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I won’t talk about unpacking anymore (after this)

We are now down to unpacking the dining room. We have no pressing urge to unpack the dining room. And the guest bedroom. That will need some actual attention.

Today, some things got put on some walls. This is always an interesting exercise. New house, same decor. On the one hand, this is very comforting. The bedroom — aside from a wacky paint decision and, for the first time ever, having windows at the head of the bed — is starting to feel like a familiar place. Those picture frames are an important part of that. But then you might think, Oh this one again, eh?

And then you feel bad about that. Because you love that souvenir print, or the photo you took or the gift you received.

I wonder if people on makeover shows feel this way too.

This looks great, but why did you leave my freckles on my face?

These are the things that help make us who we are, though, and you do love that print, that photo and that sign you got a few Christmases ago.

Yesterday I unpacked my audio equipment. Now I just need to deaden the sound in my home office-studio. That’ll take forever to agonize over.

Today I unpacked my half of the library. The joy, the challenge, of unpacking your library is putting things back on shelves thinking, “I should read this again. And I should read that again. And I should read … ”

I alternated between thoughts of kicking myself, in the haste and hustle of packing ourselves, I did not think about it at the time, but maybe I should have photographed how I had my books displayed in their book cases. On the other hand, this is kind of freeing and I can make this a new start, with my old books. And also my new ones.

(At least I photographed how we’d built the cat trees, they were reassembled easily, and before most everything else for some reason.)

So, of course The Gloms are in chronological order here in my office. The other two bookshelves in my office, which hold the Books To Read have been loosely arranged in order of interest and priority. But in the library downstairs, there were boxes to open and shelves to fill today. How to do that?

I’m not going to say it took longer than it should, because these are books and this is important — and no I do not use the Dewey Decimal System or the Library of Congress Classification system and, no, I am not a librarian, why do you ask? It took as long as it should, because I reworked the shelves a few times.

Memoirs and autobiographies got two shelves. Cycling books got a shelf. Textbooks and the like got a bottom shelf. (I still have two bins of actual textbooks that are awaiting their eventual fate. They will stay packed up at least through the summer.) Pretty much an entire bookcase is devoted to history. And there’s a pile of things over on a chair that I’m going to donate, or put in a little library. And there are some biographies that are somehow missing … maybe they’re with the kitchen knife and the good scissors.

It is strange what goes missing when you pack in haste.

This evening, we had a lap swim. The Yankee easily outpaced the ducky.

For my part, I swam a half-mile, 832 yards. Not bad for my third lap swim of the last week, which was also my third lap swim since 2015. Oddly enough it felt … good? Is that the word I want there? Was that because the water was hot-in-July? Every time The Yankee finished a (much more impressive) set she’d break the surface and say, “Uuuugh,” in a non-ironic way. Swimmers like the pool to be colder. Helps with the speed. Goosebumps are hydrodynamic it turns out.

That’s not the case, at all, actually.

Anyway, I feel like I’m close to a technique breakthrough, or at least a conscious-brain understanding of something. It will have nothing to do with kicking, of course, but there’s a progression to be made. And I wasn’t even especially sore or tired. Because I only swam 832 yards. Let’s see what happens this weekend when I add on a few more laps. And, also, if I can raise my arms above my head tomorrow. Let’s see what happens there, first.

OK, this is the penultimate performance I’ll share from the Indigo Girls concert we saw last month, which also happened to be simultaneously both yesterday and 18 months ago.

This is a song from the 2004 album “All That We Let In,” and, while it isn’t a song for everyone, and it is a bit of a divergence from the band’s brand, it puts Amy Ray’s power squarely on display. And here’s the thing I learned about lifetime activists playing near their metaphorical backyard in these trying times — and during Pride, no less — they didn’t make a big deal of much of anything in this concert, though they certainly had the receptive audience. I’m sure they know what works for them and their fans by now. And I’m certain that people who do real community work, as Ray and Saliers have since the 1980s, know something said into a microphone is minuscule compared to raising money and using elbow grease. But in these moments, where showing one’s support is a sort of social capital, this is understated. Four words, right there in Nashville, right before one of the more straightforward socially driven protest songs in their catalog, and that was all. That’s all she needed.

Speaking of Ray’s power. Tomorrow we’re closing this little feature with the best song of the night. It was a moment, and I can’t wait to watch it again.

Back to the Re-Listening project, and we have a lot of catching up to do from the long car ride. Let’s chip away, shall we? (I’m still a dozen discs behind.) Remember, I am listening to all of my old CDs, in the order in which I acquired them, and trying to think of something to write about them here, while I embed videos from YouTube.

Fiona Apple’s “When the Pawn…” was released in November 1999, the second studio album for the young phenom. She won a Grammy for a debut record in 1997, which came out when she was 20. The followup got two more Grammy nominations. Spin magazine called it the the 106th greatest of the last quarter century in 2010. For Slant Magazine it was listed as the 79th best album of the 1990s. No less than Rolling Stone ranked “When the Pawn…” at number 108 on its 2020 “500 Greatest Albums of All Time” list. It finally went platinum that same year.

To me, her debut, “Tidal” is an incredible record. And more than a quarter of a century later it still feels fresh and raw, sure, but also accomplished and something which demands attention. “When the Pawn …,” however, easy to have on in the background without notice. I don’t write the Re-Listening project entries as reviews, of course, but usually try to associate them with some silly memory or odd bit of personal trivia. But I can’t think of a single thing that goes along with this record. I can’t even recall hearing it in the car this time around, though I know I was in Ohio at the time, and that was just two weeks ago. (To be fair, I was very tired, and probably distracted.)

The next thing on the playlist was another sophomore release, Filter’s “Title of Record.” They got good alt radio airplay, and even MTV spun their video, and so they moved more than 800,000 copies between August 1999 and early 2001. Sometime after, they went platinum.

Three singles, but I only bought it for one, a good belt-out track. I was apparently not alone in that. This song climbed into the top-20 on nine different international charts. Domestically, “Take A Picture” reached number 12 on the US Billboard Hot 100, topped the Billboard Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart and peaked at number four on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart and landed at third on the Modern Rock Tracks chart at number three. It also settled at number seven on the Adult Top 40, and number 15 on the Mainstream Top 40 at number 15. The year 2000 was a good year for Filter, one hopes.

I was in a grocery store parking lot, a Meijer, in Middletown, Ohio when that sixth track came on. (Their next show, in August, is at a festival in Ohio.) It’s always been a car track to me, and so this was appropriate, even if I was riding at a parking lot speed as opposed to the usual interstate speed.

Funny how I think of almost every car song as being heard on only really fast roads. High(er) speeds just go with music, and most of the commutes of my life.

Let’s do one more CD, just to get it out of the way. After Filter there was Third Eye Blind’s “Blue.” Didn’t care for it when it came out — if I know how much airplay they were going to get I would have not purchased it — and I don’t care for it now.

That was quick. But not interstate quick.

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12
Jul 23

Yes, it involved duct tape

Today I tightened the bannisters, which were too wobbly. Now they are less wobbly. Also, they are cleaner. It’s the little things, really, finding the little things you’re actually capable of doing, and to do them sorta well. Also, I vacuumed. It wasn’t until late into the evening that I moved anything. Progress! In doing so I discovered more things I hadn’t realized were missing. Missing, in this case, meaning sitting under things in the garage. The two extra hacksaw blades will come in handy. And a box of wood stain was out of place, explaining why one of the shelves was so bare. Fixed that problem straightaway.

I still can’t find the main kitchen knife, though. Somehow it didn’t get packed with the rest of the knives. Also, the kitchen scissors are missing and this is all going to be hilarious when they turn up in October.

I set three Strava PRs this morning as we repeated the same route we rode on Saturday. Overall it was a bit faster, and less painful. The last quarter of the route is a slow and gradual uphill — nothing to write home about, but definitely something to include in your blog — and that was a slow grind. After a few more rides everything will start to feel much better. I’m willing it so.

But the views! Doesn’t this water look nice?

The Yankee was good enough to take a photo of me in a moment where my form wasn’t entirely terrible, but I wish she’d gotten one of those moments where I was leaned over the hoods, all intense.

The cranberry bogs are out there somewhere. No floating cranberries at the moment, though.

Here’s a very brief video of a few nice parts of the ride.

This evening, I’m going to try to get used to this.

Artistically, I made a hole in the waterfall. Surely there’s some rule about thermodynamics at play here. Or, perhaps, another rule about thermodynamics being violated. A hole! In a waterfall!

How cool is that?

On the subject of singalongs, as we drift back to The Ryman in June, sometimes you don’t need to pretend or preamble. Sometimes you just play the first chord and let the crowd do the rest. Sometimes it seems like everyone would be happy that way.

The self-titled, second album from the Indigo Girls was released in early 1989, went gold late that summer, platinum in 1992 and was certified double-platinum in 1997. Hothouse Flowers and REM famously appeared on the record, which won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Recording and was also nominated in the Best New Artist Grammy category. It came in at 22 on the Billboard Hot 200 that year, and there are easily a half-dozen songs or more that are deep cut classics.

But none more than “Closer to Fine.”

Amy Ray gave an interview in 2021 talking about age and longevity, and the people they look up to, and what it’s like to still be touring at (now) 60.

“When people go to concerts, it’s sentimental and fun, and reminds them of the old days,” she said. “I don’t want to be a purely sentimental act. And that’s hard. Because when you enjoy what you are doing, you don’t want to stop.

“Emily and I are like: ‘We want to keep doing this while we enjoy ourselves.’ And I’m like: ‘What if we still enjoy ourselves and we look like fools?’ And, sometimes, who cares? It won’t be the way it was 30 years ago, so what does that mean? Does it matter?”

But they’re still finding ways to share their happiness on stage, and their fans love it. (That pop song is almost 35 years old.) And it’s a multi-generational thing now. Fans bring kids. Musicians bring kids. I believe that’s Carol Isaacs’ daughter singing the last lyric.

You always wonder: what becomes of rock ‘n’ roll, the sound of noise and youth and angst and rebellion, when the performers get quieter, older and more settled? We’re now watching the third generation of rock ‘n’ roll stars hit those points. The answer is, it just gets more fun.

Did you catch the news about us moving? Did you read, with a sigh, the bit about loading and overloading cars and then driving them for 11 hours across some 20 percent of this great nation? Do you know what I did during this time? I listened to a lot of CDs as part of the Re-Listening project. And I am now well behind in writing about them here.

Remember, these aren’t reviews — because no one cares — but just a bit of reminiscence about some (occasionally) good music. Also, it’s an excuse to pad the blog and embed some videos. And the best news of all is, in six or eight more discs we’ll (finally) be out of 1999, because the joke here is that I’m listening to all of these in the order in which I acquired them. And, apparently, I picked up a lot of music in 1999. Today we’ll breeze through two records, both from California bands. This first one was released in February 1999. The second was released in September. No idea when I got them. And, in the case of this first one, why.

Wikipedia tells me Oleander is considered a post-grunge band. And on the page for this record there’s a list of some of their greatest touring achievements. None of it makes sense for me. I don’t like any of the acts they were playing with. And the writing is basic and, honestly, this sounds like a buzzy version of a Parks and Rec song.

But that could be because we’re watching Parks and Rec again. Speaking of TV, the first single was featured on Dawson’s Creek and a few movies. And, look, before we entirely fetishize the 1990s, not everything makes sense.

Somewhere around Columbus, Indiana this song came on, and I remembered this from too much radio play. But I couldn’t name the band until I fished out the disc to write about it here.

Not everything can be committed to memory.

There’s a “Boys Don’t Cry” cover that was released in the UK, and it makes you wonder how record labels make those decisions. Was it a test case for an American followup? Would this have worked on radio over here?

The record went gold, and topped the Heatseekers chart. Those two singles each did quite well on the Mainstream Rock Tracks and the Modern Rock Tracks charts. They put out another album after this, took a long break and then reunited. Oleander’s most recent album was released in 2013, but there’s not much online to suggest they’re presently performing, and that’s OK too.

That’s OK because the next 1999 act is a band still playing limited dates these days. They’re just a radio band to me, and I got this on the strength of the single, but “Nasty Little Thoughts” has good hooks all over the place, and some clever, and funny, lyrics.

This sounds much more like 1999 to me.

Both records, do, but from any distance you get to choose things.

This song got a lot of airplay on alt and modern rock stations at that time when they were the same thing.

But this is the track that I played over and over. Someone rightly pointed out that it was worth hearing, and decades later, that person is still correct. It still works.

Over the years Stroke 9 has released seven records. And this is cool, here’s a little livestream show they did in May of 2020. It’s neat to see bands when the artifice is stripped away, they’re playing on the back deck in hoodies, just being people, not trying to be the things that the industry wanted them to be.

That show, if you watch the whole thing, is basically this record. If you watch it for more than a few seconds you might notice the video is, for some reason, mirrored. It turns out that some of the songs they’re playing on this record were written right there in that house. It’s an interesting bit of personal continuity for the band, but it’s a real thing, and something authentic for fans.

I wonder how secure the handrails are in that house.

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11
Jul 23

There’s so much here it can’t be highlighted in the title

Today was the first day I haven’t broken a sweat while moving things in the new house. I’m sure this will not turn into a streak, for there is always something to move or adjust or clean or fix. But it seemed like a good thing to note. The getting settled was more low key.

I only have three giant boxes of books left to unpack, and I am savoring the anticipation for that experience.

Which is not to say that today was a day of pure comfort and ease and conditioned air. It was all of those things, but that’s not what I’m saying here. I also “exercised.” Went for a run. This was my first run since December 27th.

I know, I know! First swim in years and my first run in months, both in the same week, all while I have been lifting and carrying things around the house. This is crazy talk!

We were going to go do something called a “track workout.” Presumably this involves a track and running. We got to the place and, sure enough, there was a track. But no workout. The patch of grass inside the track oval is a soccer pitch and it is being used for a soccer tournament. No running allowed, for whatever reasons of practicality and safety. So the few hearty and hardcore runners who showed up anyway set out for a five mile run. That’s not what The Yankee had on her training schedule today and I’m certainly not up for a five-miler this week. So we went back to our lovely little neighborhood and ran around it.

And so I got sweaty. Also, this was a much faster pace than the last time I ran so, clearly, the goal for me should be to take six or seven months off between jogs.

While my lovely bride finished up her run, I watered the plants. Also, I remembered that I took this photograph an evening or two before and didn’t use it, so I’ll use it now.

That’s our new front porch sunset views. I’ll take it.

Let’s close some tabs. This is our return to the regular Tuesday feature that lets me memorialize a few tabs that, for whatever reason, I hadn’t otherwise managed. Most of these don’t deserve a bookmark, but it might be good to circle back to them one day, and so here I am.

A little while back I found myself slipping into a deeply nuanced conversation about who wrote the song, “Apache.” This could have become something really nerdy about what really constitutes a cover, but, thankfully, the conversation was diverted away from that. And thanks are due to the person who saw that train wreck happening and leapt in with some wry observation about the weather, inflation, bowling shoes or whatever it was. Anyway, the answer is Jerry Lordan, but then Bert Weedon, importantly, The Shadows, and then famously Jørgen Ingmann, followed, influentially, by the Incredible Bongo Band and then, of course the Sugarhill Gang (twice).

Many chefs, it turns out, could be a good theme today. Who killed Google Reader?:

Google’s bad reputation for killing and abandoning products started with Reader and has only gotten worse over time. But the real tragedy of Reader was that it had all the signs of being something big, and Google just couldn’t see it. Desperate to play catch-up to Facebook and Twitter, the company shut down one of its most prescient projects; you can see in Reader shades of everything from Twitter to the newsletter boom to the rising social web. To executives, Google Reader may have seemed like a humble feed aggregator built on boring technology. But for users, it was a way of organizing the internet, for making sense of the web, for collecting all the things you care about no matter its location or type, and helping you make the most of it.

A decade later, the people who worked on Reader still look back fondly on the project. It was a small group that built the app not because it was a flashy product or a savvy career move — it was decidedly neither — but because they loved trying to find better ways to curate and share the web. They fought through corporate politics and endless red tape just to make the thing they wanted to use. They found a way to make the web better, and all they wanted to do was keep it alive.

[…]

For a while, the internet got away from what Google Reader was trying to build: everything moved into walled gardens and algorithmic feeds, governed by Facebook and Twitter and TikTok and others. But now, as that era ends and a new moment on the web is starting to take hold through Mastodon, Bluesky, and others, the things Reader wanted to be are beginning to come back. There are new ideas about how to consume lots of information; there’s a push toward content-centric networks rather than organizing everything around people. Most of all, users seem to want more control: more control over what they see, more knowledge about why they’re seeing it, and more ability to see the stuff they care about and get rid of the rest.

Google killed Reader before it had the chance to reach its full potential. But the folks who built it saw what it could be and still think it’s what the world needs. It was never just an RSS reader. “If they had invested in it,” says Bilotta, “if they had taken all those millions of dollars they used to build Google Plus and threw them into Reader, I think things would be quite different right now.”

The ending is a bit naive, but it does make you wonder how things would have worked if we’d stayed out of the walled gardens.

Speaking of social media and walls … New Jersey just made it a lot harder for police to snoop on social media:

(T)he Supreme Court of New Jersey decided Facebook Inc. v. State, which puts much-needed guardrails on police conduct in the state when it comes to law enforcement’s access to digital communications. Up until this decision, it was permissible for New Jersey police to obtain a Facebook user’s private messages in near real time with a mere probable-cause warrant. However, case law and state and federal statutes rightly recognize that real-time access to private communications demands heightened privacy protections. This type of search would generally be considered a wiretap and require the police to apply for a wiretap order. Wiretap orders require an enhanced showing, one beyond probable cause, to be granted.

[…]

While certainly a win for privacy advocates, this case reminds us of several important issues in the fight for privacy in the digital era. First, in an age in which increasingly personal information is shared via digital means, it is essential that real-time communications are afforded the highest level of protection from snooping eyes …

Moreover, it is clear that pre-internet statutes and case law that govern online activity are woefully inadequate for the realities of the digital era. Many of these laws and cases are based on the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1979 ruling in Smith v. Maryland, which created the third-party doctrine and held that individuals have no reasonable expectation of privacy for information voluntarily turned over to a third party.

That’s going to come up in a class this fall, I bet.

Finally, in Macon, Georgia, the minor league team has one of the best team names in sports, but only the second best team name in city history. The Macon Bacon shirts, however, are pretty great. (Also, their mascot is named Kevin and, while predictable, I was not ready for that degree of cheesy.)

Just four more Indigo Girls songs to go from The Ryman show, sadly. I’ve mostly just been sharing things I recorded in the order that they appeared on the band’s set list that night, but I’m jumping ahead a little to set up a big finish on Friday.

First, though, here’s “Galileo,” which was the Indigo Girls’ first song to break into the top ten on a music chart, the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart, in this case. The success of this song helped “Rites of Passage,” their fourth studio album, go platinum. And ever since they released it in 1992, this song has been a fan favorite. There’s even a singalong portions.

It is one of those songs that, I think, doesn’t really belong to the performers anymore. The Indigo Girls have a few of those and (hint) we’ll have another one of those in this space tomorrow.

We have to get back into the Re-Listening project if, for no other reason, than because we are woefully behind. (Some time has elapsed and circumstances have compounded my investment into the Re-Listening project.) I think I’ll be doubling up and writing shorter bits about each album for a bit, just to try to get back on equal terms. But, for the uninitiated, the premise is simple. I am listening to all of my old CDs in the car, in the order in which I acquired them. It’s a lovely musical walk down memory lane. And, to share the fun, I’m writing a bit about it here. These aren’t music reviews, because who cares? They are a good way to pad out the page, to share the sounds and to bring up something that, perhaps, hasn’t come to mind in a while.

Kids, Widespread Panic was huge. The year is 1999 (I know, I know) but they’d been together for almost two decades by then, they’d had a concert film directed by Billy Bob Thornton, they’d been on H.O.R.D.E., they had five studio albums under their belts, they were network TV veterans and an absolutely legendary jam band already. And that’s when the regional icons got their first huge mainstream moment.

I don’t know why I have “‘Til the Medicine Takes.” Widespread wasn’t really my band. A lot of people I knew just raved and raved about them, which was probably enough for me to stay at arms length for a while. But I picked it up somehow — a giveaway, most likely, I never even had the liner notes — and put it in and this was the first song I heard.

I have three Widespread Panic memories. One, I was driving a friend and his girlfriend and her roommate somewhere and Widespread was on the radio, something from this album, on a deep cut station. His girlfriend launched into this diatribe about how she didn’t like Widespread Panic because they’d sold out. She’d put some thought and some force into this argument. The jam band from Athens was on the radio. They weren’t real, authentic, rockers, like this new band she was into, Train.

My friend, who was very much a jam band aficionado, who grew up two hours from where the band started their careers and who had probably had them as a soundtrack to most of his young life, almost broke up with her right there in my car.

Maybe that’s why he almost always insisted on driving.

Another is this. In May of 1999, just before this record was released, they were one of the Sunday night headline acts at Music Midtown. Back then it was a three-day event with six main stages and a handful of smaller venues dotting the middle of Atlanta. Just an incredible opportunity to see important bands, or check out new things. Being me, I studiously cross referenced every show and was intent on seeing the best possible act in each act of the three days of music. And the best act late on Sunday night. Your feet are hurting. You’re tired. You’re hungry. It’s May in Atlanta so anyone could be approaching their sell-by date. But this band came on proved the point about why you have to see them live.

The third is this. On Friday, June 23rd, when I loaded up my car and drove away from IU for the final time, this song came up, right on cue.

“‘Til the Medicine Takes” peaked at 68 on the Billboard 200 chart. And, yes, the CD version of “Dying Man” just rocks, but you need to see the band live. Soon to enter their fifth decade as a band, they’re still touring widely today. They play multiple shows at each venue they visit, because that’s how it is when you’re a touring monster. Later this month, three shows in Huntsville, Alabama, then three shows in Napa, California in August. Catch ’em if you can.

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10
Jul 23

“What really makes it new is the fact that we are here”

Tomorrow I’ll put four more big plastic bins in the basement because this weekend I prepared two fo them for storage. Also this weekend, and today, I emptied six more bins of books. Tonight I finished placing them on their shelves. First, all of the Gloms are now back in order in their bookcase. (One of the bins of Gloms got dropped when we were moving things into the house. It, of course, was the bin with the 120-year-old books. They seemed to do OK, the ancient books, but that was a stressful moment.)
The Gloms are going to pop back up in a photo capacity in the not-too-distant future.

After that, there also two other bookcases, filled with dozens of books I’ve yet to read. Last night I organized them into two stacks. On my grandfather’s bookcase, right next to my desk, are the books I’ll read first. There are about fifth books placed there, and perhaps about the same amount on the other bookshelf in the far corner.

Tomorrow I’ll set up the audio equipment. After that, it’s just reducing clutter, and then making plans for how I’ll actually use the space.

Anyway, most of the house settling is coming together. I’ve got two other bookcases to fill downstairs, and there are some odds and ends to figure out, but soon we’ll be on the way to trying to figure out where to hang things.

Which is good, because talking about how you’re unpacking for days on end might be the most boring thing on the web, am I right? So, starting tomorrow, back to the other riveting things I usually talk about here.

Here’s the important part. The most delicate things have been removed from balled up newspaper.

First one, then the other.

Phoebe and Poseidon are ridiculous, and they’re doing well. Quite settled, I’d say.

We had a nice little bike ride this weekend, which allows me to use the new bike banner once again. It was a lovely pedal through farmland and close to the lower basin of the Delaware River estuary.

We rode by crops ready to be pulled from the vine, cornstalks ready to soar and over a bit of the marshy river itself.

On this particular route, I think we only passed one church, watching over the fields and the people and the carefully planted trees.

It wasn’t a hard ride, but it was not without its challenges. It wasn’t especially fast, and at one point everything hurt. I am, I reminded myself, recovering from a move, Also, despite my lovely bride’s best efforts, I still got us off to a later-than-desired start, so the sun was ready to bake us in the last few miles. But the scenery was nice, and the company was wonderful.

I’m ready for the next ride, and maybe after a few more I’ll be ready for them to be a bit faster.

We took some time out for gymnastics. Tthe former All-American still has the Focus Face and the fingers and toes do what a gymnast’s fingers and toes do. I doubt she’s even aware of them, but it always amuses me.

She stuck the landing, several times.

Today, there were laps.

I swam some laps as well. I’m easing back into this, having now my second lap swim in just under eight silly years. In a few more pool sessions I’ll be up to a respectable warmup distance.

Also, I really need my shoulder to stop spasming. This is a Memorial Day weekend thing, followed by the stress-of-a-move thing. But, hey, I can still carry things. First, heavy boxes, then books by the armload and finally, when that got old, moving entire bins of heavy books. I’m sure that has in no way contributed to this running issue.

Yes, I am going to get one more week of videos out of the concert we saw last month at The Ryman. I recorded it, you get to hear it. “Shame on You” was a 1997 single from the “Shaming of the Sun” record. Love that album, love this song, love the banjo.

There’s a reference to the year 1694 in the song, fit in as rhetorical rebuttal. Not a lot seemed to happen in colonial America in 1694, but it doesn’t make the point any less valid, but the migration was underway. These sorts of things happen slowly, until you one day look around and everything is different, and new challenges and realities are emerging. I suspect that’s what was happening in the 1970s and 1980s and early 1990s when David Zeiger released his documentary, “Displaced In The New South” which has a theme that inspired the song.

The opening line of the documentary is the title of the post. I suppose it has always been that way, as well.

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26
Jun 23

We’re moving

Here’s the thing. This has been in the works for a while — and we’ll get into that later this week, I’m sure. Talks have been going on even longer. None of this is a surprise. And, happily, our new employer is paying for our packers.

Oh, they talked a good game on the phone. Walked them through the house verbally, they estimated the boxes. The guy that was going to be leading the actual work wanted to do a visual check via Facetime. That turned into a drop in visit on Wednesday or so. He looked at everything, thought the people on the phone in the office were about right. Said he’d be here with his crew on Friday to whip all of our things into boxes in a few hours.

So, you see, while none of this is a surprise, we’ve spent a few months just hanging out, thinking, Maybe we should be doing something?

Nahhh, we’ve got packers.

And they were scheduled to come at about 4 p.m. on Friday.

I bet you can tell where this is going.

On Friday at the end of the day I loaded my car with the last of my things from my on-campus office. Said goodbye to … well, no one, really, but I got a nice Slack message … and drove to the house. My lovely bride’s car was the only one in the drive.

These guys are fast!

I pulled in the garage, slid out the boxes from my office and stacked them in the fledgling pile of stuff we’ve actually put in the garage and walked inside, expecting a forest of boxes. Columns of cardboard, a feat of fort-making.

And there’s my lovely bride, packing a box.

Where, I asked, are the packers?

She gave me the smile that isn’t a smile, but is a smile, but really isn’t. The packers hadn’t turned up.

And so I joined her. She’d already made a frantic dash out to pick up a few boxes from stores and then hit the U-Haul and bought every packing supply they had in stock, and we got to work.

There was some back and forth with the no-show packers. They weren’t coming until so and so. And then they didn’t come. And then they didn’t come on Saturday. After which, we started demanding our money back. And some of it has been refunded. The next call, because we have time for this nonsense right now, is going to go like this: All of my money back, right now. Otherwise, you’re going to have two media professionals who have an embarrassing, embarrassing, array of media contacts and two months with nothing better to do than talk about you.

(Update: They fully refunded the charge.)

So we packed all night Friday. We packed all day Saturday, until about 8 p.m., when there was a small going away party held in our honor with The Yankee’s triathlon team. We packed all day Sunday. At one point yesterday I was packing some particular box and got sidetracked to help with another packing chore, but was then sidetracked by still two more packing tasks. It was ridiculous. We have packed all day today. (I spent most of that time doing some real work in the garage.) We’ll be packing still tomorrow.

At times, it looks like we’ve made a dent and the spirits are high. Progress! At times you can stand in the same spot and see not the momentum, but all of the things still to do, and you can see how this will never be over. Despair.

At every moment there is something to trip on. Sometimes there is something to trip on, and then you land in something else to stumble over.

Fortunately, we’ve been alternating the emotions between us, so someone is always on an upswing and lifting the other along.

These rotten packers.

The movers, a different company, show up tomorrow morning.

Music is doing us a lot of good right now. There’s been a curious sort of traffic pattern throughout the house. For a while, for some reason, The Yankee will work on something upstairs and I will work on something downstairs. And then she moves downstairs and I drift upstairs. I can’t say it is effortless, because everything is a huge effort right now, but it’s an easy flow. And there’s always some song or another as we pack. And usually two. So here’s some more Indigo Girls from their recent show at The Ryman.

Now, sure, you think, The Ryman. The Mother Church of Country Music, and here’s an Americana band, a folk band, a rock band. And all of that is true. But this song features, from left to right, a fiddle, a mandolin, an acoustic guitar, a resonator and a banjo.

Also there are two Loretta Lynn references in “Second Time Around.” This more country than anything Nashville churns out these days.

I love that lyric about compromise.

Here’s what I find about compromise
Don’t do it if it hurts inside
Cause either way you’re screwed
And eventually you’ll find
That you may as well feel good
You may as well have some pride

This is one of those songs where I find myself thinking about the narrator versus the performer, because Amy Ray has an earlier line about how she doesn’t want to sing again, it has a catchy little meter, but is probably the farthest line possible from the performer. Throughout her career she has talked over and over and over about how she has to do these things, sing and play, like it’s in her and she has to get it out, because from the first time she ever played cover songs with Emily Saliers, when they were kids, that this was what she wanted to do, make these noises with her friend. And here we are 40 years later and there’s no way that woman won’t sing her soul out because it feels right. So it must, then, be the narrator. And anyway, that line about compromise is a good concept and maybe one that should be applied a little bit more.

Point is, there’s a lot of time for your mind to wander while you’re trying to find the right angle to get all of these things to go in boxes. And why do I have this many things anyway?

The good news is that late last evening I got to the place where I am ready to shove it all into boxes, or study the insurance policy about fire. It was easy to get into that last bit of gallows humor when the tornado warnings fired up yesterday. This could solve a few problems at once!

Tomorrow, the movers.

If you ain’t go nothin’ good to say
Don’t say nothin’ at all