I missed you bloggy mcbloggerton. Although I wasn't terribly motivated to write to you today, when I signed in you sucked me in.... you took me back to a different time and place. Oh how we change and grow in different directions in such little time. When I was lonely you were my outlet... catharsis for the debilitatingly over analytical mind. There is so much I should have shared with you. I noticed numerous draft blogs that I never published... one in particular about Ernie Harwell that I started last September. I think it is time to finish that one now that we know how that story ends. One about Trizzy, oh Trizzy. Another about home, one about forgiveness, and one about the my annoyance with conservative pop culture, that is really old news now.
I guess now that I have re-broke the ice maybe I will finish those blogs and publish them with their original dates... along with some new thoughts.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Saturday, August 1, 2009
I and Love and You
Update (Sept. 22 2009): You can hear the entire album on NPR from now until Sept. 29 .
I can't wait for the new Avett Brothers album. So if you are like me here is the track list with links to the youtube performances to hold you over. I can't find them all but this is what I have found so far.
1. I and Love and You
2. January Wedding
3. Head Full of Doubt, Road Full of Promise
4. And it Spread (I was at this show)
5. The Perfect Space
6. Ten Thousand Words
7. Kick Drum Heart
8. Laundry Room
9. Ill with want
10. Tin Man
11. Slight Figure of Speech
12. It Goes On and On
13. Incomplete and Insecure
Rarities; not released yet?
Down With The Shine
Telling Time
In the curve
Another
I can't wait for the new Avett Brothers album. So if you are like me here is the track list with links to the youtube performances to hold you over. I can't find them all but this is what I have found so far.
1. I and Love and You
2. January Wedding
3. Head Full of Doubt, Road Full of Promise
4. And it Spread (I was at this show)
5. The Perfect Space
6. Ten Thousand Words
7. Kick Drum Heart
8. Laundry Room
9. Ill with want
10. Tin Man
11. Slight Figure of Speech
12. It Goes On and On
13. Incomplete and Insecure
Rarities; not released yet?
Down With The Shine
Telling Time
In the curve
Another
Monday, June 29, 2009
You Can't Go Home
So I don't mean to transcribe the entire book in this blog but here is another excerpt from Travels with Charley that resonates with me. I have felt this, and just as much as the memory of me stands still back home as time goes on, my memory of home stands still as my life goes on... Despite what Bon Jovi says, you can't home.
"...What we know is dead, and maybe the greatest part of what we were is dead. What's out there is new and perhaps good, but its nothing we know... The place of my origin had changed, and having gone away I had not changed with it. In my memory it stood as it once did and its outward appearance confused and angered me. What I am about to tell must be the experience of very many in this nation where so many wander and come back. I called on old and valued friends. I thought their hair had receded a little more than mine. The greetings were enthusiastic. The memories flooded up. Old crimes and old triumphs were brought out and dusted. And suddenly my attention wandered, and looking at my ancient friend, I saw that his wandered also. And it was true what I had said to Johnny Garcia-- I was the ghost. My town had grown and changed and my friend along with it. Now returning, as changed to my friend as my town was to me, I distorted his picture, muddied his memory. When I went away I had died, and so became fixed and unchangeable. My return caused only confusion and uneasiness. Although they could not say it, my old friends wanted me gone so that I could take my proper place in the pattern of remembrance--and I wanted to go for the same reason. Tom Wolfe was right. You can't go home again because home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of memory."
This song is me:
"...What we know is dead, and maybe the greatest part of what we were is dead. What's out there is new and perhaps good, but its nothing we know... The place of my origin had changed, and having gone away I had not changed with it. In my memory it stood as it once did and its outward appearance confused and angered me. What I am about to tell must be the experience of very many in this nation where so many wander and come back. I called on old and valued friends. I thought their hair had receded a little more than mine. The greetings were enthusiastic. The memories flooded up. Old crimes and old triumphs were brought out and dusted. And suddenly my attention wandered, and looking at my ancient friend, I saw that his wandered also. And it was true what I had said to Johnny Garcia-- I was the ghost. My town had grown and changed and my friend along with it. Now returning, as changed to my friend as my town was to me, I distorted his picture, muddied his memory. When I went away I had died, and so became fixed and unchangeable. My return caused only confusion and uneasiness. Although they could not say it, my old friends wanted me gone so that I could take my proper place in the pattern of remembrance--and I wanted to go for the same reason. Tom Wolfe was right. You can't go home again because home has ceased to exist except in the mothballs of memory."
This song is me:
Friday, June 26, 2009
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Say It Ain't So
MDA camp has been canceled this year because of the swine flu. This is devastating news to so many campers that live for this week. The concern is that many campers have suppressed and weak immune and respiratory systems, and they don't want to take the chance of potentially infecting any campers. I guess there have already been several cases where campers have been infected at this year's camps.
My old camp was one of the remaining camps that has been canceled. What a monumental let down. I guarantee, given option to go regardless, most campers and parents would take the risk... That is how much this camp means to these kids.
MDA probably did the right thing... but... Man what a huge decision to have to make. The reality is some campers will die before next year. This is truly the most important week of the year for most of them. You can't understand it, unless you see it or experience it first hand.
My old camp was one of the remaining camps that has been canceled. What a monumental let down. I guarantee, given option to go regardless, most campers and parents would take the risk... That is how much this camp means to these kids.
MDA probably did the right thing... but... Man what a huge decision to have to make. The reality is some campers will die before next year. This is truly the most important week of the year for most of them. You can't understand it, unless you see it or experience it first hand.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Social Creatures
In 1960 John Steinbeck embarked on a journey across the country with his Poodle Charley. He said that he realized that he had been writing stories about the American life but that he hadn't really known the extent of people, cultures, or places in his great country. His journey is chronicled in what I think is his only non-fiction book Travels with Charley; in Search of America. The following is an excerpt from the book that spoke to my core. I understand exactly what he means by this and it really speaks to the human spirit; that we are social creatures and that we need each other:
"Having a companion fixes you in time and that the present, but when the quality of aloneness settles down, past, present, and future all flow together. A memory, a present event, and a forecast all equally present... A number of years ago I had some experience with being alone. For two succeeding years I was alone each winter for eight months at a stretch in the Sierra Nevada mountains on Lake Tahoe. I was a caretaker on a summer estate during the winter months when it was snowed in. And I made some observations then. As the time went on I found that my reactions thickened. Ordinarily I am a whistler. I stopped whistling. I stopped conversing with my dogs, and I believe that subtleties of feeling began to disappear until finally I was on a pleasure-pain basis. Then it occurred to me that the delicate shades of feeling, of reaction, are the result of communication, and without such communications they tend to disappear. A man with nothing to say has no words. Can its reverse be true--a man who has no one to say anything to has no words as he has no need for words? Now and then there appear accounts of babies raised by animals--wolves and such. It is usually reported that the youngster crawls on all fours, makes those sounds learned from his foster parents, and perhaps even thinks like a wolf. Only through imitation do we develop toward originality..."
And this is why I blog.
"Having a companion fixes you in time and that the present, but when the quality of aloneness settles down, past, present, and future all flow together. A memory, a present event, and a forecast all equally present... A number of years ago I had some experience with being alone. For two succeeding years I was alone each winter for eight months at a stretch in the Sierra Nevada mountains on Lake Tahoe. I was a caretaker on a summer estate during the winter months when it was snowed in. And I made some observations then. As the time went on I found that my reactions thickened. Ordinarily I am a whistler. I stopped whistling. I stopped conversing with my dogs, and I believe that subtleties of feeling began to disappear until finally I was on a pleasure-pain basis. Then it occurred to me that the delicate shades of feeling, of reaction, are the result of communication, and without such communications they tend to disappear. A man with nothing to say has no words. Can its reverse be true--a man who has no one to say anything to has no words as he has no need for words? Now and then there appear accounts of babies raised by animals--wolves and such. It is usually reported that the youngster crawls on all fours, makes those sounds learned from his foster parents, and perhaps even thinks like a wolf. Only through imitation do we develop toward originality..."
And this is why I blog.
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