Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Is August too soon for ghost stories?

One of my former students, I learned yesterday, is beginning her new job as a reporter in Savannah. Great city, of course. The Yankee and I were married there. We visit often. And I’m excited for my young journalist friend. It should be a great market for her to start polishing her skills.

The day before yesterday I learned another former student has just begun a job reporting at NBC in Chicago. Her third stop in the business is number three in the Nielsen rankings. Only New York and Los Angeles are bigger markets, of course. In the media, the dues paying a young employee does sometimes means starting in smaller newsrooms, or in smaller markets, or both. Over time the successful worker bee moves up the ladder. Courtney, who is now in Chicago, started in market 138, moved to 35 and is now in market number three. To make it that high, that early in her career is a testament ~~to my innate ability~~ to her incredible talent and superior networking skills. Success stories are successful for a reason, and I’m always so proud to see my friends continue their success.

I keep a map of where my former students are. They’ve spread out across the country, of course. But I know, from my map, that four of them are working in Chicago. A few are working abroad. The problem is that I’ve been doing this long enough that inevitability some people fall off my radar. I only catch so much on LinkedIn. (I updated four of those map locations last night, for example.) So please keep me updated with your success stories, my friends.

Someone I met 15 years ago in my first year on campus went out into the world, and then law school, and is now teaching classes at a law school. That’s the one that aged me.

Today’s errands put a few new lines on my face too, I’m sure of it. I took the garbage to the garbage taking place, because, again, no one picks up garbage in this neighborhood. Despite two companies which pick up garbage in the neighborhood. I have witnessed it and taken photographic proof. Monday, a truck stopped at the house across the street. A gentleman stepped off and grabbed our neighbors’ discarded materials and drove off to … wherever garbage trucks go when they’re through on your street.

We had a little chat with our neighbor yesterday. A wonderfully pleasant and cheerful man. The sort that knows everyone, and talks about them like they’re all old friends, and you are too. I should have asked him about the garbage truck. Probably he owned the company, or the person that does owes him some not insubstantial favor.

Anyway, in and out at the convenience center, as it is locally called. And, except for the location, it is convenient. Of course, if that isn’t too convenient, or at least upwind, that’s OK, too.

From there I went to the Tractor Supply to inquire about peach baskets. They have no tractors, a thin selection of supplies, and no peach baskets. The woman I spoke with there suggested I go to the Coal and Ice, which is a local hardware store that has kept it’s name, if not it’s original products. The Coal and Ice does not carry peach baskets. (I wonder if I can make a gag of renaming that store everything they don’t have. This would be unfair, it’s a small store. And it would become a long gag pretty quickly. For example, so far it would be the Coal and Ice, and Digital Deadbolt, Sliding Glass Door Lock and Peach Basket. They do carry, however, weather stripping for basement doors. I have to be fair about this inventory gag I won’t pursue.)

A nice lady at the Coal and Ice suggested a farm market. Produce stands on the side of the road. That was, actually, my next option. They’re ubiquitous, and that’s lovely. But most of them are all stocked and sold on an honor system, which is charming. I needed to talk with someone, but no dice.

So I set out for a distant grocery store to buy Milo’s. They did not have Milo’s. So I visited a sister store to try my luck again. I think maybe the delivery guy has been under the weather or something, because I went oh-for-two. I need that driver to get back on the road, quickly.

My next stop was a Lowe’s, but on the way there I ran across a place called Bloomer’s Garden Center. A big, sprawling, someone-has-to-water-all-of-these-plants-daily place. A place with a water garden wing, and another bird sanctuary wing. Everything smelled of rich nitrogen soil. These people are in the business of selling things to people who want to grow things. The woman there had no idea about peach baskets. I think they must appear from the very air.

So I went to Lowe’s. I looked there for peach baskets. No luck, of course, because that’s a pretty small, and obviously obscure, item for a box store. I did get two garbage cans, because see above, and a spool of weed eater string. You could purchase this in spools of one or three. I had the three-spool pack in my hand, considered my traditional weed eater habits and opted for the smaller, less expensive version. Rolled my two garbage cans to the self-checkout, and then out to the car.

Next to the Lowe’s there was a Dollar Tree. I walked in there. No peach baskets. But I did find small plastic baskets that are about the proper size, have a big breathable basket type pattern and a convenient handle. I got six of them. Paid eight bucks, which is probably close to how much gas I’ve spent on that search today.

Picked up some Chick-fil-A for a very late lunch and then drove it the 20-some minutes back to the house. Whereupon I learned that one of the two garbage cans I picked up … doesn’t have a lid.

So I’ll go back there tomorrow.

We went on a bike ride early this evening and it was obvious almost right away that I had no legs. My lovely bride waited on me twice, but finally I waved her on. No need for her to slow down if I can’t speed up. This is a training ride for her, anyway.

I just turned mine into a scenic experience. Here’s today’s barn by bike.

The last four miles on this route are uphill, which is to say, have a gentle, gradual slow ascent. There’s nothing bigger than a roller, but you gain the same 70 feet a few times over and over. Also, I was developing a soft rear wheel. I titled the ride “Slow leak, Slower legs.”

Tomorrow’s ride will be a bit better. But I have to allow for a few minutes to swap out that tube. Some first world problems feel insulting even to the concept of the first world problems meme.

For dinner, we took some of these tomatoes from the backyard …

And some of these peaches from the front yard …

And mixed them with some things we purchased at a nearby grocery store to make a tasty little peach salsa.

It complimented everything nicely, but the cilantro and the onion muted the peaches just a bit. Anyway, we’ll have plenty more opportunities to try this concept. We might also soon be eating peaches as an entree. I mean, aside from breakfast and midday snacks.

And I have those baskets now, so we’re now important produce power players, locally speaking.

I have started tracking down the local historical markers. New county, new goals and all of that. I found a site that lists 115 markers in this county, so there’s a ton of easy content!

This is the second installment. You can find them all under this brand new blog category, We Learn Wednesdays. What will we learn about today?

This is a place called Seven Stars. Built in 1762 by a man named Peter Lauterbach, it is architecturally significant, and there are important bits of social and military history inside those brick walls as well. The side features Flemish patterned brickwork, which was once a common thing here, and will come up again in a later post. In this case, the pattern carries the initials “P-L-E” for Peter and Elizabeth Lauterbach.

Their son John Louderback changed his name and lived in the tavern during the Revolutionary War. The British came through and raided the tavern, looking for him. He had a price on his head because he was thought to be giving food to the Americans. Louderback and his family hid in the woods. And, a few years later, he marched with a unit out of Pennsylvania. Earlier he’d served under Casimir Pulaski.

Peter, the father, died in 1780. John lived to see the country independent, and died in 1802. His mother lived until at least 1806, which is where historians find her name on a church roll. She also voted in 1800, presumably because of the property she held, inherited from her husband or otherwise. During that period, depending on where you were, it is estimated that between seven and 25 percent of the tallied votes were cast by women. (A state law that was billed as progressive at the time disenfranchised women and Blacks in 1807.)

Seven Stars has a lot of ghost stories attached to it, as well. In the early 20th century, the residents claimed seeing figures on horseback riding up to the tavern window, that small one to the left of the door, which was where people got their orders. Someone is said to have seen a ghostly figure checking on a baby. Supposedly Peter roams the ground looking for valuables he buried during the Revolution. Another spirit is said to be a spy for the British who found his end at the end of a rope in the attic. A Halloween-type site says loud footsteps and scuffle sounds can sometimes be heard in the attic. A pirate is thought to be a frequent haunter, as well. Be as skeptical as you like, but someone also needs to go camp out and see if the ghostly ghosts and their ghostly horses trot up to the tavern window.

It is now a private residence.

In the center of town you’ll find this wonderful bit of signage. There’s a lot going on there, because, for a small town, a lot has gone on there.

I’m sure we’ll pick up on some of those themes again in future installments. For now, here’s the door to that bank, which is still standing, sturdy and beautiful as ever.

Some day, I’ll go back and photograph the whole of the building. When I was there for this, it was small-town rush hour, and people have to get where people want to go.

(Update: A few weeks later, I had the opportunity to improve on the shot. Here’s the First National Bank.)

Which is what you should do, right now. Go to the next place. But come back here tomorrow. There’s going to be a lot more fun to discuss here tomorrow.

errands / memories / music / Re-Listening / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
08
Aug 23

Mostly music

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

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

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

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

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

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

I guess we’ll start cutting those up tomorrow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

cycling / memories / Monday / photo / running / site / swimming / triathlon — Comments Off
07
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.

cycling / Friday / memories / photo / site — Comments Off
04
Aug 23

Happy birthday to the website

Twenty years ago today, yikes, I wrote my first blog post. I wrote four brief things that day. They were nothing to write home about, but I certainly did put them on the web. No one saw them, of course. Since then, I have published 6,538 more posts.

Nineteen years ago, this weekend, I launched kennysmith.org. My goal at the time was to make something aesthetically unique that had minimalist coding. Two hidden frames, with text on the left and a small photo collage on the right. Of course, no one was visiting. The site had 647 visits that month. (For those of you still around, I thank you.)

Last month, was pretty good. The site saw a 10,925 percent increase over August 2004 first month. In between, for whatever reasons, we’ve logged. 5.3 million visits. (And thanks.)

And so we launch year 20 on this URL, and year 21 of writing the blog. The party hasn’t begun yet. I’m waiting for the cupcake to get here.

Even so, this place has come a long, long way since then. So I have. I wonder what kind of fun and interesting things we’ll see in the months to come.

Today in outdoor fun, I picked up sticks. What should I do with all of these sticks, I wondered, and then I remembered we have a fire pit and we’ll need kindling. Stick problem solved.

I was going to cut away dead branches from a few trees, but that’s never as fun to contemplate when you’re standing under a tree as when you’re inside wondering what you should do.

The apple trees are coming along nicely. And I spent some time studying the chokecherry trees, and started reading about what you can do with chokecherries. Do you like tart jams, jellies or wines? Chokecherry might be for you.

I found some maple saplings that I’ll try transplanting this winter. And I pulled up, and then chopped up, a few more pokeweed plants. I also checked on the tomato vines, a new seasonally favorite habit. In a few more days more will go from the vine to the kitchen.

Next, we’ll have to figure out the herb garden. That’s what the weekend is for. There are a few bramble vines in there. And I’m looking forward to picking those berries sometime soon.

And we’ll need to keep a closer eye on the peaches. We’re going to have a lot of peaches. They’ve really lit their tree up this week.

Across the way, a darker tree looms. Check out this maple, which pins the yard to the road.

There are a lot of fun things to explore outside, so I’m taking it a bit at a time. Plus, ya know, outdoors being outdoors, it’s always changing.

I didn’t have that stack of kindling this morning, for example.

I’d planned a 30 mile bike ride today. It was precipitating when I left the house. Saying it was misting wouldn’t be accurate. Saying it was sprinkling would overstate it. Minkling. It was minkling. Minkling sounds fun. I rode through the little downtown, checking out some of the sites and taking photos for later.

Then I turned toward the southeast, to follow the next part of the route. I looked up and saw dark clouds. I felt a new precipitation begin, something much more sprinkling-like. I glanced at the time.

Which was when I thought of the one reason to continue on — because I planned this route — and weighed that against all of the reasons I should call it early. Instead of pressing on I took the next right. And then two amazing things happened.

I started riding without looking at a map. Then, three miles later, I found myself at an intersection I knew. That sensation of knowing a place, the feeling of some knowledge clicking in, you know the one, right? It probably isn’t much, that “Ohhhh yeah!” moment, but it surely seems like a big thing when it occurs. It’s just an intersection with a red light and a Sunoco, but it was a big deal. Those realizations of clarity, understanding a tiny bit of context in a new place always feel like a big deal.

As I rode back, the weather in front of me was better than the stuff behind. Still gray, as you can see behind this hay shed, but brighter.

The cattle in the pasture next to it seemed content, for cows. Why wouldn’t they be? They can see their winter food right there. That would be reassuring to them, if they understood calendars, and the tilt of the earth, and seasons.

Anyway, I set three PRs on Strava segments on this ride. And I am now in second place on the segment that someone drew up on our road.

That’s one of the many things I wasn’t doing 20 years ago when I started this place, sitting at an old MDF desk, using dialup: riding my own road for highly personalized bragging rights.

Small steps. At least until that cupcake arrives.

memories / music / photo / Re-Listening / Thursday / video — Comments Off
03
Aug 23

Hard to Handle

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

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

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

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

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

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

This, in my estimation, was an excellent tradeoff.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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