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‘On your yellow bucket seat’

Today was Copeland Cookie Day in my classes. (And so was Monday.) Dr. Gary Copeland was a professor of mine. He retired soon after my cohort, and he passed away not too long after that. He didn’t get enough time with his beloved grandchildren, and no one got enough time with a widely beloved man. He was a giant of a scholar, a sweet-hearted man who always did a lot for his students.

In one class, he’d bring cookies, put away the syllabus and talk about whatever seemed important: conferences, papers, dealing with colleagues. A lot of the most important things we learned came from that non-class.

Because of that, that’s why I have a Copeland Cookie Day. I bring in snacks, put aside the plans and, for a few minutes, we just talk about industry, courses, war stories, whatever.

After classes were over we went for a run. It was too late in the day for a run. It was too late, which made it too cold. So I only did a quick mile, but I did see this part of the far side of the sunset.

I need to find my running gloves. And start dressing better than shorts and a t-shirt. ‘Tis the season, and all. Only, I have no idea where my running gloves are. I knew where they were, in a drawer, right by the refrigerator. But that was in the old house. And that was in June, in the chaos of packing our stuff when the packers no-showed, and when it was the middle of summer when gloves weren’t exactly a priority.

Where are they now? No idea, but mother nature is a necessity.

Since we’re at the beginning of the month, let’s look at the year’s cycling graph.

The blue line represents mileage I would accrue if I road seven miles a day, a basically arbitrary number I picked at the beginning of the year when I started this spreadsheet. Seven miles, on average, seemed doable.

Then I added columns, and lines, for nine and 10 miles per day. That’s why those three lines are nice and steady, daily projections are consistent, steady, reassuring.

But that purple line, that’s the one that reflects my actual mileage.

As I say so often, I need to ride more. Tomorrow, then.

But tonight, we dive back into the Re-Listening project. I’m playing all of my old CDs in the car, and in the order in which I acquired them. Right now, we’re in the summer of of 2003, when Guster’s “Keep It Together,” their fourth studio album, was released.

This is the first Guster album where the Thunder God, Brian Rosenworcel, played on a drum kit rather than his legendary hand percussion.

A bunch of musician’s musicians — Ron Aniello, Ben Kweller, Joe Pisapia, Josh Rouse and more — appear on the record, which peaked at number 35 on the Billboard Top 200. Thirteen tracks, I like 12 of them, and I love 11 of them. It’s a record that comes up a lot for me, and so the flashes of memories span, well, two decades now.

This is the first track, which was a trippy departure to hear as the first sounds on the thing.

“Careful” was released as a single, and it went to number 30 on the charts.

This was the lead single, which the label released before the album. “Amsterdam” climbers to the 20 spot on the charts. The band said, and you could never tell if it was a joke, that they wrote this just to get the label to fund a trip to Amsterdam for the video.

I think it was a joke.

Someone told me that this song reminded them of me. All melancholy and what not. I’m not sure if she didn’t understand the song or the word melancholy. Apparently, all of the guest musicians were allowed to record one pass (and only one pass) on this song. They didn’t hear the song before they played, or told chords or instruments. I don’t understand how that would even work out, but it’s a triumph. And not about a melancholy me.

“Jesus on the Radio” is now a crowd favorite singalong. They usually do this on stage as unplugged as possible, and if you look around on YouTube tons of fan videos have been uploaded. It’s odd that the band hasn’t done more with that fervor, he said mischievously. Here’s a version with Pisapia (who toured as the fourth member for seven years) on banjo.

There is a high quality version on the “Guster on Ice” DVD, also featuring Pisapia.

Here’s a more recent version, from four or five years ago, long after Luke Reynolds joined the band.

And, as the O’Malley family proved, most anything in your kitchen can be a percussion instrument.

Not just the O’Malleys, but all of their musical fans cover it and record it and upload “Jesus on the Radio,” too. And a few years ago the band made a supercut, and somehow, despite the changes in tempo from version to version, it mostly works. Except for that one.

I could do this all day. And I usually do, on Jesus on the Radio day, March 16th. I actually have the t-shirt. It was a Christmas gift a few years back.

Here’s the title track.

I could do this with the whole album, but I’ll wrap it up with a version of “Come Downstairs and Say Hello,” a thoroughly underrated song when it gets going, and, here, with symphonic accompaniment.

You will discover, about three minutes in, why the Thunder God is so named. It’s one of the few times on that particular record when he went back to his roots. (As I recall he was basically learning how to play a drum kit while they produced this record, partly to change the sound of the record, but, I think, also to give his hands something of a break.) Also, in the second half of that version, the brass, and certain of the strings make it sound absolutely triumphant. I wish they hadn’t come into the song until then.

I have the T-shirt featur that song too. I guess I should finally buy a Guster Is For Lovers shirt, to solidify my OG cred.

Original Guster cred, that is. I go back to the spring of 1997, when Guster Is For Lovers was one of the two things they sold.

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17
Oct 23

The sun stepped back, the leaves dozed, autumn was awakened

Just a gray blah day, and I acted like it, too. Could have done more, but I did enough. At least I hope so. If not, someone will let me know, and there’s always tomorrow and Friday and so on. (Thursday I’ll be busy, of course. Which means tomorrow I’ll be busy. Which means Friday I’ll be making up for other stuff. And that is how a stuporific Tuesday influences the rest of the week.)

Late in the day we went for a short run, and the clouds were just beginning to move off for the evening. The sun was able to just break through in the last hour or so of daylight.

The Canada geese are taking all of this as a hint.

Do you ever wonder just how much smarter all the critters are than us? Sure, we’ve got thumbs and language and social skills, but the animals, they know when to call it a day.

Those geese flew over this tree, the first tree to start the light show.

And so it begins.

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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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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.

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17
Jul 23

1,800 words, didn’t even talk about Monday

Saturday afternoon I went out to explore for a bit. I needed to drive my car, basically. Also, I wanted to make friends at a nearby SCUBA diving shop. It serves you well to know all of the nearby people in your many interests. Plus it was a lovely day and so on.

So I stopped in at Ocean Spirit Aquatics, where I met Joan, who runs the joint with her husband, Jim. She was a lovely woman, happy to chat about the local dive scene. She was not able to help much with my main reason for stopping by, but the world wide web can pick up the slack. She told me about a SCUBA diving flea market that takes place each spring — buy and sell used gear! — something I would have otherwise overlooked for some time. I’ll be there next March.

I glanced at one of the little shelves I was standing next to while we were chatting and there were the goggles I do pool swims with. I had two pair of these in my Amazon cart, but the dive store were selling them for $10 less a pair. So I bought two pair from her for taking up her time, and now we are friends.

Setting out for my second errand, I was following the map app and winding my way through a residential area when I thought, Double check and see if there’s another dive shop nearby.

Good idea, me! Let me find a parking lot.

A car was following closely behind. Took every right I did. Took every left I did. Finally, that car turned off, and I found a lot for some quick map searches. I was correct, there wasn’t another dive shop conveniently nearby. But, I looked up, and the sign on the building said Aldi. I surmised I was in a grocery store parking lot. And my incredibly well-honed powers of deduction, I further determined that I was in an Aldi parking lot.

It just so happened that my next stop was an Aldi, but not this one. I figure, though, I’m here. I’m parked. Let’s see if they have what I’m after. Walk in, turn left to the far wall, walk halfway back through the cooler section, and, yep. Grab the goods, self checkout, and back to the car.

The next stop was back home. The map told me to retrace my steps. This, in the scheme of things, saved seven miles. And finding those goggles while talking with the nice people at the dive shop (but I repeat myself) means I also saved 20 bucks.

Serendipity!

Before we go any farther, let’s check in on the cats. It is, of course, the reason you’re here on a Monday, after all. (I watch the site data. And, remember, I have incredibly well-honed powers of deduction.)

Poseidon has progressed from sleeping in a cardboard box …

… to standing on the side of a cut up cardboard box.

I’m over cardboard boxes altogether, at this point.

Phoebe, for her part, has upgraded to plastic bins, because she is smart.

Also, she’s enjoying this bird on her traditional spot, the staircase landing. The bird makes tweeting, chirping noises when you move it. The cats like that.

It’s probably not as satisfying as catching the real birds outside, but these two wouldn’t know what to do with a real bird if they could grab one.

Saturday morning we went for a bike ride, of course. I feel like my legs are starting to come back, if only a little bit, and if only for shorter rides.

It was just a 20-miler; the last five miles were faster, thankfully. In that section, a couple caught up to us as we waited on the one red light on the route. The guy said hello. I said, “Welcome, join us,” and, jokingly, “Which of you can I draft off of?”

The light turned green, I told The Yankee to go ahead, as is our custom. The guy told his riding part to come along. And my lovely bride … dropped those people in about four pedal strokes. That probably looked gratuitous, but everyone is on their own ride, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Not everyone is as strong as The Yankee, or as determined as I am to stay on her wheel, and that’s OK, too.

Also, they could have just turned quickly, for all I know. I glanced back once, and they were gone.

Maybe I should save this graphic of the route that we pedaled that day.

It already has a home roads/default route feeling to it.

It rained Sunday afternoon, so we spent the time listening to the rain and reading. It was lovely. I got back into a May Sarton book, though I think it sounds better if I say, “I am reading the journal of a Belgian poet.” It’s titled Journal of a Solitude, and that’s apt. The book started in September of a particular year. I am now through April, and there’s a big meaty section of spring and summer to come. But, sitting under a July rain, trying to picture a rugged Maine January …

I love how she hints at the difference of manipulating words or concepts. Because she is a poet, one is always weighed more heavily against the other. The W.B. Yeats poem she refers to there is, perhaps, “The Circus Animals Desertion,” where he narrates that he labored on the theme for six weeks. Any number of literature shortcut sites will tell you he’s, late in life, trying to square his own life with the times and mores of his native Ireland, and how that impacted his inspiration. It’s Yeats, so just say it is full of modernism or postmodernism; people will nod sagely.

I think she’s referring to “The Snow Light.” The line she went with:

In the snow light,
In the swan light,
In the white-on-white light
Of a winter storm,
My delight and your delight
Kept each other warm.

What do you want to happen in a poem after that? For Sarton, the love had to be lost.

She had published a book of poems just before that journal entry, and the rest of winter breezes by in the journal. So, much of spring and summer will be filled with her gardens and flowers and her descriptions of those things, but she’ll sneak in all manner of powerful observations about being alone, femininity, sexuality and then, near the end, something absolutely unexpected will happen.

This is my second Sarton book — My second of four Sarton books. I discovered her through Ray Boomhower, Indianapolis-based historian, who shared a quote of hers, “Keep busy with survival. Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember nothing stays the same for long, not even pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go.” that sounded very much like something a cyclist would say. So I was intrigued. I then found a site that recommended four of her books in particular. After that, I found a used bookstore online that had each of those four books, plus free shipping. I bookmarked that store immediately. — so I know for certain there will be much about flowers and weeding and the spring and summer chores. The other three themes are all over this journal. And I’m hoping for another “Huh. How about that?!?” moment, that brings it all together, just as in Plant Dreaming Deep.

Belgian poets, man.

After the weather cleared, we took a little swim, unleashing an impressive array of splashy dives that created great splashes, even if they weren’t terribly splashy. I decided to do a few laps, because Sunday was a rest day, but by that time I hadn’t exercised in more than 24 hours and Saturday morning seemed a long time ago. So I did a few laps, and then a few more. And then I decided I’d just swim until I was tired. This being my fourth swim in just 10 days, and, also, my fourth swim since November 2015, I was curious to see what that looked like.

It looked like 1,120 yards. I feel a bit of that in my shoulders today, but in a good way.

So, naturally, we went for a run tonight. I did 2.91 miles — and I feel that in my feet — just to keep an easily reachable goal out there.

We return to the Re-Listening project, where the goal is to listen to all of my old CDs, in the order in which I acquired them. Since I am writing a bit about them here, and as I am woefully behind, the immediate goal is to … catch up. These aren’t reviews, but an excuse to pad out the blog and embed a few videos on a trip down memory lane.

Gran Torino, was a Knoxville-based band, that started with a rhythm-and-blues, soul and funk feel and shifted pretty effortlessly to a pop formula. This is their second album, the one that had a minor hit, mostly on college radio and the like. A lot of horns, a lot of fun somewhere between game show themes and Earth, Wind & Fire.

If you weren’t around Knoxville, this was probably how you were introduced to this band.

Infectious!

Gran Torino put out only one more album before they disbanded in 2003, but they have played the occasional show, often for a fundraiser, here and there.

Jimmie’s Chicken Shack dropped their second album in August of 1999, a time when almost no one used the word “dropped” in that way. I picked this up in a giveaway bin at one of the stations I was working at, and I am so glad I did. This is a fusion of slack rock, entry-level ska, acoustic pop and some sort of blue-eye hip hop and new wave sounds. Now, as I type that out, it sounds ridiculous, but this record is so, so great.

Track one feels like a nod to their early work before they diverge into that odd collage.

I did not understand this when I first heard it, but I liked it straight away.

And this was the low key hit. “Do Right” peaked at number 12 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart, helping to push the album to 153 on the Billboard 200.

Really, almost every song here has something to offer. How it didn’t get a bigger push is a mystery.

Oh. Wikipedia tells me that Elton John had a record label and Jimmie’s Chicken Shack was one of their acts. They apparently did not often see eye-to-eye. Also, it was “marketed” by Island Def Jam, this would have been before IDJ really figured out they were supposed to be a major entity.

Jimmie’s Chicken Shack put out two-independent records after this one, and now they’re releasing things on Bandcamp. And they’re touring now, too. Good for them.