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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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3
Aug 23

Hard to Handle

We inherited this giant L-shaped wardrobe. A functional IKEA piece. It doesn’t match our furniture, or fit amongst it, but it is perfectly serviceable. When we moved, as I have mentioned, the movers moved it downstairs for us. I’d disassembled it into its four base parts and they sweated and streamed and muttered and heroically got it down. And then those poor guys moved our stuff in.

Eventually, I put some of the pieces together. I may never rebuild it into one piece, because I rushed through dismantling it, because see above, and took no notes. And I have no instructions. But there’s this full-length, full-length-and-then-some mirror on one part of that wardrobe. And today I re-installed it.

Sorta. That’s a two-person job. There are four hinges, eight screws, and the ones in the middle are done. The rest will require some muscle, and perhaps some more muttering.

It was demoralizing to find that the best approach was to take apart what I’d recently put together so I could get the mirror in place. And even that only partially.

I found a stopping point. How does one find a stopping point in an endless, intractable project? You say, “OK, enough of that.” And then you go outside.

It was a lovely afternoon, much better spent in the backyard than the basement. So I deadheaded daisies and hibiscus and pulled up a few weeds. I was rewarded with a new bowl of tomatoes.

This, in my estimation, was an excellent tradeoff.

I wanted to do this as a daily status update, as a joke, but I was afraid the joke would come off as boorish.

Early this evening I floated for 75 minutes, until the wind was chilly, and told myself I should do more of that, and for longer.

I only got out because it started raining. Wouldn’t want to get wet.

Also, it was dinner time. The day has moved swiftly, even when I have not, and that’s not an altogether bad thing. Though I would vote for consistency in days, and I would vote for them to feel longer than today did.

Let’s dive back into the Re-Listening project, because I need to catch up before I get … really behind. (Right now I’m 13 discs in arears.) I’m playing all of my old CDs in the order in which I acquired them, which sounds easy enough. But there’s a ridiculously overwrought process involved. First of all, the CDs are all in their big CD books. This part is neatly and ordered — though we’ll come to a moment, later in the Re-Listening project — when I don’t recall which book comes next.

From these books, I pull out the CDs and put them in a miniature CD book for travel. (Since the point, for some reason, is listening to these in the car.) Right now that book isn’t in the car, but here on my desk. I am patting it confidently now. Also, I am at the end of what that book will hold, so those CDs will need to come out of the mini-book and go back to their proper homes. So I need to reload the book. Oh, but four of the CDs that have been temporarily in the miniature book are still in the car’s CD player. They need to come out and go back to their proper place. Which means the reverse has to happen to refresh the playlist. Also, the last CD in the player is the first CD in a double-set. Everything is in the in-between. So let’s dive in.

In April of 2000 a friend of mine burned me a CD (remember doing that?) that was, at that time, seemingly a small release. (That was a thing that happened, and we didn’t even blame the supply chain. Things were just limited sometimes.)

It was Guster. We’re talking about Guster’s debut album, “Parachute.” They were just a local Boston act at the time. People were just barely downloading questionable tracks online. You can, of course, get the thing in all sorts of formats now. CD, vinyl, digital. Back then, the first few thousand prints were sold as being by Gus. It’s a different time, because that was a different time. But they put it out themselves, because Guster was a trendsetter, even in the mid-90s.

Adam Gardner and Ryan Miller split the lead vocal duties, which was what they were doing back then, but that felt odd pretty quickly. Owing to some of that, and it being their earliest recorded work, it isn’t as good as “Goldfly,” or anything else that comes after, but it’s worth having.

Probably, people bought this at their early shows. Or they heard it because their roommate or their sibling had it on. That song is the first one you heard. The blueprint for the next decade of what Guster was going to become follows up right after that.

I never got especially attached to this record because, by the time it was given to me I was already two more albums into their catalog. It seemed like going back in time to a more raw, nascent thing, and who wanted to go back to that?

This is the title track, with Gardner doing the lead. This song got mixed up for a lot of people with a Coldplay song of a similar name. And early 21st century digital media humor ensued.

Apparently some people thought this was, in fact, a Coldplay song. I find that difficult to believe. But I own no Coldplay records, so I could be altogether wrong in this.

Someone also burned me a copy of the first disc of a Dave Matthews Band concert album, “Live at Red Rocks 8.15.95.” I wonder why I don’t seem to have the second disc. Now there’s a 23-year-old mystery that’ll bother me for four or five minutes. Anyway, recorded in 1995, when the band was touring to support “Under the Table and Dreaming,” this was released in 1997 and given to me in the spring of 2000. It went double platinum and, from here, just reads like a live version of a greatest hits CD. Nothing wrong with that.

“Seek Up”
“Proudest Monkey”
“Satellite”
“Two Step”
“The Best of What’s Around”
“Recently”
“Lie in Our Graves”
“Dancing Nancies”
“Warehouse”

I wonder why I didn’t get that second — oh! Look! This is a version of “Warehouse” before the Wooo became a thing.

If you’re wondering about the Woo becoming a thing, it’s a bit of a call and response. Just a few years later, it was the thing to do with this song.

Somehow, I never really listened to this CD a lot. So there are no impressions or anecdotes to go along with this one. In fact, I’d all but forgotten I had it. I just never played the thing. Selected tracks always seemed to be on the radio, so maybe that’s a part of it.

I played this one more, a not-for-release Black Crowes EP from 1998. This was sent to radio stations, complete with two callout hooks at the end of the thing. Those hooks were for promotional bits. I picked this up because the station I was at didn’t want it and I did. There are seven tracks here, and six of them are all of the Black Crowes catalog I need. This EP was meant to support “Kicking My Heart Around.”

“Jealous Again” is on here, and that song was eight years old by the time this came out. “She Talks To Angels” was seven years old. “Remedy,” “Thorn In My Pride” and “Sting Me” were all six years old. The one I really wanted, because I was never buying a Black Crowes album for just one song, was “Hard To Handle,” which was also eight years old.

Remember, this EP is from 1998. (I got it in 2000.) The Crowes’ version of “Hard To Handle” was from 1990, which explains a lot about that video.

But that song was, then 30 years old, of course.

For years now, my goal has been to find the right mixture of musically savvy, but musically inexperienced young people and hook them on that Black Crowes cover. When they appreciate the awesomeness and intensity of that, I will play the Otis Redding original and watch their minds evaporate.

That’ll be a tricky group to find, of course, because they need to be able to appreciate a certain level of glam rock/jam band, they need to know about Otis Redding, but they don’t need to know all about Otis Redding.

The only problem with this goal is that you can’t just go around and say “Do you know about Southern rock bands with disproportionate amounts of attitude relative to their talents, and do you have an appreciation that the King of Soul is better than most everything that came after him, but not know about his posthumous releases?” Believe me, I’ve tried. It kills a conversation dead.

And it can bring a long blog post to a quick halt, too.

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1
Aug 23

Happy August! (August? Somehow? Already?)

There’s this ~~superstition~~ very real phenomenon where, if I pick a restaurant, something will go wrong and the dining experience will turn into a big dramatic nightmare. I first noticed this anti-superpower when I said, on a hot summer’s day many years ago, “Let’s go to Dairy Queen,” and so me and a college buddy went … and they were out of ice cream.

I suggested they lock up and go home, because what’s the point? And on the basis of that very true story, and a lot of other incidents that are far more consistent than random chance — one time, for instance, we went to a suburban Outback and they were out of steak! — I carefully avoid most restaurant-making decisions. To the chagrin, it must be said, of anyone that I’m dining with. The burden of the decision is on the other person or people, but we all have a much better chance of getting a reasonable meal.

Since we hardly go out to restaurants in a Covid world, this has become less of a problem.

Today …

Today I wondered, for a few moments, if that whole restaurant thing (which is very real, I assure you) would carry over to bike routes because, today, I picked the road we rode.

It was a simple out and back. Leave the neighborhood, head north until the road ends because, on the other side of that hill, there’s the river. Turn around and head back. There were two stop signs and one tiny little community along that road. And there were also several cars parked on the road along the way for one unhurried reason or another. But the route turned out fine. It was an easy little spin, and it was pleasant and I’m ready for a lot of rides like this.

I did get a close pass by a guy in his work van. This is an odd thing to do because, I know who that guy works for. There’s a particular local HVAC company that will get a little email about it.

Everything else on the ride was just fine. I may repeat part of the route tomorrow, just for fun.

Elsewhere today, we marked a significant moment in the house move. The last three boxes of our things, part of an advanced shipment, were finally brought into the house. Cleaning supplies and the like. The things, basically, that the moving company didn’t want on their truck. My god-sister-in-law (just go with it) has been holding onto these things. My lovely bride retrieved them today. Two boxes went into the basement. The other was quickly unpacked.

But that’s not the significant moment, no. I noticed, the day we moved in, that the stairwell to the basement had a light burned out. Owing to the way things have been organized, today was the first opportunity I had to carry the big aluminum ladder downstairs, extend it to almost its full height, and bring light to what was once darkness.

You don’t count how many lightbulbs you’ve changed in life — probably for the best, after a certain level of achievement the notation would make you go mad — but despite the great many light bulbs I’ve changed, this one gave me a certain feeling of satisfaction. Can’t quite put my finger on why.

It isn’t the first one in this house. It might not even be the last one I change this week, so flush with the feeling of momentum am I.

Also in the day’s list of boundless achievement I have watered many plants, studied the baseboards and vainly attempted to tighten an electrical outlet cover. Oh, and we determined which outlet in my lovely bride’s home office is a switched outlet. We have at least three of those in the house. One in each office and one in the living room. While that last one is fairly convenient, I have an unexplainable disdain to the entire concept of switched outlets. That I spent two or three minutes plugging in a table lamp and flipping switches today is the least of it.

I also watched a video on DIY drywall, so if you’re ever interested in a productive day or two, and appreciative friends … I have a project.

The most productive thing of the day, aside from that light bulb, was when we lazed about in the water this evening. That was a fine end to an easy summer’s day.

Did you know that, when we drove 11 hours across some 20 percent of this great nation on the move that I listened to CDs? I listened to a lot of CDs. What that means for us, now, is that I am still playing catchup in the Re-Listening project. That’s the one where I’m listening to all of my old CDs, in their order of acquisition, and padding out blog posts for my own amusement. I am very far behind, so let’s get to it. Remember, these aren’t reviews, but an excuse to post some videos, and maybe dig up a memory or two along the way. It’s good fun, come rock out with me now.

I load these into the CD player blind, which is to say I often don’t know what is coming next. Sometimes I remember the order — since this album just ended, then thaaat one is next, and so on. More likely, and more fun, is when I don’t recall. There’s that little pause as the CD changer pulls one CD away from the laser eye and slides the next one into place. It’s like watching a movie fanfare on TV and wondering what you’re about to see. And when the first plucked strings of this CD sprang to life I said, and I quote, “YESSSSS!”

Angie Aparo, out of Atlanta, is indirectly, come to think of it, probably my first experience with radio payola. The owner of the station I worked for when this record was released in March of 2000 “encouraged” all of his employees to attend a performance Aparo was putting on at a small venue in town. Record label people wanted to see a big turnout and somehow, this was our concern. I went to the show, pressured as I was, and only later did I make the connection.

What’s important is the show was good. This record is stinking amazing. This was the single, all futuristic and almost from a different planet.

I knew that song before the station gave me the full CD, because it was programmed a lot, but what is pleasantly surprising is how deep this record is. You most likely know this song from Faith Hill’s cover. (Her cover isn’t as good as his original.)

And maybe you know this one from a cover that Faith Hill’s husband did.

The thinnest pop tune on the whole disc will stick with you for hours. So here’s that.

They aren’t all radio pop songs, but they’re all great in the car, great to singalong with, and, if you are in the car, good for a good hand dance.

Angie Aparo put out six more albums, then had some life-and-death health problems. After he recovered, he’s put out one more album, in 2018, and is still playing around the southeast. I’ve only seen his show that one time, in early 2000.

Somehow, around that same time, I picked up Bobby Bradford’s “No Saints Walkin’.” It’s perfectly acceptable blue-eyed blues, if you’re looking for that. I never played it a lot, owing to all of the good music surrounding it in my CD books, I’m sure. And nothing really stood out this time through it, that I recall. Here’s the title track.

I think his label released that album three different times across seven years. I’m not sure why. Perhaps it found a lot of success abroad.

Speaking of success, this is where I get to tell the radio success story. My campus radio station was one of a small handful across the country that reported their song counts to some influential charts and labels. The easiest way to explain this is to say that important music executives sometimes used that data to determine who they should push. “If it is a hit on low-powered stations with college kids, we should mainstream it!” And, friends, someone (not me, in fact, this was just barely before my time) at my station liked one guy a little too much. That person wrote down the performer’s name in the playlist affidavits a little too often. And, I fear, my college radio station is responsible for making Kid Rock a thing.

I don’t own any Kid Rock albums, mind you. I always changed the station if I heard him on the radio. I was doing that long before he started experimenting with three-sample lifts and chorus quotes in the hopes of being noticed by legacy performers. If someone at my station was an early trend setter, I was an early avoider. But then I stumbled on Robert Bradley’s Blackwater Surprise. This band is amazing, even if Kid Rock is all over the first track.

It’s an odd thing to say, but he adds something invaluable to the song.

Now, before we go any farther, a little backstory is required. Robert Bradley came up out of Alabama. He sang at the Alabama School for the Blind. He was a busker in Detroit. And, there, four white guys decided to work with him, forming Robert Bradley’s Blackwater Surprise. This record, their second, was a refined step up from their debut. RBBS’s fans noticed the difference, sometimes critically. And if you feel the same way about Kid Rock, here’s a version with out that guy.

I don’t recall which song I heard that prompted me to pick this up. But there’s a great deal here. This, after all, was an instant modern blues classic. Maybe the first in a generation.

(Also, that song sounds better live. This feels like the most real thing in the world, somehow.)

This one, this might be the song that got me.

Also, this record … it’s autobiographical.

RBBS produced four more studio albums after this one, and a double live CD, which I may have to pick up one of these days. Bradley ran a vending machine business for a while, returned to busking, and then put out another album on his own in 2018. I’m not sure what’s become of him since then. I hope he’s still out there around Detroit’s Eastern Market, singing and writing.

So now we’re three CDs closer to being caught up. I think I’m only nine behind, now. And, in the next round of the Re-Listening project, we’ll go back in time to April of 2000 to listen to a record that was released in 1994.

It’ll make sense when we get to it.

Happy August!

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26
Jul 23

Ray Stevens was an overdue mention anyway

We started this morning with a bike ride. OK, I started this morning with a PB&J, and then we went on a bike ride. The first 10 miles felt great, just following my lovely bride, jumping ahead on the little hills because I can, but sitting up and waiting for a second or two for the red flash to come through.

The corn is nice and tall. The sun is high. The roads are quiet. Everything is going great.

Somewhere around mile 13 my legs reminded me that they have been underused of late, and they stopped pedaling well in protest. It was squares from there on in, and I have to ride more, I know it, and my legs do, too. But the views were lovely.

And even though my ride was feeling clunky, I did remember to take a photo of this sign which surely means … something.

I think it’s recounting the local legend of the bird that celebrated the building as a deity, and brought it fish sacrifices, in the hopes that the building would give plentiful thermals in return. Silly bird.

Around mile 18 my legs rallied, if only for a moment, and then they stopped being productive at all. There was no more hanging on the wheel. No more catching up, not even on the gentle rollers. I was merely dropped. I managed to set four PRs on Strava. She set PRs on five Strava segments.

After that, The Yankee went for a run.

I sat in the shade.

Today was, I think, the first day I didn’t do anything involved with house settling. That’s about the tasks, not the mentality. That may take a while, I guess. But I did make a list of things to do tomorrow. And a long term list of things we might want to do, one day. Also, I did some paperwork for work, but there’s not really a good tale emerging from paperwork. Not one like this …

Late this afternoon we took some garbage to the garbage taking place.

The waste people decided they don’t manage service in this neighborhood anymore, despite having just closed a contract with the previous owners. And despite evidence — actual garbage cans that will go out tomorrow — of all of our nice neighbors receiving said service. We called this company twice on different days and times, just to see if that was a fluke, but it was not. Not sure what’s going on with that company, but I invoked Smith’s First Rule of Economics.

Don’t make it hard for me to spend my money with you.

So I found another company. Feeling very proud of myself, I shared this information. I didn’t know what the relative rates were, but it turns out this contract will save us a few bucks. They’ll start pickup next week, and deliver one of those giant cans later this week, supposedly. Which meant we took a few bags and some recycling to the transfer station today.

Transfer station being a term that sounds better, but isn’t necessarily an improvement in the olfactory region.

Being a warm summer day, we enjoyed our evening outdoors, and then had a fine steak dinner. It was a wonderful day, thanks for asking. I also introduced my lovely bride to Ray Stevens today. It was a topic that just evolved from a regular conversation. To my great relief, she found him funny, too.

I don’t know what comedy track we’ll get into, but tomorrow could be even better!

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25
Jul 23

Shocking! I felt shocked! (Because I shocked myself … )

The people that sold us the new house had a giant corner wardrobe in their bedroom. They didn’t take it with them. Left it right where it was. The day we moved in, we moved it to the basement. I had to take it apart, disassembling it around the hard-working movers. They had to carry it, in four pieces, into the basement. Down the stairs, out the front door, around the side, into the garage and downstairs. They strained. They struggled. They did it with good cheer. We felt bad. We tipped them pretty well. We were going to do that anyway, but after that we huddled and agreed to tip them a bit better still. They earned it.

Only, they didn’t reassemble that wardrobe in the basement, where we will use it as off-season clothes storage. So, late last night and early this morning, I did that work. (Sorta?) It had been three-plus weeks (time flies) since I took it apart. I was in a rush to tear it down back then and I didn’t document where in the MDF all of the little metal parts went. Also, IKEA doesn’t have it listed anymore, and I’ve no idea what they sold it as, so I can’t easily find the manual online.

Today, though, the giant four-part wardrobe is reassembled as three individual pieces. Maybe I’ll make it a two-section wardrobe later this year, when I swap out the clothes. But at 2 this morning, I felt like I’d done enough with it.

Today I raked up the grass clippings from the lawnmower, and stuffed them and a bunch of weeds, mostly pokeweed, in a lawn bag. I also discovered we have an electric fence. Every day there’s something new to discover, and that’s fun. Still don’t know what the extra light switch in the hallway does, but I digress. I was out at the shed and found a small solar panel, pointed west, with a little red cable running to a white cable that runs around the shed, right about at big toe height. It is energized, and it’ll give you a nice, moderate, shock. Not as many volts as you’d get grabbing a hot wire in the house, but a little more than static electricity. No pests in the tool shed, then.

I called the company that makes the solar panel. A nice woman there said this little unit could power a fence that covers three-quarters of a mile. Electric fences don’t take a lot of power, of course, but that’s just remarkable.

Soon after, someone came by to take all of these bad boys off our hands.

It only took three tries to give them away. A guy who came out last week to do some work on the house carried some off to use in his flowerbeds. I advertised them on a Facebook group. Move! Store things in them! Build forts! Put them in your flowerbeds!

A woman agreed to swing by, but she disappeared. From the chat. She disappeared from the chat. I’m sure she’s fine.

So I found another woman who needed boxes. She took them in two trips today. In between, the sky looked like this.

And then, almost magically, those clouds moved on, burned off, disappeared. It was all but instantaneous. The sun came out, bright as ever. And then it rained through the sunshine. I stood in the window and watched it. And, after the shower had passed, I glanced in the large room where cars are normally parked. The boxes were gone. We no longer have a squished warehouse. We now have a garage. About the same time, my lovely bride finished setting up the gym. (Can’t wait to renovate that one of these days.)

We’re making progress every day. So much so that we feel confident in having a bike ride tomorrow. It has been so long since I’ve been on my bike I’m mildly curious if it is, in fact, just like riding a bike.

I need to make some progress on this front as well, closing tabs in my browser, that is. Good for me, then, that it is Tabs Tuesday. These are a few links that I’ve kept open for too long. They might not rise to the level of making a bookmark — which comes at considerable cost, if you read this sentence wrong — but they could be worth memorializing. So I put them here. Let’s see what I’ve been holding onto.

Sometime back I learned about the Artisans Cooperative, which emerged as something of a maker’s revolt from goings on at Etsy. Or, at least that’s what I seem to remember about it.

Artisans Cooperative is crafting a “better” online handmade marketplace, run as a values-aligned, member-owned cooperative.

OUR VALUES
1. Member-owned co-op …

2. Free and fair marketplace …

3. Inclusion …

4. Authentically handmade …

We are in the final stretches of development and getting ready to launch to the public in October 2023.

Good for them. And some of the merchants, the ones I’ve clicked through so far, anyway, do some amazing work. Like, East Ruin.

East Ruin is an archaeology-inspired art & design business for eco- and socially-conscious consumers who value alternatives to extractive production methods.

For a different sort of thing, there’s Maple Creek Vermont.

I started Maple Creek Vermont in the fall of 2020 as an outlet for my creative energy. For as long as I can remember I have had a passion for creating, building, crafting and making. As the son of a carpenter I have been around wood working my entire life and I worked to spend as much time as I could in the wood shop during all levels of my education. From the closet turned wood shop in my kindergarten classroom to the well appointed wood shop on my college campus, I have always felt at home making sawdust.

And check out StellaNCWorks. I’ll definitely be shopping here.

Pottery was the souvenir my parents brought back from every place we went, each piece chosen to represent that place, with the potter’s mark on the bottom. Embracing my home in NC is reflected in my own pottery. It seems appropriate, forming a chunk of the very land itself, through an intimate, engaged process, into a practical object that reflects the plants and animals that share the land. I am inspired by these plant and animal neighbors, by the idea that memories and heirlooms connect us to our loved ones, by things that are made by someone’s hands, and by shared humanity. I explore these ideas to create themes that celebrate the personal connection with nature and with other humans, and often use artifacts of these things—plant leaves, animal footprints, heirloom lace—to shape my work.

When I first started making my own pottery, it was driven by the need for a perfect vessel for a particular food: a plate for sardines with a line of mustard, bowls for pho, a big tea mug. Making clumsy pottery taught me lessons about making things better: about handle shape appropriate for leverage on a big mug, flat bottoms that don’t retain dishwater when drying upside down, shapes and edges that are comfortable for hands and lips. I make pottery for people who love the art in the practical, who love useful things made by someone’s hands.

(It also happens to be beautiful work.)

I discovered a bramble vine in the yard the other day. So now I’m reading up. Brambles: Pesky garden weed or delicious summer treat.

Brambles are bush-like, thorny plants with arching canes that are all in the Rubus family of plants. This includes the common blackberry, raspberry (including red, black and yellow) and the less common dewberry and thimbleberry. Many of these species are grown or bred for their wonderful fruit, and there are many wild-growing brambles as well. Wild bramble fruits are generally smaller than their cultivated, on-farm cousins, but are more packed with flavor! It’s almost “brambleberry” foraging and harvesting time now; if you see anything in the woods that looks like store-bought raspberry or blackberry, it’s safe to eat! There are no poisonous look-alikes to worry about.

There is good news and bad news about plants in the bramble family. The plants root easily, they spread out, and they give off fruit every year. If you are trying to establish them in your garden, you’ll likely be successful; they are quite vigorous. Another plus is that they are an incredibly rich (and common) source of pollen for pollinators of all types. Expect new plants to bear fruit in their second year.

And there’s always something new to learn about peaches, too. There’s so much to learn about peaches. They aren’t at all intimidating.

Less intimidating: the 54 tabs still open on my browser.

Just two more clips from last week’s Barenaked Ladies show. I didn’t include the encore. These days BNL brings out their supporting acts (Del Amitri and Five For Fighting on this leg of the tour) and they do a cover. They’re doing Steve Miller Band’s “Jet Airliner.” (It’s fine, I guess. Last year, though, they did “Handle Me With Care.” It was much better. Here’s the version they did in Cincinnati. And this is the version they did in Indianapolis.)

There was a freestyle rap, an Ed Robertson staple. And they mixed it into a medley with a Taylor Swift song. I am counting this as having attended a Taylor Swift show.

Tyler Stewart came out from behind the drums for the big finish. And it’s a pretty robust singalong. Think of it another way: this is a 40-year-old song, a staple of another band’s catalog, and everyone, or at least the guys, are all singing along.

When Joe Elliot screamed it in 1983 “Rock of Ages reached 16 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and number one on the Top Tracks Rock chart. No one forgets Def Leppard — who are playing seven dates across the U.S. next month.

But enough about music. There’s a lot more of that to come. Tomorrow we’ll dive back into the Re-Listening project, because I am very behind, and that’s making me itchy.