of recyclables in there somewhere, and driving them the 7.3 miles to the drop off place.

So I did that. One over-filled, smelly garbage can into the trunk. Plastics, steel, glass and aluminum into the back seat. Turn left, drive awhile, turn right, go around a curve, turn right and then left again, and you’re there. If you do this in the middle of the day, as I did, you might be the only one there, as I almost was.

A woman pulled in just after me and, even though this place should probably suit four or five people setting about the busy work of getting rid of things, I managed to get in her way. She smiled, I smiled. I got out of her way, and then drove away, back through town, and I took this photo.

Two-and-a-half weeks ago, I published a photo of the front door of a local historic bank as part of the We Learn Wednesdays feature. Here’s a better look.

Back at the house, the plastic recycling tub returned to its spot, the garbage can dealt with, I returned to the computer to do computer-type things. I plugged away at this site and that, dealing with tech support from two separate parts of the country on two separate issues. All but the last little bit of what the university requires for their administrative work has now been completed, and the last thing, something of a redundancy if I recall correctly, is now out of my hands. All of which means there will soon be real work to do.

But at quitting time, I quit, and went for a swim. Today I counted out 1,760 yards, which is a fair amount for me. My longest swim since October 29, 2015. I only wrote one throwaway sentence about it here that day; maybe it felt common to do long swims at the time. Most anything can feel ordinary after a time. And then ordinary can, of course, change with the simple demands of the day.

My swims aren’t very pretty, or fast, or efficient. I’ve been in the pull next to incredible swimmers — varsity swimmers, All Americans, Olympians — and it’s simply a gorgeous demonstration of the human form. What you see on TV does not do justice to what you see when you’re in the next lane. And you’ll forget to “swim” altogether as you watch the poet slicing through the water next to you. Or, at least, I do. I don’t swim like that. The only thing we’d have in common is being in the water. But over your lap time, you get to think about things, and today I considered what legendary coach David Marsh — he was himself five times an All-American, coached 12 teams to national championships and has coached more than four dozen Olympians — once told me. “You have to respect someone willing to spend hours and hours, swimming hundreds of laps, to shave a thousandth of a second off of their best time.”

Every now and then, during my swim, a part of one lap felt better than the last. Maybe I was almost finding the right technique, just in time to reach the wall and throw the whole thing off. I’m not good at it, is what I’m saying, and also inconsistent. But it was a long swim, and it felt mostly comfortable. The metric I’m using: I only stopped twice.

After that, my lovely bride and I talked about sports and classes. For the second time in a week or so someone has mentioned to her a study idea I suggested a few weeks back. We might be on to something there. These are the conversations that are the most fun. Sometimes they go somewhere.

By dinner time, which was soon after that conversation, I could already feel that swim in my shoulders. I wonder, what would Marsh say about that?

“Blame it on the garbage cans,” probably.

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15
Aug 23

Yes, the world’s best hobo song is included here

Last night I swam a mile. I didn’t know how much I would do, but it started raining on me at about 800 yards and I didn’t want to get wet, so I just stayed in the pool. Before you know it, that’s 1,650 yards and my shoulders felt like it.

The getting wet joke is a lame family joke. We’d gone on a vacation, a dive trip, and my step-father and his kids had just been certified for open water diving. Now, some of us had been diving for a long time, and some of us took to water naturally, and a lot of us had learned from different companies and through evolving teaching methodologies. So I got to be the stick in the mud who demanded the safety meeting the night before our first dives.

Good thing, too, because we learned that my step-sister thought that giving the Heimlich maneuver was delivering CPR. (To be fair, she was young.) Anyway, she wanted to go to the pool, but I wanted to go over hand signals and hypothetical situations. It seemed a good idea. She hated every moment of it. Finally, after a refresher on rescue breathing, and a run through of the basic Caribbean fish signals, we decided we were all at least in the same chapter of the book. So it was time to hit the pool. But it was raining, you see, and so she wasn’t enthused by that. (She was young.) So the rest of us went to the pool. I stayed underwater so I would not get wet.

But last night, I swam that mile and then I floated in the water listening to the raindrops until I got cold. It was delightful in every way.

I swam a mile and I … liked … it?

I do not know what is happening.

Maybe I’ll go for another swim on Thursday.

My laps have been pretty decent, by my standards. My riding has been OK, but light. My running, lousy as ever. Now I just need to put them all in a consistent routine. That’s the part that always gets me.

Today, just more peaches. We tried the new blender. (It blends!) We had peach smoothies. And then we blanched peaches to freeze. Our freezer has a lot of peaches in it now. A new colleague came over and took some off our hands. I brought in three more baskets from the tree. I made myself another smoothie.

We goofed off in the pool until dinner time. It was a fine day. Just peachy.

So let us turn our attention to the Tuesday Tabs feature. This is for all of those extra browser windows I have open. Some of these are worth keeping, somewhere, but perhaps not worth a bookmark at this time. So I’m simply memorializing them here, so I can finally close a few more tabs. (There are so many tabs.)

This is a relatively new one, and I must say, not really, but I have to start somewhere. 10 Alternatives to bi-fold closet doors (you’ll absolutely love):

The most common alternatives to bi-fold closet doors include barn doors, sliding doors, pocket doors, French doors, and curtains. If you want a more unique option, consider swinging doors, a room divider, mirrors, bookcase doors, and industrial doors …

If you’re tired of the same old bi-fold doors, choosing an alternative comes down to the overall look you want. Ready to try something new? Give these different looks a chance when you’re ready to close the door to your closet.

My home office has a bifolding door set. Not a fan.

Here are some nice places to explore here. Maybe I’ll get to one or two this fall. 8 Adorable small towns in Delaware

“The First State” is an amazing state along the Atlantic Ocean, Delaware Bay and Delaware River. This peninsula location means it is full of beautiful sandy beaches, riverfront views and gorgeous parks. The state also has a rich history dating back to it being the first of the original 13 states to ratify the constitution in 1787 (hence its ‘first’ nickname). Among the big cities and prominent attractions are a number of adorable small towns full of charm, history, and opportunity. From the Dutch colony of Lewes to maritime villages or the scenic beaches of Bethany Beach, Delaware is a beautiful and friendly state worth exploring.

I wonder how long we’ll see stories like this, before they all feel inevitable, I mean. AI comes for YouTube’s thumbnail industry:

This March, when U.S.-based AI researcher Anand Ahuja launched CTRHero, “an AI to replace Thumbnail Artists,” he called it “his life’s work.” Trained on millions of successful thumbnails from various social media platforms, CTRHero could create thumbnails within minutes, reproducing faces with 99% accuracy, according to Ahuja. The tool outraged designers who felt their livelihoods were suddenly at stake: some threatened Ahuja with physical violence. Soon after its launch, Ahuja sold off the core technology for CTRHero.

…

For YouTubers, thumbnails are serious business, as they can make or break a videos’ reach. Top creators such as MrBeast test up to 20 different thumbnail variations on a single video, paying designers a reported $10,000 for a single video. This has spawned a microeconomy of freelance YouTube thumbnails artists around the world, who hone their design skills to attract clicks.

Stop me when it feels like everything is Ready Player One. How AI will turbocharge misinformation — and what we can do about it:

By some estimates, AI-generated content could soon account for 99% or more of all information on the internet, further straining already overwhelmed content moderation systems.

Dozens of “news sites” filled with machine generated content of dubious quality have already cropped up, with far more likely to follow — and some media sites are helping blur the lines.

Without sufficient care, generative AI systems can also recycle conspiracy theories and other misinformation found on the open web.

University of Washington professor Kate Starbird, an expert in the field, told Axios that generative AI will deepen the misinformation problem in three key ways.

Starbird is a brilliant scholar and one of the leading researchers in this field. Check out her work.

As you read this, I am eight CDs behind in the Re-Listening project. That’s the one where I’m listening to all of my CDs in the car, in the order in which I acquired them. I am writing about them here because, it’s a good excuse to post videos of good music. Also, sometimes there are memories attached to these things, but mostly it’s padded content. And all of it’s fun. Except when you run across that bad CD, sorta like the bad grape you weren’t expecting. There’s one in every bunch, and it all comes down to taste.

Someone else bought Sister Hazel’s third studio album so I didn’t have to. I’m not sure who gave it to me, because I did not write it on the CD and it has been at least 23 years and two months since it happened. My memory is good, but there’s a lot of stuff in my memory, ya dig?

“Fortress” featured three singles, “Change Your Mind” peaked at number five on the US Adult 40. “Champagne High,” one of the album’s better songs, reached number 22. “Beautiful Thing” did not chart, which, in retrospect, was probably a signal that the moment of success brought on by Sister Hazel formula had somehow passed them by. It’s a mystery to me, really, because it’s the same as what we were all used to from the boys from Florida.

They are rhyming the word “thing” with the word “thing,” though. Maybe people noticed.

But, look, the formula works. If you want a fun sweaty party band, Sister Hazel can take the stage and keep you happy.

As an album, “Fortress” was a minor hit, settling at 63 on the Billboard 200. The record you remember, “Somewhere More Familiar” made it to 47 in 1997. Nine years and four albums later they cracked the top 50 again. Maybe tastes change around them, but the syrupy, twangy Southern rock guitar and the upbeat harmonies stayed with the band. And you can hear it still, Sister Hazel is touring all over the eastern US for the rest of the year.

Next up is one of those albums you regret. It was released in 1997 and I got it in 2000 and I can only blame myself. The world wide web was out there, and I had three solid years to find out “Deconstructed,” a remix album, is just a bad project. Even if you like electronic music, you didn’t want this. There are no new tracks, and no real reason to listen to this. I have probably played it four or five times, total, and two of those were for the Re-Listening project. Anyway, Bush worked with DJs from the electronic genre of music to remix some of the band’s previously released songs. The first one is probably the best track … but … still … electronic, British or of any other nationality, just wasn’t for me.

Hey, it was a fusion idea that went gold, and settled at number 36 on the Billboard 200 in 1997. I didn’t like it in 2000. I don’t like it today. I never understood it on my few tries in between. Maybe it’s just me. (It can’t be just me.)

Let’s wrap up this post with a better one. Up next in the Re-Listening project was a 2002 purchase, something I no doubt got at a discount bin. Something Sony licensed for a few suckers just like me. But that’s not a problem, because “The Sound Of Country was a 2 CD sampler set full of important tracks. It grabs you right away, with some classic Roy Acuff.

That’s the more famous Acuff version, of course, but his 1946 original is something to behold. It’s not o this CD, but I have included it for you here.

One of the greatest songs ever recorded in the English language is also included here.

It’s a fundamentally perfect song. Chet Atkins is in there. The background vocals are none other than the Jordanaires. That song topped the country chart for eight weeks in 1958 and climbed to number seven on the predecessor of the Billboard Hot 100. At least three covers of that song have charted over the years.

I am pretty sure I bought this double CD, which was, no doubt, very cheap, for this one song. It was the correct choice.

I was going through a Roger Miller phase. I’d find reasons to play that song. I wasn’t the only one who fell in love with that. It won five Grammys in 1966. It should have become a Broadway show and a network miniseries. If it had come out a few decades later it would have been embossed on mudflaps. The legendary Buddy Killen played guitar on that song. His people knew my people. Maybe that’s it.

You get into some important later hits, too. This topped the charts in 1984, presaging what would become of country music a generation later.

Also atop the charts in 1984, was The Kendalls last number one.

The father-daughter act released 16 albums, seeing 22 singles making the top 40, and 11 climbing into the top 10, including three at the top of the chart. Royce died in 1998 (this CD was published in 2002), but Jeannie Kendall, who started performing at 15, is still strong more than a half-century radio.

The whole double CD:

Blue Eyes Crying in The Rain – Roy Acuff
Walking After Midnight – Patsy Cline
Oh, Lonesome Me – Don Gibson
Mama Tried – Merle Haggard
King Of The Road – Roger Miller
Big Midnight Special – Wilma Lee & Stoney Cooper
When I Stop Dreaming – Leona Williams
No Help Wanted – Bill Carlisle
Sweet Memories – Frank Ifield
It’s Only Make Believe – Conway Twitty
I Love You Because – Bob Luman
All My Ex’s Live In Texas – Whitey Shafer
Louisiana Man – Rusty & Doug Kershaw
Does Fort Worth Ever Cross Your Mind – Whitey Shafer
Okie From Muskogee – Merle Haggard
I Got Mexico – Eddy Raven
The First Few Days Of Love – Lorrie Morgan
Sweet Dreams – Don Gibson
Tennessee Waltz – Redd Stewart
Honky Tonk Merry Go Round – Patsy Cline
Night Train To Memphis – Roy Acuff
Tortrue – Kris Jensen
Thank God For The Radio – The Kendalls
God Bless The U.S.A. – Lee Greenwood

And with that, we’re only four CDs behind. The next installment of the Re-Listening project will feature an act that shows us what turn-of-the-century country and bluegrass music should have done.

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8
Aug 23

Mostly music

We had some big winds and a great lightning show last night. Other parts of the region got hit quite hard, but we did OK. There were two branches in the road when we went out to pick up some dinner. (We tried a local pizza place, ordering things that weren’t pizza. The manager’s son, who looked all of 9 years old rang us up. No idea if he got the price right, but his dad was right there, cracking wise for us, so I’m sure he didn’t undercharge.

The lasagna was OK. But plentiful. I got two dinners out of it, last night and tonight, and I’m happy with that.

Anyway, this morning we found that the hydrangeas got waked by the storm. Mostly the rain, I think. One is in the back, on the eastern side of the house, but close enough to the structure that it’s hard to imagine those gusts got in there. The other is on the northeast corner. But hydrangeas will lean from the weight of water alone, and these guys were big and proud and tall.

So we went to a hardware store for some stakes and twin. Poured out a pint of blood to pay for it all, visited the grocery store to stock up on a few supplies. (How long does that take, we’re still re-stocking things. It seems a slow process. That’s fine. No one is going hungry, it’s just the idea of it, Shouldn’t there be more things in the refrigerator? There will be in time. What’s the next great meal that provides an abundance and leftovers? Thanksgiving? Will I be wonder about this in November?

Anyway, I tried my hand at staking up the hydrangea bushes. I spent a long time pondering strategies. I spent an almost equal amount of time wondering if I was up to the task. Am I kidding myself? It’s a weird question to ask yourself over such a small matter. First, they’re flowering bushes. Second, and you can look this up, it’s a common problem, and everyone has an easy peasy attitude about the solution. On the other hand, having driven most of the stakes into the ground and tied up a lot of branches, they don’t look quite as nice as they did yesterday.

Which was when I stopped, and decided to check on the peach tree. It was fine in the storm, but gravity put some more fruit on the ground, so I brought them inside. I ate six or eight peaches today. I may have a few more in a minute. The kitchen is stocked in fresh fruit.

I guess we’ll start cutting those up tomorrow.

Tonight, I’m apparently working on someone else’s project. Instead of reading about that, though, read about this.

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We are still trying to catch up to the Re-Listening project, and this post is helping us make a lot of progress. Remember, the Re-Listening project is the one where I listen to my old CDs in the car, and in the order in which I acquired them. I think I am seven CDs in arrears right now. These aren’t reviews, just an excuse to post some music, recall the occasional fond memory and pad the site with some extra content. It’s fun! And musical! And there’s a lot of it, so let’s get to it.

Tracy Bonham’s first album was certified gold, earned her two Grammy nominations and in 1996 saw a single top the Billboard Alternative Airplay chart. (She was the last woman to top that chart for 17 years, if you want a bit of trivia.) “Down Here” was the delayed follow-up record, released in April 2000. I got it off the giveaway shelf at a radio station. It was a signed copy. It wasn’t commercially successful, but Bonham shows her talent throughout. Here’s the single.

Wikipedia cites a ridiculous review about how it sounds like an album recorded in 1997 rather than 2000. Hey! There’s someone who reads the industry trades!

I’d go with a line like this. It feels like a song on the soundtrack of a movie about movie soundtracks.

The important thing to appreciate about Bonham is that she’s a classically trained violinist, playing at making pop records.

Bonham put out four more records after this one, the most recent in 2017. She still plays a few live shows, and has continued her varied and impressive musical career. She’s now a curriculum developer for kids’ music education. She also produced a kids album, 2021’s “Young Maestros Vol. 1,” that is aimed at teaching music theory and confidence building.

That’s a cool followup to a pop music career.

In May of 2000, Matchbox Twenty’s “Mad Season” hit the shelves. Their second album, it entered the Billboard 200 at number three and was four-times platinum in the next 18 months. Because the music industry is, well, the music industry, this success was a quantifiable disappointment. Their debut, after all, sold three-times as many units.

There are two memorable tracks to me. One I forget about every time, until that soaring riff that sets the tone. Kyle Cook can.

And this track, which has a way of haunting you, and is best not heard on the highway at night.

They’re on tour right now, supporting “Where the Light Goes,” an album they released in May. (Also, they are apparently climbing the charts again, apparently thanks to the Barbie movie.) The new record was a surprise, I guess, because they said they were going to become primarily a touring band prior to Covid. I haven’t heard any of it yet, but it gets four-out-of-five stars on AllMusic.

And I love this promo photo. There’s Cook, a rock star, but looking like he wants to play it like he’s not. Especially so since he’s standing next to Rob Thomas, who is showing his ultra rock star confidence. On the end is Paul Doucette, looking like he’d really appreciate it if you could think of him as a rock star, too. Behind them all is Brian Yale, who is just wondering if you’re done with that drill he loaned you last week.

He’s got a project to get to and he needs his tools back.

Someone gave me a copy of the next entry into the Re-Listening project. Tracy Chapman’s “Telling Stories” came out in February of 2000 and I got it that May, when it was on its way to becoming a gold record. The title track is song one. It was also the first single of the record, and it’s laying the groundwork.

Rolling Stone has a concise 16-word summation of her fifth record, calling it a “strong and steady — clear-eyed, poetic folk/funk of the kind that first got Chapman noticed.” That’s correct, and is always the case with Tracy Chapman, it’s never enough. She’s such a unique performer to me, historically, that every song is enough, but every song leaves me wanting more.

This one was a leftover from “New Beginning,” and this is, in part, why Rolling Stone called this album strong and steady, because you could put this anywhere in her catalog.

For my money, this might be the best song on the record. The woman is a poet who happens to be holding a guitar. Oh yeah, the Songbird sneaks into the chorus, too.

I’ve never produced an album, so I don’t know how this works, but is the last song supposed to be so awesome? Because this is track 12 and it feels like a third-song sort of tune.

The summer of 2000, when I got this, was an unusual one. College was over, real life was beginning, sort of. It took a few months for things to get going — not an unusual story, not everything begins on schedule. But there was Tracy Chapman, getting a lot of plays. I was grateful for that. No idea why I didn’t buy this one myself, though.

Before that happened, there was this. I was working for a company that, at that time, had three stations in their cluster. One of those stations, the best one, I thought, was a mid-century big band/jazz music format AM station that the station owner tolerated because the old music, the sports, and the absolute legend that did the morning show paid the cluster’s bills. It was a great place to learn because you could make all sorts of mistakes and everyone left you alone. It was a difficult place to learn because everyone left you alone. But it was fun. And one night, in a bin of discard CDs, I ran across this record.

Contemporary jazz just didn’t fit the format, so they were happy to give it away. The only memory I have of this CD is putting it in a player in one of the production studios, and making a tape for a pen pal in Arkansas. She did cute things like send me a postcard made from a cereal box, and blowing up a beach ball, writing a letter on it, and shipping it my way. Then or now, I couldn’t keep up with that level of creativity.

But I did have access to studios, so I set about to see if I could talk over an entire record. And I did. I talked about everything, and about nothing, really, for the entire CD. The run time on that CD is 55 minutes.

My poor pen pal. She lives in Texas now, and she has a beautiful family. They have two daughters who are in musical theater. I follow them on Instagram. Pen pals are just one of the ways that I’m sure social media does us a disservice.

I’m going to write her a letter, using some unconventional format – not a cassette or an mp3, though. Can’t play that lame card twice, even with 23 years in between. There has to be a local good or product around here that would be a sufficiently silly novelty.

Anyway, I think I am just three CDs behind on the Re-Listening project now. We may even catch up before the week is out!

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7
Aug 23

Nature’s candy in my hand or can or a pie

Great weekend around here, thanks. How was yours? I did garbage duties on Saturday. I let the cats lounge on me. I floated around listening to nothing. I found the weed eater, which I used this morning. Weeds needed to be ate, and the job was accomplished in the back yard and on one side.

Now I need to get some better line, something less fragile than dried, crystalized cotton candy, so that unwanted grasses and weeds can be removed from tricky spots with a casual waving of the magic device.

I found the manual to the weed eater, too. This was useful, because I could find the page telling me precisely which size line I need to acquire. We had a weed eater guy at our old house. He solved all of these problems easily, and efficiently. Also, that gentleman knew the intricacies of a weed eater. A craftsman know’s his tools. My weed eater’s manual also had a stamp showing the build date. It was manufactured in 2012. I know, for a fact, it has been used … not very often.

Also today, I checked on the peaches, deadheaded some flowers and showed a few pokeweed plants who was boss around these parts. I rescued a frog, discovered two electric outlets that apparently don’t draw power and watered the plants. And I vacuumed.

This evening we brought the first batch of peaches in. I think I ate four in the yard and three in the kitchen today? It was a warm day, the extra hydration couldn’t hurt.

We looked up things to do with peaches beyond cobblers and ice creams. We’re going to be making a lot of peach salsa. We’ll put it on everything.

Yesterday I did a triathlon. It was a backyard triathlon. No clocks, no medals. Which is to say I timed it, it was slow, and there were no finisher medals for me, because it wasn’t an official triathlon. But I did a swim-bike-run. It was my first tri since … the 10th. The 10th of October. The 10th of October of 2015. That was a half Ironman, and a lot happened after that, so I sat out the beginning of the 2016 season to save money. After which I started a new job, and that took up a lot of time.

Sure, the really devoted find the time. Make the time. I recall reading the inspirational story of one man who was an Ironman, a medical doctor, and a father of nine. He found the time. But me, and my old split 50-60 hour schedule and no pool time had no time. Which is to say I could have made the time, but there would have been no other time. And I didn’t want triathlon training to be my only hobby.

These are the things I told myself since 2016. Now, I have a little more time. And, one hopes, more motivation. And so it was that I had, just last month, my first swim(s) in years. And also running, which comes and goes for me due to apathy. (I see people riding their bikes and think I wish I could go for a bike ride. I have never watched anyone run by and thought, Man, I wish I could be jogging right now.) And so today, a backyard sprint triathlon. (Sprint in this case denotes distance, not speed.)

Counting laps in a pool is hard. The mind wanders. You lose track. Was that 15? Or 16? So, today, I used sticks.

I swam 800 yards, moving a stick from one pile to another. Then I did an easy out-and-back 20 km bike ride. It was a decent ride. I had six stop signs, and I was conscious of having to shuffle through a run after. So I took it easy-ish, but it was fun and I was pleased.

I was not at all pleased with the run. I was not surprised by that, either.

In July of 2015, when I was eight years younger and in a different kind of shape, I did a sprint tri 15 that was minutes faster than what I did today. The week before that, I did another spring tri. (Two weekends in a row. See? I was in a different kind of shape.) In that one, I was 12 minutes faster than today. I was proud of my bike ride in that one. I had the third fastest bike leg on the course. They were roads I rode every day and, it turns out, there’s a little advantage to that.

It was a brand new event put on by our old LBS. I miss those guys, and I wish we’d had the opportunity to do that one more than once. I wish for a lot of things.

Anyway, my fastest sprint tri was 22 minutes faster than today. I can find 22 minutes somewhere, right? Right?

Phoebe says the answer to my question may be just through this door.

Through that door is the garage. And my car is in there. And it does go faster than my bike and feet. So she’s not wrong.

She still loves sitting in boxes. Good thing we’ve kept a few kitty-sized bits of cardboard around for them.

Poseidon really doesn’t want me to write anymore about Phoebe. He’s jealous of her and whatever she’s doing, at most all times.

I love when I catch him yawning. Usually it makes him look angry or ferocious. Once or twice a big yawn has looked ludicrous. In this one, I think, he looks playful.