Monday « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Monday

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.

cycling / Indigo Girls / Monday / movies / music / photo / swimming / video — Comments Off
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.

Monday / photo — Comments Off
3
Jul 23

Grupo compacto

All of the stuff is in the new house. About 39 percent of it has been sorted and settled. The living room and kitchen are basically opened for business, but still a bit cluttered. The bedroom is unboxed. The basement has come together nicely. The home offices, the dining room and the library are still to come. But, at least, there are some parts of the floor plan where you don’t have to shuffle sideways, trip or take comically big steps over things. That’s a nice change of pace after the last week.

So, naturally, with that sort of progress under our belt, we went to pick up the cats on Sunday. They’ve been staying with The Yankee’s parents the last few weeks, and that, in retrospect, was a great move for everyone. She’d also taken a load of things we wouldn’t want to put on a moving truck. So we took care of that yesterday. Rented an over-sized car (for the stuff) and drove the three hours north for the reunion. That trip is now much shorter than it used to be.

We had a short visit and had an early dinner. We loaded up the rental with everything we’d sent ahead. We had room for almost everything, except the cats. Aside from a half hour of complaining about it, though, they handled the trip like champs.

It was dark when they got to their new home, their third place in the last few weeks, but despite Phoebe’s judgmental look here, they’ll adjust quickly.

Poseidon is going to be very interested, aggressively interested, in everything. Here he is, trying to figure out the basement.

(Yes, I need to get a door sweep there.)

And they are already enjoying their new views.

It is always a bit unnerving when they do the same thing at the same time.

This made us feel better. We found a nearby grocery store on Friday evening, and it was hopping. This place just opened, it turns out, and it is pretty amazing. But more on that, I’m sure, later.

So we’ll continue the process of putting the house together when we’re not enjoying the summer.

And you’re more than welcome to come help me unpack books in the coming days.

adventures / Indiana / Indigo Girls / Monday / music / photo / video — Comments Off
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

cycling / Indigo Girls / IU / Monday / music / photo / Re-Listening / video — Comments Off
19
Jun 23

Photos, cycling, music, cats: a Monday clearance

I feel like I should be doing something. Can’t quite put my finger on it. Ah, well, you know how it is in the summertime. Things come along when they come along. Ideas too! And sometimes activity, as well. I’m sure it’ll come to me, or catch up to me, at some point.

I had to go into the office for a few minutes on Saturday. The tree outside my window looked pretty nice that afternoon.

We’ve had some pretty nice light lately, which is a thing you find yourself saying from time to time in these parts, even in the sunny part of the year. These are the woods behind our house, this evening.

That photo is timestamped 9 p.m., which is a magical thing, to be sure. Look how much light there still is in the sky! We’re just now approaching sunset. For my money, the late hours of daytime in the summer is the best part about this place.

Also, the cats. We didn’t check in with them last week, and site traffic no doubt suffered, as the weekly updates on the kitties are the site’s most popular feature. Just ask Poseidon who, I am sure, will tell you all about it.

Recently, we paused a bike race we were watching so we could watch a car chase. Which is to say, we paused a bike race so Poe could watch a car chase. He was invested.

He knew this particular chase wasn’t going to last much longer. There’s no tire on the front of that car. At the conclusion, he was trying to give the driver a few helpful tips. Get out of the car, lay down and listen to the officers’ instructions.

Poseidon would not be a good wheelman, I think.

For her part, Phoebe did not watch the car chase. I think she knew the inevitable outcome, or was embarrassed that her brother would assume the position.

Phoebe, I think, might be the better driver of a getaway car of the two. Whereas Poe would be like, “Hey, what’s up? Is this fun? This looks fun. Can this be fun?” Phoebe is always looking for a way to get out of any room, juuuust in case.

Smart girl, that one.

I had a brisk 34-mile ride on Saturday. I set no Strava PRs, and so that part was disappointing. But I did chase this guy down from a long way back, so there’s that.

He was a bit surprised when he looked over his shoulder and saw me. Maybe it was the huffing and/or the puffing.

Since we saw The Indigo Girls at The Ryman last weekend I’ve been doling out a few songs. That’s going to continue on for a while, because this was a great concert. This is the first track from their eighth studio album, 2002’s “Become You,” it sets the tone for the record, and it holds up like all of the best of their catalog. “Moment of Forgiveness” has a great set of lyrics, a wonderful refrain and a keyboard sound that doesn’t really come across here, but the spirit of the song, and more of Amy Ray’s spirit, does.

Speaking of the spirit of music …

More music! The Re-Listening project, to be specific. I’m playing all of my old CDs in the car, in the order I acquired the CDs. And right now we’re in 1999, listening to a double-live CD which was released in 1997, from a series of concerts in 1996.

Everybody got that?

This is Lilith Fair, which I didn’t see live, the timing and location never worked out, but I’m certain that, if I had, I would have been duly impressed.

The first track is from Paula Cole, who I did see at a different festival about that time. She had a cold, she said. She was afraid her voice would crack. She stole the the show.

There’s this cool song from Autour de Lucie, a French pop band I’d never heard of. Quite captivating, really.

Lilith Fair, of course, was a Sarah McLachlan-inspired project.

In its first summer, Lilith easily outpaced the then-fading Lollapolooza festival, in both audience size and ticket sales. It returned for two more summers and went on to become the top-grossing music festival of the late 1990s, racking up $60 million in ticket sales over its three-year run.

Indigo Girls, Joan Osborne and and Victoria Williams were among the other headliners. Then there was the incomparable Tracy Chapman, Fiona Apple and Natalie Merchant. It’s an amazing, embarrassing catalog of star power. The stage was full of huge and important musical acts, like Suzanne Vega.

But I’m betting the Songbird herself often stole the show. How could she not?

For my money, the best song on the double CD is this rendition of “Water is Wide” by the Indigo Girls, Jewel and Sara McLachlan. I listen to this over and over, just for the goosebumps.

Both Shall Row.