Category: Music

“Albert Lee!”

When I left you last week, we were off to the movies – Diana’s first since COVID began.  We enjoyed “Top Gun Maverick” very much.  At over two hours long, we were a bit nervous, but things didn’t drag at all.  The linkage to the 1986 original was very well done on several fronts – Goose’s son saving the day, Iceman (Val Kilmer) as the Admiral in charge, and Jennifer Connely as the bar owner.  We highly recommend seeing this on the big screen.

I dragged Diana (might be a bit more accurate than the use of “dragged” to oysters last week) to the downtown McKinney 4th of July parade on Monday morning.  Parking was a challenge with the multi-storey garage full, with no sign out front, resulting in a complete cluster as everyone tried to turn around at the top of the structure.  We did find a spot on a side street without too much hassle.

The parade began with the usual fire truck and police motorcycles, followed by Maylee and the Mayor, singing songs from the back of a pickup truck.  Diana groaned at Maylee, as usual.  Then there were the usual boy scout troops, jeep clubs and the like.  I liked the pinewood derby car float – bringing back memories of many hours constructing those kits with the boys.

Our favourite group was the RC summer camp – kids and adults racing their remote controlled cars around – some very creative vehicles.  Here are some other pictures – old cars and floats.  The horn sound from those old cars always makes me smile – “Eeeaww, eeeaww.”

There wasn’t much music associated with the parade – big missed opportunity – until the Scottish pipe and drum group from Fort Worth, towards the end.  I laughed at this.  Independence from Britain is celebrated with a group of Scottish bagpipers?

We continued the patriotic theme with a trip to the city fireworks show in the evening.  This is the first time that we’ve driven all the way into the madness of thousands of people listening to music, and then watching the fireworks.  I enjoyed this set to Neil Diamond’s “Coming to America.”

Unfortunately, the show was cut short due to high winds – they weren’t very high, just a bit gusty, and obviously not great for a fireworks show.

Oh, almost forgot to mention – Maylee (Mayor’s wife) sang the National Anthem to start the firework show.  Diana choked out: “She did a good job.”

Will sent this picture on Sunday.  Interesting look on the “future Mrs. Robertson’s” face.

I threatened to cancel my New York Times crossword subscription with this offering on Tuesday – Taylor Swift song titles indeed.

I came across this interesting sight as I was moving through the kitchen.  Girls and power tools – be afraid!

We watched “Can You Keep a Secret” on Tuesday evening.  This is a quirky romantic comedy that we both enjoyed quite a bit.  Alexandra Daddario does a great job as an entry level worker in an advertising agency.

Diana picked our Wednesday evening movie, “House of Gucci.”  She got quite excited when the Lady Gaga character drove up at the start of the film – she was driving Diana’s first car – a bright red 1977 Fiat 124 Spyder.  This movie was quite good – with great performances from Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, and Al Pacino.  I thought Jared Leto was a bit too over the top – reminded me of some kind of crazy Joker from Batman act.  I had no idea how nuts the Gucci family were in the 80s and 90s.  Would definitely recommend checking this out now that it’s streaming.

I have been trying to get back in touch with the three characters that I hung out with during my years at Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland (1981-1985), without much success.  I took a stab at googling “Bobby Miller, bass player, Edinburgh” on Wednesday night.  Success!  I found a website for a Scottish band named North Sea Gas – and there was Bobby – looking just like I remember him.  I probably shouldn’t admit that it took me a couple of days of noodling to even come up with Bobby’s last name – running the alphabet over and over again.

I posted a comment on the website and contacted the UK booking agent for the band, explaining what I was up to.  And “Hey Presto”, I had an email address a few minutes later – the joys of technology.  I also learned from the website that Bobby had married Kristy somewhere around the year 2000.

Here’s what the band sounds like:

I hope I get a reply from the email address I was given.

A reply came in on Saturday afternoon – really brought a smile to my face.  Here’s an excerpt:

 “You might remember me playing with Fat Sam’s Band while we were at University giving me gigs in France as well as over Britain. I moved from them to start playing Double Bass and Bass Guitar with North Sea Gas around 1988, continuing for nearly 15 years, with mainly Scottish gigs for me but did German Tours and got over to New York State/New York, which was a highlight gig. I did I think 6 albums with “the Gas” all of which I think got Silver Discs, with one Gold Disc. Amongst other musical talents, Kirsty graduated from the Academy in Glasgow in violin performance and she ended up joining North Sea Gas for around three years before we both left in 2002. At this point family commitments and the prospect of lengthy tour schedules made this unsustainable, far less try to keep the day job.

Other musical highlights have included doing Double Bass for a couple of Runrig singles, live BBC Hogmanay shows, many festival gigs and folk clubs (both North Sea Gas and New Celeste) and a cameo appearance on Outlander (as a Double Bass player in a band). Still doing many gigs in loads of settings both on Double Bass and Bass Guitar.

Also had a brief stint playing football semi professionally but couldn’t commit enough time along with the music, and a part-time university stint getting an MSc to cheer up my first degree, so returned to play for Ferranti’s works team.”

Diana left for Montego Bay, Jamaica on Friday morning.  She was snapping pictures of the unapproved stowaway, BP, on the beach by 4pm.  Fortunately they don’t have far to walk to the beach – as seen in this picture from the room.

When I spoke to her around 11pm, Diana had just finished listening to some “silly reggae” music on the beach.

Meanwhile, I made the very short drive to the Guitar Sanctuary to watch a show by Albert Lee and band.  Haven’t heard of him?  Well, let me share some background.  Albert was born in 1943 in Shropshire, England before moving to and growing up in London.  He was first introduced to music through the piano at age 9, before listening to the likes of Lonnie Donegan, Buddy Holly, and Gene Vincent who inspired him to take up the guitar.  His first big hit was “Country Boy” with Heads, Hands and Feet.  This song was a big hit for Vince Gill.  Lee did a great, high-speed rendition of this at the Sanctuary.

Albert was a member of the famed “Wrecking Crew” in Los Angeles in the 70s, playing on countless albums as the premier set of session musicians.  He was a member of Eric Clapton’s band from 1980 to 1985, playing on “Just One Night”, “Another Ticket”, and “Money and Cigarettes.”  I was fortunate to see this band at the Edinburgh Playhouse.  Lee was the one who took my albums back for Clapton to sign when Andy Bull and I spotted the band going in for soundcheck on the way home from University in the afternoon.  Here’s a song from “Just One Night” featuring Lee’s vocals and picking:

Lee also spent several years playing with the Everly Brothers – I was just writing about them last week.  Here’s a story he told about that time – I do enjoy a good story as part of a musician’s set.

He played a great variety of music with his own songs and covers by Delbert McClinton, Ray Charles, and Rodney Crowell.  I particularly enjoyed this Crowell cover:

That song is “Song for the Life”.  What great lyrics:

Somehow I’ve learned how to listen
For a sound like the sun going down
In the magic that morning is bringing
There’s a song for the life I have found
It keeps my feet on the ground

What a treat to have a classic musician performing in walking distance of home.

Saturday was a quiet day for me – household chores, supervising the neighbour boys spreading mulch, catching up on emails, reading, and a trip to Apex for a workout since it’s 105 degrees outside.  I did receive notification in the mail that my US citizenship has been approved, with an oath ceremony on July 26th.  I’ll need to call and get that pushed out a bit.  It seems that our research on 5 years of flights must have been good enough for government work.

In Jamaica, the girls enjoyed coconut drinks, jerk chicken from the grill, and then lobster and champagne for dinner.

Diana reports that she’s having a checkout dive in the swimming pool on Sunday afternoon, in preparation for going scuba diving on Monday morning.  Monday afternoon brings a first for her – apparently they’re going parasailing.

Sunday morning brought the Wimbledon Men’s Final – a pretty good start that then became pretty predictable.  I smiled at this food truck parked by the Apex when I went in for a swim – I could get some jerk chicken from the barbecue like Diana.

My first book this week was “Who By Fire – Leonard Cohen in the Sinai” by Matti Friedman.  Here’s the online summary:

“The little-known story of Leonard Cohen’s concert tour to the front lines of the Yom Kippur War

In October 1973, the poet and singer Leonard Cohen – 39 years old, famous, unhappy, and at a creative dead end – traveled from his home on the Greek island of Hydra to the chaos and bloodshed of the Sinai desert when Egypt attacked Israel on the Jewish high holiday of Yom Kippur. Moving around the front with a guitar and a group of local musicians, Cohen met hundreds of young soldiers, men and women at the worst moment of their lives. Those who survived never forgot the experience. And the war transformed Cohen. He had announced that he was abandoning his music career, but he instead returned to Hydra and to his family, had a second child, and released one of the best albums of his career. In Who by Fire, journalist Matti Friedman gives us a riveting account of those weeks in the Sinai, drawing on Cohen’s previously unpublished writing and original reporting to create a kaleidoscopic depiction of a harrowing, formative moment for both a young country at war and a singer at a crossroads.”

I’m not sure what I think about this book.  Sometimes fascinating with stories of a war I knew nothing about, and with tales of Cohen performing for small groups of soldiers in front line locations, at other times very academic and reading like a research paper.  The author seemed determined to somehow include all the little snippets of information that he had collected in his investigation into these events.

I did enjoy the descriptions of how this song came to Cohen during this time:

The title of the book comes from the song of the same name, from the album released shortly after Cohen returned from Israel, and is based on an old Hebrew prayer:

And who by fire, who by water
Who in the sunshine, who in the night time
Who by high ordeal, who by common trial
Who in your merry merry month of May
Who by very slow decay
And who shall I say is calling?

Here’s a paragraph describing the scene of one of the impromptu concerts:

“When the soldiers join Cohen for the chorus of “So Long, Marianne,” their voices are the only sound in the desert.  He introduces the next number.  “This song is one that should be heard at home, in a warm room with a drink and a woman you love,” he says.  “I hope you find yourselves in that situation soon.”  He plays “Suzanne.”  The men are quiet.  They hear about a place that doesn’t have blackened tanks and figures lying still in charred coveralls.  It’s a city by a river, a perfect body, tea and oranges all the ways from China.  “They’re listening to his music,” writes the reporter, “but who knows where their thoughts are wandering.”

A description of the young Israeli soldiers that I enjoyed:

“In the photographs they are grinning, of course.  They’re young and unfazed, chest hair surging from unzipped flight suites, mustaches and sideburns on the older reservists, nicknames like Rhino and Wild Bull, looking less like clean-cut American air-force types than like the military wing of Credence Clearwater Revival.”

An interesting anecdote on how the soldiers reacted to a big music star in their midst:

“The kid said, “Okay, okay, bit-time poet, big-time artist, you come in here, you’ve got the band with you, you’ve got the pretty girls with you, you’re singing all these pretty words and everything, well what I want to know, buddy, is what do you think about me?”  Cohen walked off the stage and into the rows of seats, the guitarist remembered, “and before you knew it he had the guy in his arms, hugging him.”

There is only one known interview where Cohen directly addresses his time in Sinai – by the British music writer Robin Pike, conducted in September 1974:

“PIKE: You mentioned that you went back to Israel at the time of the last war and your sang.  Can you say a bit more about that?  How did you actually take part:

COHEN:  I just attached myself to an air force entertainment group.  We would just drop into little places, like a rocket site, and they would shine their flashlights at us and we would sing a few songs.  Or they would give us a Jeep and we would go down the road toward the front and wherever we saw a few soldiers waiting on a helicopter or something like that we would sing a few songs.”

After that interview there is really no mention of this time anywhere:

“Anyone hoping for a hint had to be paying enough attention to his work to notice the song “Night Comes On,” which appeared a decade later on the album “Various Positions.”  By that time Cohen seemed like yesterday’s man, and his American label famously didn’t even bother releasing the album, though it included not only the enduring “Dance Me to the End of Love” and “If it Be Your Will”, which might be his best song, but also “Hallelujah,” now one of the most popular songs on earth.”

What a poor decision by the American record label!

As seems to happen frequently, the crossword comes along with a clue directly relevant to something new I’ve learned.  The Wednesday puzzle had this clue for Sinai:

My next book, which I loved, was “Nowhere for very long – The unexpected road to an Unconventional Life” by Brianna Madia.  This is a bit similar to “Wild” by Cheryl Strayed, but quite a lot lighter – it has heavy moments but not at the depth of “Wild.”  Madia’s writing style and honesty kept me very engaged, with the book finishing way too quickly.  I would have happily read another 200 pages or more.  Here’s the online summary:

“In this beautifully written, vividly detailed memoir, a young woman chronicles her adventures traveling across the deserts of the American West in an orange van named Bertha and reflects on an unconventional approach to life

A woman defined by motion, Brianna Madia bought a beat-up bright orange van, filled it with her two dogs Bucket and Dagwood, and headed into the canyons of Utah with her husband. Nowhere for Very Long is her deeply felt, immaculately told story of exploration—of the world outside and the spirit within.

However, pursuing a life of intention isn’t always what it seems. In fact, at times it was downright boring, exhausting, and even desperate—when Bertha overheated and she was forced to pull over on a lonely stretch of South Dakota highway; when the weather was bitterly cold and her water jugs froze beneath her as she slept in the parking lot of her office; when she worried about money, her marriage, and the looming question mark of her future. But Brianna was committed to living a life true to herself, come what may, and that made all the difference.

Nowhere for Very Long is the true story of a woman learning and unlearning, from backroads to breakdowns, from married to solo, and finally, from lost to found to lost again…this time, on purpose.”

From page 2 of the book:

“Forty-eight miles later and forty-eight miles from pavement, the van rolled silently to a stop in a network of desolate dirt roads.  There had been no loud clanking noise, no odor of leaking fumes, no smoke from the hood.  A tie rod end hadn’t snapped, jerking the wheel ninety degrees and sending me skidding violently into a sand-bank.  Rusted leaf springs hadn’t cracked in half, rendering the van slightly crooked and limp as though the passenger side had had a stroke. (All things that had already happened up to that point, by the way.)  I cranked the starter a few times, pumping the gas pedal with each attempt, but there was no sound besides the cicadas buzzing in the heat.

I jumped out of the front seat – still a far fall even at my five-foot-ten stature – and squatted down to look at her undercarriage.  Above my head was the orange and black nameplate I’d had custom-made for her front grille.  Bertha.  Named after my favorite Grateful Dead song.”

Maybe my favourite Grateful Dead song also.

I love this quote from the start of Part II of the book:

“And then there is the most dangerous risk of all – the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.     – Randy Komisar”

Why Madia loves the desert:

“With mountains, the beauty is right in front of you.  Their grandeur can be seen from miles away.  The shorelines and the coastal cliffs can be felt before you even arrive; telltale signs of cooler winds and sticky salt air, the call of gulls.  But the desert is a bit trickier.

Cow-pie and cactus-covered stretches of sand, dotted with the occasional juniper.  Jackrabbits and beady-eyed lizards and that Western-movie whistle of wind and buzz of unforgiving heat.  Some may find a place like that unnerving, even boring.  They might drive a few miles down the road, maybe peer off a ledge into more vastness, and then turn to leave.  They’ve seen all there is to see, they assume.

But then there are those who go farther, who tumble down miles and miles of dirt roads until those roads devolve into rocky two-track trails that wind and sink down between the buttresses.  And when those tracks end, they forge their own on foot, winding through dried-up washes and aimless cattle trails carved through fields of half-bloomed rabbitbrush and Mormon tea.  The sky narrows; the sandstone rises.  In a world of instant gratification, the desert still calls to the determined.”

I could feel myself getting quite claustrophobic as I read a section about high-stemming through a canyon that was less than a foot wide:

“Suddenly my palms, soaked with sweat, slipped from the sandstone behind me and sent the back of my skull crashing into the wall.  My knees began to slide slowly down the opposite wall, leaving two perfect trails of dark blood like paint.  Below me was Bucket and below Bucket was a V-shaped crack that would shatter any limb that fell into it.  I screamed Neil’s name.  I screamed every swear work I could think of.  The nearest cell phone service was over three hours away from the crack I was now wedged inside of in a half-upside-down fetal position.

By the time Neil had gotten Dagwood through and scrambled back to me, my screaming had turned to hyperventilating, I could feel the blood dripping down my back, dripping down my calves, dropping onto Bucket’s back.

“Help me!” I cried as Neil’s face appeared above mine.  He slid down beneath me ever-so-slightly, propping Bucket up on one of his legs, effectively removing her sixty pounds of weight from my harness.  With a swift motion, he clipped her carabiner to himself and took her from me.  I righted myself and dragged my bloodied body behind him as he grunted his was through the walls.”

My last book was “A Swim in the Pond in the Rain” by George Saunders.  In this book Saunders recreates a class on the Russian short story that he has been teaching to MFA students at Syracuse University for the last twenty years.  This book was highly recommended in a review by a writer that I like but can’t remember just now.  Saunders is a risk for me – I’ve abandoned a couple of his books in the last few years – particularly “Lincoln in the Bardo”.  All the critics raved, and it just seemed like nonsensical gibberish to me.

I am interested in learning a bit about the 19th century Russian masters and will give this book a solid try.  I enjoyed the reading and discussion on Chekhov’s “In the Cart.”  Maybe I’ll read one or two short stories and discussion a week.  I do feel like a slight better educated reader already – Saunders breaking down what’s happening on each page to keep the reader’s attention and to develop the plot and characters.

I listened to the old Pink Floyd album “Animals” last Monday while reading, and loved some of the songs that Spotify automatically started playing when it ended:

Coexist with kindness and compassion!

“Healing Up Nicely”

I had a check up with the hand doctor on Monday – all healing well, with good flexibility.  Here’s a picture from Monday when I got the dressing off, another from Wednesday, and one from just now – I think it’s coming along nicely.  Hopefully this is my final run in with dupuytrens.

I’m easily able to make a fist and stretch out my fingers.

Penelope had an oil change on Tuesday morning.  And then I got myself in trouble with informative texting:

K at 9:15 : “P all done.  Will head back and we can have our walk”

D: “Ok baby:)”

K at 9:30: “Decided to have a coffee at Ascension”

D: “Hmmm (with chin scratching emoji)”

Penelope needed gas, so I made a stop for that.  Noticing a car wash right next door, I thought she deserved a bath and hoover to go with her oil change and full gas tank.  Not well received when I made it home around 11:30 – “I thought we would go for a walk around 10am, based on the text that P was all finished and you were on your way home.  Instead, I’ve been sitting around for an hour and a half wondering where you were.”  Oopsy.  Note to self – vaguer updates required.

Our friend Sean showed up on Monday night.  He’s staying with us for a few days while doing some consulting work in Plano.  We enjoyed some pleasant catch up time on the patio.

On our walk on Tuesday morning, we came across a poor duck with a fishing lure attached.  It was trying really hard to get it off.

K: “Who should we call about this?”

D: “Those guys in the truck over there”

She was right, someone else must have called the McKinney animal folks.  The lady did her best to catch the poor duck in a big net, but he escaped into the pond.  She promised to circle back around later and give it another try.  I really hope she was successful.  I hope the lure was a result of someone’s line breaking, rather than carelessness.

I met Finn for coffee on Wednesday afternoon.  He was excited to report that “corporate” had visited his store, and he received a perfect 100 score for the produce department.  His department is also the 2nd highest revenue generator in the district.  He’s very pleased with how things are going at work.

We had planned to participate in “Music Bingo” at Guitars and Growlers on Wednesday night, but Sean was too late in getting home from work.  He had been meeting with a local telecom sales team to give them some recommendations on how to improve their overall processes, and that must have become pretty involved on Wednesday afternoon.  We just relaxed at home, listened to music, and caught up on families.  Sean left us around 7:30am on Thursday – off to give a readout on his findings, play some golf, and then catch a flight home.

The Thursday New York Times puzzle is the one that has all the special gimmicks – rebus (multiple letters in one square) and the like.  It’s supposed to be the marquee day for solvers.  The puzzle this week is one of my favourites in a long time.

The “revealer” (40 across) is “cover your eyes” and is clued as a hint to 4 long clues.  You can see that 17, 18 and 19 across spell “vending machines”, with the “i” covered by a black square.  Similarly with “Marie Antoinette” at 24 across.  The clues for the long acrosses were very clever in the way they joined together to make a clue for the full word.  Ok, enough crossword geekery for now.

Diana has been on soft foods for a few weeks now since her dental surgery, and doing a great job of sticking to her soups, yogurts, and cottage cheese.  So, after work wound down on Friday, I dragged her to Pappadeaux for oysters.  “Dragged” is not the correct term at all, as she was quite excited to go, having not tasted oysters since our residency in New Orleans.  The price of oysters has doubled since the last time we were there.  Still well worth it for soft food D.

After lunch, I surprised Diana with a visit to Fizz.  This is a champagne and coffee bar that has been open for a month.

We arrived around 3pm – coffee service until 4pm, and then the full bar opens – ok, we’ll sit at the bar and have a coffee.  Then the bar tender/manager arrives behind the bar.  McD asks to see the drinks menu and starts chatting with her – happy to serve you a drink if you like, I’m here and all the stuff is ready.  So, Diana was able to enjoy an afternoon glass of bubbly.

Finn came over after we got home.  He was on a mission to pick up the fancy new Yeezys that Will sent for his birthday.  He arrived with his burrito from Nom noms, ate that at the island, and then broke into his new shoes.  They fit perfectly and coordinate nicely with his Friday work outfit.

Finn showed me this picture he snapped on his drive over.  He was quite entertained with the “R”.

Clorinda thought she was super cool and hip on Friday afternoon as she prepared to head out for dialysis.  We’ll have to tease her about dressing up like a rock star to go there.

We enjoyed early walks on Saturday and Sunday, beating the usual summer heat.  Saturday was pretty quiet – catching up with friends on FaceTime.  We watched a movie, “Guest Artist”, written and starring Jeff Daniels, on Saturday evening.  Almost exclusively set in a railroad waiting room, this is a typically excellent Daniels performance.  All about a washed up, alcoholic playwright, who arrives in rural Idaho, without a play to perform.

Today we have reservations at iPic to see the new Top Gun movie.  We’ll let you know what we think next week.

We watched some episodes of a couple of streaming series this week.  Both are acting masterclasses.  “The Old Man”, starring Jeff Bridges and John Lithgow, is very good, with a lot of CIA cloak and dagger intrigue.  We look forward to new episodes each Friday.

This series had a few episodes with Amy Brenneman, one of the stars of the excellent NYPD Blue years ago.  It’s not clear if she’ll be involved in future episodes at this part in the story.  I can never remember her name, and just had to look it up again.  The conversation is typically:

K:  “That’s the lady from NYPD Blue with the long, curly hair.”

D:  “Yes, Amy Brenneman.”

K (5 mins later):  “What’s that lady’s name again?”

The second series is “Night Sky”, starring J.K. Simmons and Sissy Spacek.  The acting is again superb, while the story has more of a sci-fi component.  It’s early days yet, and we can’t really tell where the story is headed.  I can’t help but flash to “Whiplash” whenever I see J.K. Simmons – such a disturbing portrayal of a music teacher.

“The Club”, by Ellery Lloyd, was my first book this week.  Here’s the online synopsis:

“Envisioned as a luxurious home-away from-home for Very Important People, The Home Group is a collection of celebrity members clubs dotted across the globe, from London to Lisbon, Malibu to Manhattan, where the rich and famous can party hard and then crash out in its five-star suites, far from the prying eyes of fans and the media. 

The most spectacular and exclusive of all is Island Home—a sprawling, closely-guarded complex of faux-rustic guest cabins, spas, bars and restaurants just off the English coast. To mark its opening, Home’s mercurial CEO Ned Groom and his team have planned a glamorous three-day launch party, easily the most coveted A-list invite of the year.   

But behind the scenes, tensions are at breaking point. Years behind schedule and vastly over budget, the project has stretched a long-serving and long-suffering team to their limits. There’s Ned’s trusted PA, who has over decades maneuvered her way from coat-check girl to Home’s inner circle; Ned’s younger brother, who has sacrificed his marriage and morals to be Ned’s right-hand man; the Head of Membership keeping the world’s most spoiled and jaded individuals entertained using any means necessary; the Head of Housekeeping, who plays silent witness to the guests’ very worst excesses. All of them have something to hide—and that’s before the beautiful people with their own ugly secrets even set foot on the island. 

As tempers fray and behavior worsens, as things get more sinister by the hour and the body count piles up, some of Island Home’s members begin to wish they’d never RSVP’d at all. 

Because at this club, if your name’s on the list, you’re not getting out . . .”

This was a fast read and an engaging tale.  Certainly not great literature, but a fun caper nonetheless.  I couldn’t help relating the “Home” clubs to the SoHo house club that our CEO took me to in Austin.  His wife is a member, and these are clubs designed for artistic folks to come together – very exclusive.  They have them in major cities around the world.  I smiled when I read about Ellery Lloyd inside the back cover:

“Ellery Lloyd is the pseudonym for the London-based husband-and-wife writing team of Collette Lyons and Paul Vlitos.  Collette is a journalist and editor, the former content director of Elle (UK), and editorial director at Soho House.  She has written for the Guardian, The Telegraph, and The Sunday Times.  Paul is the author of two previous novels, “Welcome to the Working Week” and “Every Day is Like Sunday.”  He is the subject leader for English literature, film, and creative writing at the University of Surrey.”

It seems that Collette must have pulled a lot of her inspiration from her experiences at Soho House.

“Left on Tenth, A Second Chance at Life” by Delia Ephron was my next book.  She is the younger sister of Nora Ephron (“Sleepless in Seattle, “When Harry Met Sally”, “Silkwood”,…), and the book follows her life for four years from 2016 to 2020.

Here’s the online synopsis:

“Delia Ephron had struggled through several years of heartbreak. She’d lost her sister, Nora, and then her husband, Jerry, both to cancer. Several months after Jerry’s death, she decided to make one small change in her life—she shut down his landline, which crashed her internet. She ended up in Verizon hell.
 
She channeled her grief the best way she knew: by writing a New York Times op-ed. The piece caught the attention of Peter, a Bay Area psychiatrist, who emailed her to commiserate. Recently widowed himself, he reminded her that they had shared a few dates fifty-four years before, set up by Nora. Delia did not remember him, but after several weeks of exchanging emails and sixties folk songs, he flew east to see her. They were crazy, utterly, in love.
 
But this was not a rom-com: four months later she was diagnosed with AML, a fierce leukemia.
 
In Left on Tenth, Delia Ephron enchants as she seesaws us between tears and laughter, navigating the suicidal lows of enduring cutting-edge treatment and the giddy highs of a second chance at love. With Peter and her close girlfriends by her side, with startling clarity, warmth, and honesty about facing death, Ephron invites us to join her team of warriors and become believers ourselves.”

I loved this book and consumed it in a couple of days.  The varied style is fantastic: short chapters about mundane, daily life; the details of finding love in her 70s and how she feels about it; the torturous chapters about her battle with leukemia; emails to friends and family.  Just great writing throughout.  It really makes the reader want to go and live in the apartment building on Tenth Street in Greenwich Village, New York.  Highly recommended.

My last book was “This Time Tomorrow” by Emma Straub.  A little out of the ordinary for my picks, this one features time travel, but in a very compelling and compassionate way.  Here’s that the wonderful Ann Patchet says:

“The pages brim with tenderness and an appreciation for what we had and who we were. I could not have loved it more.”—Ann Patchett

The online synopsis:

“On the eve of her 40th birthday, Alice’s life isn’t terrible. She likes her job, even if it isn’t exactly the one she expected. She’s happy with her apartment, her romantic status, her independence, and she adores her lifelong best friend. But her father is ailing, and it feels to her as if something is missing. When she wakes up the next morning she finds herself back in 1996, reliving her 16th birthday. But it isn’t just her adolescent body that shocks her, or seeing her high school crush, it’s her dad:  the vital, charming, 40-something version of her father with whom she is reunited. Now armed with a new perspective on her own life and his, some past events take on new meaning. Is there anything that she would change if she could?”

It seems the title was at least somewhat inspired by the song by the Kinks – one of my favourite bands.  The song is quoted in the intro to the book.

Alice’s (main character) Dad is a big Kinks fan.

Prior to traveling back to her 16 year old birthday party, Alice works in a New York private school called Belvedere.  Here’s how Straub describes it:

“This one was for the eating-disordered overachievers, that one was for dummies with drug problems but rich parents.  There was the school for athletes and the school for tiny Brooks Brothers mannequins who would end up as CEOs, the school for well-rounded normies who would become lawyers, the school for artsy weirdos and for parents who wanted their kids to be artsy weirdos.  Belvedere had started in the 1970s on the Upper West Side, and so it had been full of socialists and hippies, but now, fifty years later, the moms at drop-off idled outside in their Teslas and the children were all on ADHD medication.”

A very enjoyable read overall, and a productive week of reading.

The new album from Goose, “Dripfield”, has been on heavy rotation this week.  It’s got everything I like, good songs, great musicianship and production, and a nice loose, jammy feel:

This very deep cut (I would bet there’s nobody else in McKinney familiar with this song) appeared on a playlist this week.  I love the lyrics and the brass band (Black Dyke Mills band):

That sent me off in search of some brass band tunes.  This one sounds good on a great sound system – those B flat bass bottom notes just resonating on:

And finally, something sublime from the Everly Brothers, from their 1960 album, “A Date with The Everly Brothers”.  Those close duo harmonies from Don and Phil always make me smile.  Seeing them play a few songs during a Simon and Garfunkel show was a live music highlight for me.

Coexist with kindness and compassion!

“You Know it’s a Quiet Week when Haircuts are the Excitement”

Welcome back to this hebdomadal blog posting.  That’s a new word I learned this week and have been looking forward to trying out.  If you don’t know it or lack the drive to look it up – it means weekly, or every seven days.  The weird things you learn from crosswords and their associated blogs.

This is the first week in a while where we’ve both been together, at home, with nothing much going on.  Gave us a chance to catch up on some movies and TV series in the evenings.  That, and catching up on mind numbing administrative tasks like filing health and dental claims.

The only real activity outside the house for us both was getting haircuts on Friday afternoon – me at the Allen Boardroom, and Diana with Leah in downtown McKinney.

McD looks much cooler than me, with her shades on.

Walks this week had to be undertaken much earlier in the day, with heat indexes in the 105 degree range later in the day.  Clorinda always commented on the crepe myrtles when she was staying with us, so I snapped this picture for her this morning – not quite in full bloom yet – the trees, not Diana.

Here’s an entertaining picture from earlier in the week.  Adamo took the boys to the beach, and poor Frankie enjoyed the peace and quiet so much that she fell asleep right on Molly.

Now for a report on some of our TV time.  We started with a corny, rom-com type of thing, “Love and Gelato”, on Netflix.  Some mild humour and pretty views of Italy were the highlights for me.

From a completely different genre, I loved “Under the Volcano”, a documentary about the AIR recording studio and compound that George Martin built in Montserrat.  An amazing number of exceptional albums from the 80s were recorded here, with artists enjoying the quiet and isolation to come up with some of their best work.  Duran Duran, the Rolling Stones, the Police, Dire Straits, Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder, among many others.

One of my favourite stories was Paul McCartney telling about recording “Ebony and Ivory” with Stevie Wonder, and heading out to a local dive club, where Stevie entertained the locals until 4am.  The pure joy on McCartney’s face in one of the pictures says it all.  I also enjoyed Sting talking about one of the locals teaching him to windsurf on the nearby beach – reminded me of a humorously failed attempt to learn on vacation in France – translation necessary, and some better balance.

In a similar vein, I continued to work my way through the “Get Back” documentary on the final days of the Beatles, by Peter Jackson.  The highlights are definitely watching Lennon and McCartney composing songs, like “Get Back”, on the spot in the Apple studio.  That, and Billy Preston joining the Beatles on piano in the sessions, and immediately bringing a new dimension of musicality and positive energy.

Neither of us has watched more than a few episodes of Downton Abbey- I know, I know, that will be hard for all the avid fans to believe.  We did watch “Downton Abbey: A New Era”, where part of the family decamps to a villa in the south of France.  The other members remain at home to supervise a movie being filmed in the Abbey.  It’s right when the first “talkie” movies are being produced, and that adds quite a bit of hilarity to the proceedings.  I thought this film was very well written and entertaining.

“The Bear” on Hulu, is a great new series.  Set in Chicago, it’s about a young chef who gives up his position running the French Laundry in Napa, to return home and rescue the family restaurant after his brother dies.  Very good characters and acting throughout.  We both really enjoyed this.

While we’re talking about movies so much – did you know that the outside scenes in the movie “Benji” were filmed in downtown McKinney?  Who knew?  We only found out recently, with the announcement of a statue to commemorate the fact going up in downtown.

I came to find out that this was one of Diana’s favourite movies as a kid.  We’ll have to take a picture with the statue when it’s installed.

Lest you think we’ve been sitting on the couch all week, I did come up with a list of projects for Diana – clean out the dust, cobwebs, dead bugs, and other grime from the garage windows and ceiling, find landscape lights for me, and clean the dangling globes in the kitchen.  She reciprocated with some hornet and weed killing tasks for me.  It doesn’t take long to get worn out on those projects when it’s so ridiculously hot outside.

My book this week was “Four Treasures of The Sky” by Jenny Tinghui Zhang, a Chinese born and now Austin based writer.  Set in the late 1800s, the book follows the life of a young Chinese girl from her home, to San Francisco and Idaho.

This is the first book in a while that I contemplated not finishing, but slogged on to the end.  The writing didn’t keep my attention much, except when describing the art of Chinese calligraphy and the meanings of characters.

“In the afternoon, I returned to the school and swayed in the courtyard, memorizing the characters on the stone tiles below me.  Sometimes the students threw half-eaten apples into the courtyard.  If the weather was nice and Master Wang opened the windows, I could listen in on class, letting myself be seized by his unwavering tenor.

From these sessions, I learned that the ink brush, ink stick, paper, and inkstone were called the Four Treasures of the Study.  I learned that, in addition to painting the right strokes in the right order, the artist was also responsible for maintaining a balance of self in order to create good calligraphy.” 

I wasn’t familiar with the concept of an “inkstone”, so found this on YouTube.  I know it’s from Japanese calligraphy, but I’m sure the concept is the same in the Chinese version.

It was also interesting to read about the cruelty of the “Chinese Exclusion Act” and how it emboldened anti-Chinese actions – even in rural Idaho.

From the Author’s Note at the end of the book:

“It is important for me to mention that while the history of anti-Chinese violence has not been “forgotten” by scholars and historians, it is largely unknown by the majority of Americans.  Even as a Chinese immigrant, I did not learn about it until I took an Asian American intro course in my senior year of college.  I experienced passing shouts of “Go back to where you came from!” growing up but had no idea that this was a call descended from decades of racist initiatives toward Chines immigrants by the United States.  The Chinese helped build the railroads, that I knew, but what about everything else?  What about the part where we were not wanted here, where we were killed for being here?”

Here’s one from the excellent “Country Funk” series.  How much does Billy Swan sound like Robert Plant from those albums with Allison Krauss?

A great song that appeared on “The Bear” soundtrack.  Been a while since I listened to R.E.M.

Something that I watched come together on the “Get Back” documentary:

I’m pretty pleased with how the music and TV watching sections came together!

And finally something wonderful from the late, great Greg Allman.  The musicianship on this live track is excellent:

Stay safe, kind, and compassionate to everyone!