Category: Books

“Haggis is Pretty Good”

This was a relatively quiet week overall – mostly just working at home.  I met our friend Vinod for lunch at Brio in Southlake on Monday.  It was nice to catch up as I haven’t really talked to him in months.  We used to see each other every day in Austin and Vinod would always come by my desk to check in at the start of the day.  In all the years that I’ve known Vinod, I’ve never seen him with any kind of facial hair – apparently his wife has given the new goatee a maximum one month lifespan.

I picked up “The Boy, the mole, the fox and the horse” at the bookstore in Southlake and gave it as a gift to Diana.  Such a beautiful book.

I stopped into the British food store in Grapevine on the drive back from Southlake and picked up supplies for “Scottish night” on Saturday – more on that in a minute.

Amy and Ray were in town to do a final pack up for their move to Santa Fe.  Diana is really going to miss her workout buddy.  We enjoyed one of McD’s excellent meat and cheese platters on Thursday evening and had a great visit.  The ladies seem to be enjoying my music selection in this picture.  Finn hung in there with us for a couple of hours before heading up to bed.  He says the music didn’t keep him awake – I hope that’s true.

Speaking of Finn – he worked hard on some art showing the evolution of “Squirtle”.  We framed it and shipped it off to Will as a thank you for all that he’s done to help his little brother.

We enjoyed coffee and some hummus and avocado toast at Duino on Saturday afternoon as we ventured out to ship the picture to Will.   Finn has become quite the coffee connoisseur (tricky word to spell correctly).

I was able to catch up with some friends that I hadn’t talked to in a while during the week – Meeksie, Ron, and Meadie.  Everyone seems to be doing well and looking forward to the time when most of us are vaccinated.  Speaking of that – Diana is schedule for her first shot on Tuesday.  I’ll be very happy in a few weeks when she gets her second dose.

Scottish night on Saturday consisted of haggis, meat pies, shepherd’s pies, mashed potatoes and baked beans – all the classics.  We did torture Finn with the piping in of the haggis and reciting of a portion of the “Address to a Haggis.”  He didn’t think he’d tasted haggis before and quite liked it.

Those are pretty much the highlights.  Finn managed to keep up with Diana for a long run on Friday – showing her how it’s done on the steep grass hill at the end of her route.  I continued to work on week 5 of Couch to 5K and am planning to finish it up and move on to week 6 on Monday.  We visited 24 Hour Fitness a couple of times so that I could enjoy a swim while Finn worked out with the weights and machines.

I made hardly any progress on my Obama book this week, instead catching up on a bit of a backlog of The New Yorker magazines.  The most interesting article in those was one about how dogs have been trained to sniff out COVID – they patrol lines of people going into sporting events and are apparently very accurate.

“In a Silent Way” by Miles Davis turned 50 this week.  I struggle with most of his electric band work from the 70s but do enjoy this one.  Ethan Hein has an excellent music blog (he’s a teacher at NYU) and his article on this album is outstanding:

http://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2021/miles-davis-in-a-silent-way/

“In a Silent Way is my favorite Miles Davis album, possibly my favorite jazz album, and one of my favorite works of music generally. Most of Miles’ music of this era is ornery and angular, but In a Silent Way is like slipping into a warm bath. The music hardly sounds like “jazz” at all. It has elements of rock and funk, but it doesn’t really sound like those either. With its three keyboard players, ultra-minimal drums and static harmonies, the album sounds more like ambient electronic music than anything else.”

One of the really interesting parts of this album is listening to the trio of keyboard players.  Chick Corea plays the Wurlitzer in the left channel, Herbie Hancock plays the Fender Rhodes (my favourite keyboard sound)  in the right channel, and Joe Zawinul (of Weather Report fame) plays the organ in the center.  Totally different sounds and feels that build against and on top of each other.  John McLaughlin (of Mahavishnu Orchestra fame) plays guitar in a very laid back groove compared to his later theatrics.

Here’s another good article about the album:

https://www.passionweiss.com/2019/12/03/miles-davis-in-a-silent-way-turns-50/

Here’s a great Sunday morning jazz song from Oscar Peterson with Ben Webster on saxophone – what an amazing strength and tone there is to his playing:

I dipped back into the Spin magazine list of the top 50 albums from 1971 again.  This time starting at number 39.  I remembered a book I read over 3 years ago that talked about all the great music created that year.  Here’s a link to that post:

https://www.keithjrobertson.com/?p=1020

Elton John’s “Madman Across The Water” is at number 38.  What?  An album that opens with “Tiny Dancer” and “Levon” isn’t in the top 3?  This is my favourite from the album:

Stay safe and kind – hard to believe that in less than a month we’ll both be fully vaccinated.

“Brrrr“

Happy Saint Valentine’s Day to all of you.  We are definitely staying inside to celebrate, except for a quick sprint that I plan later – out to the grill to cook the lobster tails.  Temperatures are falling way below freezing very quickly and are not forecast to pass back above until next Saturday.  We have an inch or snow just now and are expected to receive another 6 to 8 inches this afternoon with “near blizzard conditions.”

Weather has been the big discussion topic this week with an ice storm on Thursday causing havoc with traffic.  Several massive pileups closed almost all the major highways through and around the Dallas/Fort Worth area.  We don’t expect to be able to leave the house for the next week as several inches of snow and freezing temperatures will effectively shut down the roads until Saturday.  The temperatures on the left have been significantly reduced in the current forecast.

I was able to get out for my runs earlier this week with Week 5 Day 1 on Monday and Day 2 on Wednesday.  I squeezed a swim in between on Tuesday.  Day 2 consisted of two 8 minute runs with 5 minutes of walking in between.   I managed that fine, even in the 28 degree weather with drizzle freezing on my glasses, and was really looking forward to stepping up to the 20 minute run on Day 3 – scheduled for Friday.  The frigid weather put a stop to that – I’ll never hear the end of it if I pull a muscle in the cold.  With very little chance of a run this coming week, I may have to go back to the start of Week 5 again when things thaw out.  This being Texas, it won’t be too many months until I’m complaining about it being too hot for running.

The Monday New York Times crossword brought a chuckle with the “Pooh” answer – crossing “discombobulated” which seems like a very big word for the Monday (easiest day) puzzle.

Monday night brought the regular weekly torture – oopsy, I meant entertaining fun – of watching the “Bachelor” with McD.  Crazy Queen Victoria has left the show but it seems that things are still very silly with the remaining group of girls.

We enjoyed a new episode of “This is Us” on Tuesday evening.  Kevin was having fits getting back to Los Angeles for the birth of his first child, and the commercial was very misleading about what happens on that trip.

Anne sent us these pictures of a great pineapple sign – “Be a Pineapple: stand tall, wear a crown, and be sweet.”  Also another picture of a Mardi Gras float house.  She was planning to take Denny out for a bike ride to look at all the decorated houses.  One of the benefits of living in such a compact city.

Diana cooked up one of the more delicious sea bass steaks that I’ve had in a long time on Saturday night.  The ponzu like sauce was excellent and the fish was perfectly cooked.  Thanks D!

I finished up “Shuggie Bain” by Douglas Stuart this week, and the narrative certainly didn’t get any more uplifting as Agnes, Shuggie’s mother, continues her downward spiral with alcohol abuse.  There is a vague hope at the end that Shuggie is getting on his own feet and may have a successful future.  I did continue to find humour in some of the phrases:

“Voices crackled over the C.B.  Some man in a Teuchter accent was talking about floods on the Perth Road.”

What’s a Teuchter accent?  Well here’s the very proper definition from Wikipedia:

“Teuchter [tʲu:xtər] is a Lowland Scots word originally used to describe a Scottish Highlander , in particular a Gaelic -speaking Highlander. Like most such cultural epithets, it can be seen as offensive, but is often seen as amusing by the speaker. The term is contemptuous, essentially describing someone seen to be uncouth and rural.”

The quality of the writing is excellent throughout and I can see why it was on the Booker prize shortlist:

“She had been drinking all day.  Her mood was a low-level haar, foggy, dark and heavy, but holding steady without rain.  Shuggie did not want to burst this cloudiness and force the bad weather.”

In case you’re wondering about “haar”:

An entertaining anecdote from their first trip to Japan:

“There had to be a thousand fans waiting for us at the hotel; just an amazing turnout.  As soon as our translator announced to the crowd that The Black Crowes had arrived, two-thirds of them immediately sat down and looked disappointed.  Turns out they were expecting Status Quo, an English rock band I assumed had broken up at least a decade earlier.”

I still enjoy the music from Status Quo – so simple and yet so effective.  How quickly musical tastes can change:

“Sixteen months earlier, we had headlined Glastonbury and the Phoenix Festival.  As far as we knew, we owned the UK in the summer of 1993.  And now…that’s it?  I guess the rest of our fans were all at home listening to the new Nirvana record.”

I’ve only seen The Black Crowes once – during the first trip Diana and I made to the New Orleans Jazzfest – after a massive downpour and following a performance by Dr. John.  I remember really enjoying their show and being very impressed with Rich Robinson’s guitar skills.

Thanks to Kara for sharing this book with me.  She made a special trip to bring it to us when we were leaving New Orleans for the drive back to Dallas after the New Year celebrations.

Let’s start out the music section with something from The Black Crowes.  A favourite of mine from one of their later albums:

In a completely different musical genre, I forget how much I love this Greig piano concerto:

A great Neil Young and Crazy Horse song that The Black Crowes covered:

And finally an interesting combination – Willie and Diana Krall – with an excellent big band arrangement:

Stay safe, calm, and kind…oh, and warm as well.

“Hullo, hoo are ye?”

Let’s start out with a funny video this week.  We received this “Why Rock N Roll Will Never Die” video from Kristina.  I just love the faces on the toddler.

About this time of year, we would typically be “discussing” whether to attend the Mardi Gras season in New Orleans and looking forward to Jazzfest.  Not this year, at least not until potentially October for Jazzfest.  Anne shared this picture of Tin Men playing in front of one of the Mardi Gras float house in New Orleans.  Will saw Tin Men with the boys crew at Mirliton Festival on his 25th birthday trip to NOLA, and loved them.  They are best known to us for the classic “If You Can’t Make it Here” song – one of Timmy’s favourites and a great sing along number:

We’ve taken to reading a story from Diana’s Christmas Winnie the Pooh collection out loud if we’re not too tired when we make it to bed.  I’m still perfecting the voices for each of the characters.  Diana decided it would be good if Pooh could join us – and of course have easy access to his favourite food.  I just hope that Hunny pot doesn’t fall on my head one night when I’m sleeping.

Monday and Wednesday were both great running days – sunny with temperatures in the mid 50s.  Week 4 of Couch to 5K was much more pleasant the second time around.  The last 5 minutes of running didn’t have me puffing nearly as much as on Monday.  I hoping to make it to Week 5 next week without any injuries.

Here’s what happened after Week 4 last year:

https://www.keithjrobertson.com/?p=4657

I survived Week 4 Day 3 on Friday and have beaten my old record without any injuries.  Looking forward to starting Week 5 on Monday.

I laughed at the Scottish phrasing in the crossword puzzle:

It was quite chilly on Saturday morning and I was looking forward to reading in a cozy spot while Diana went for a run with Amy.  The best laid plans… Amy got busy and couldn’t make it and so I was drafted to go out for a walk.  That wasn’t too bad until it started raining and got really cold – I had to put my emergency headband and gloves on.

As if that wasn’t enough torture, I then made a trip to the grocery store with McD.  In all fairness, I had volunteered to get some lobster tails to do a dry run on my Valentine’s day meal.  We did pretty well – I overcooked the lobster a little bit but they still tasted great and we really liked the herb butter.  That’s a picture from the recipe and ours didn’t look too dissimilar – we got too excited about tasting them and forgot a picture.

Here’s the recipe that we used for the herb butter:

https://www.delish.com/cooking/recipe-ideas/a26883467/grilled-lobster-tail-recipe/

Damon sent this drone video earlier from outside of Philadelphia.  He’s getting the hang of his Christmas present and it’s snowing pretty hard there.

It won’t be snowing in Tampa today for the Super Bowl.  We’re looking forward to settling in to watch a good game this evening.  And I’m looking forward to the traditional pigs in a blanket that Diana will be cooking up.

I completed my journey through the life of John Steinbeck earlier this week.  Souder’s book does a great job of intertwining Steinbeck’s writing exploits with the history of the world at the time, traveling through the Depression, World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam.  My only beef with Souder is the way he narrates objectively for the majority of the book and then feels compelled to dismiss points of view that are contrary to Steinbeck’s in a very flippant way, with no exploration of both sides of an argument.

Most would cite “The Grapes of Wrath” as Steinbeck’s best work.  I learned two new facts about that work in this book – he lived in Los Gatos the entire time that he was working on the novel (wouldn’t you have thought that would have been well known by someone who lived in that city for 15 years? – weird), and the title comes from the line in the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” – should have been obvious I know, but never occurred to me.

“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored”

Interestingly, it was Steinbeck’s wife, Carol, who came up with the title.

“Steinbeck thought it was fitting that the title came from a march, as the book itself was a march of epic proportions, and also because it was an iconic commentary on the helplessness of the migrants in California, whom no god was watching over.  Carol’s contribution to the book was far greater than giving it a title.  As she typed the manuscript from his crabbed handwriting, Carol revised and corrected it as she went.  Steinbeck said he was doing the first draft of the book, and Carol was doing the second.”

A parallel commentary with that I learned about in the Churchill biography “The Splendid and the Vile”.  You’ll remember that I certainly didn’t enjoy that book as much as this one.  I wrote:

“I do not recommend this book at all.  500 pages of loose history, chock full of incongruous anecdotes and gossip.  People magazine of the 1940s meets a lightweight biography of Churchill and his family meets an even lighter weight chronicle of the Battle of Britain.”

Here’s a link to the posting where I reviewed that one:

https://www.keithjrobertson.com/?p=5089

Back to the parallel commentary:

“Roosevelt wrote to Joseph Kennedy, the U.S. ambassador to Britain, telling him that Americans did not yet appreciate the fact that the world was shrinking, that mere geography could no longer protect us, and that we were experiencing “the rapid annihilation of distance and purely local economies.”  America and Europe were inherently linked, and Europe’s problems, he believed, would likely become ours.”

Here’s the passage that explains the title of this work:

“In a letter to Steinbeck in Paris, Covici subtly suggested that the trip might rekindle Steinbeck’s temper and his willingness to take on injustice , natural-born traits that had driven him to greatness and were being neglected in his recent work.  No other author, Covici believed, could get so mad at the world with such grace.”

A couple of sentences that sum up how difficult Steinbeck could be to live with.  Gwyn was his second wife:

“He’d come up and interrupt Gwyn when she was with the children and tell her they needed to discuss something and could she please come downstairs.  When she went down, Steinbeck would fix two cocktails and then sit down and start reading the newspaper.  After a while, Gwyn would ask what it was he wanted to talk to her about – whereupon he would get up and make them two more drinks.”

You might remember how much I enjoyed Steinbeck’s “Travels with Charley”, a journey around America with a French poodle.  I wrote, “I highly recommend this book.  A really enjoyable read.  Has me ready to go back and revisit all those Steinbeck classics set in Central California.”  Here’s a link to that posting:

https://www.keithjrobertson.com/?p=4629

Here’s a passage from the biography about that book:

“In January of 1962, a proof of “Travels with Charley” caught up with Steinbeck in Capri.  Covici reported that the Viking sales team liked the book better than any other Steinbeck had written – and that it would be the lead in their spring catalogue.”

My final quote:

“What the critics saw from book to book – but failed to detect as a linkage among all of them – was Steinbeck’s anger.  He was America’s most pissed-off writer.  “All his work”, Gray wrote, “steams with indignation at injustice, with contempt for false piety, with scorn for the cunning and self-righteousness of an economic system that encourages exploitation, greed, and brutality.”

I can’t contemplate the vast amount of work that was put into this biography which finishes with over 50 pages of links to the reference material used to build the story.

My next book for the week was completely different.  Here’s the Amazon summary:

“A heartbreaking story of addiction, sexuality, and love, Shuggie Bain is an epic portrayal of a working-class family that is rarely seen in fiction. Recalling the work of Édouard Louis, Alan Hollinghurst, Frank McCourt, and Hanya Yanagihara, it is a blistering debut by a brilliant novelist who has a powerful and important story to tell.”

Not a light, uplifting read, but I’ve enjoyed it so far.  Set in Glasgow housing schemes between 1981 and 1992, this is the story of Agnes’ struggle with alcoholism and her youngest son, Shuggie Bain’s, attempts to help her cope.

I’m a bit over half way through and hoping Agnes is close to hitting rock bottom.  She has moved to Pithead, a housing scheme next to a shuttered coal mine and is really struggling with everyday life.  The dialogue in the book is excellent, reminding me of early William McIlvanney.  Here are some samples:

“Ann McGee had the brass neck to call in sick again that morning.”

I haven’t heard the term “brass neck” in so many years.

“Shuggie would stand there, his back teeth pinching the inside of his cheek, and indulge their indecisiveness with a forced smile.  Then the real pantomime would begin. “Gies three breasts, five thighs, and just the wan wing the day, son.””

“The morning chill had turned his naked thighs a tartan blue.”

My favourite so far:

“I’m tired o’ watching you auld wummin dance like youse are Pan’s People.”

Commentary on the hopelessness of the times for working men:

“He had heard them say that Thatcher didn’t want honest workers any more; her future was technology and nuclear power and private health.  Industrial days were over, and the bones of the Clyde Shipworks and the Springburn Railworks lay about the city like rotted dinosaurs.  Whole housing estates of young men who were promised the working trades of their fathers had no future now.  Men were losing their very masculinity.”

A reminder of how, as a boy, I thought rubbing docken leaves on a nettle sting was somehow helpful:

“The boy grew panicked, his eyes wide in fear.  He ripped a handful of large green docken leaves out of the dirt and scraped them up and down Shuggie’s leg.”

A long forgotten sweetie:

“They sucked on soor plooms and pressed their noses against the front window of the top deck.”

Without being sounding too anachronistic, I have oft maintained that the music I enjoy most was created between 1971 and 1973, a period when creativity and musicianship were welcomed and music wasn’t pigeon-holed and created with mass market consumerism as the primary criteria.  I’ve been working my way through SPIN magazine’s list of the best 50 albums of 1971 this week.  Here’s a sampling of the excellent music from number 50 to number 40.

At number 47, “Anticipation” by Carl Simon.  In addition to the title track I really like this cover of Kris Kristofferson’s  (sung originally as a duet with Rita Coolidge) “I’ve Got to Have You.”

Two slots higher at number 45 is the debut album by the fantastic Bonnie Raitt:

Number 44 brings War’s “All Day Music”.  This was their second album after the departure of Eric Burdon of the Animals and the variety and musicianship are terrific:

Number 43 is a real highlight for me so far – Booker T & The M.G.’s “Melting Pot”.  The bass sound and runs that Donald “Duck” Dunn lays down are just amazing.  Coupled with Steve Cropper’s constant guitar creativity and Booker T’s organ playing, this is a total winner of an album:

Fleetwood Mac’s “Future Games” comes in at number 42.  This is the transition Mac from the original Peter Green led ensemble to the ultimate Steve Nicks/Lindsey Buckingham led group.  It features Bob Welch and Danny Kirwan on guitar and, for the first time, Christine McVie on some vocals and piano.  The album is fine but very pastoral sounding and a bit bleh – good background music I suppose.

I used to love “Hocus Pocus” from Focus’ album “Moving Waves” which makes number 41.  Now it sounds kitschy and contrived, but still a bit entertaining.  Not to take anything away from the great Jan Akkerman’s guitar chops.  Here’s the 23 minute (typical of the 1971 penchant for stretching out songs in multiple movements) Eruption:

And finally, rounding out the 50-40 section, the diaphanous sound of the early Stylistics – a classic example of the Philly Soul Sound.

We’ll see if I stick with this progression and enjoy the higher ranking albums as much as this wildly varied selection.

Stay safe, calm and kind to everyone.

“Roses are Red”

Having a dental crown seated is not the ideal way to start out a week, but the operation was smooth and painless.  Dirty Penelope was treated to a bath on the way back from the dentist and it’s been much quieter in the garage since.

Monday was Burns day and so we cooked up one of the tins of haggis, the lamb version, and piped it in with “Scotland the Brave” from Spotify.  I gave a poor rendition of “Address to a Haggis”, with a translated printout for Diana, and then we enjoyed the once a year or so treat – really yummy.  After that Diana was “wanting something sweet” and so, in my typically cheesy way, I guided her through to the piano and attempted a rendition of “My Love is Like a Red Red Rose”.  It was a very poor attempt, having only printed the music a couple of hours earlier.  Here’s a better attempt – see Mum, I did get some roses this year.  Diana quipped “Now I recognize it.”

Oh, almost forgot, I also read a couple of verses of “Ode to a Mouse” at our Executive Committee meeting on Monday afternoon, telling them that since diversity and inclusion was such a big topic these days,  I wanted to be recognized for my diversity as well.  Here are links to read both poems:

http://www.robertburns.org.uk/Assets/Poems_Songs/toahaggis.htm

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43816/to-a-mouse-56d222ab36e33

Going up to the elliptical on Tuesday, I came across this display of Mardi Gras beads.  Apparently McD had decided to organize our collection of beads ahead of parade season (cancelled this year) and thought the pool table provided the ideal surface.  We collected the majority of those on a freezing cold parade night on our first New Orleans Mardi Gras visit.

I went for a swim on Wednesday and enjoyed listening to a podcast where Alec Baldwin interviewed Kristin Bell.  On removing my earphones after the swim, I couldn’t hear anything from my left ear.  I assumed water was stuck in there, as happens sometimes.  On arrival home, and letting Diana know that I had enjoyed a nice swim with Kristin Bell, very cheesy again, I tried the drops we use to get water out of our ears when scuba diving.  No luck.  Now I’m getting a tiny appreciation for what Elspeth deals with every day – can’t hear anything Diana is saying if she’s coming at me from the left.  Still no joy on Thursday morning, so emailed the doctor.  Come on in for an ear lavage on Friday morning.  Ok, not sure what that is but it sounds soothing.  Turned out to be a quick and mostly painless procedure that within a few seconds had removed a wax plug that had adhered to my ear drum.  Going to have to be a bit more diligent with those earphones and the “Fit Goo” that I use to get a good seal.

The Designer Twins and Jose visited us on Friday afternoon to discuss the rumoured kitchen remodel.  We’ll see what great ideas they come back with.  One of the bigger discussion points was whether or not to keep the elevated, round section of the island.  We enjoy gathering around a meat and cheese plate there when we have another couple over.  Jose says they’re out of style and we need to consider a single long island that accommodates seating at the end.  Any input from those of you that have occupied the barstools at the raised end?  I’m scared to see the bid – so much tile and granite to be replaced.

Late breaking news on an incoming text.  Jose can start in 3 weeks.  Oh joy!

We watched the new Justin Timberlake movie “Palmer” on Friday and Saturday nights.  Second weekend in a row that we fell asleep before finishing our movie on Friday night.  We must be working way too hard during the week.  Timberlake did his usual excellent acting job in what was a pretty harrowing movie.  Spoiler alert…there is a happy ending.

I did complete week 3 of Couch to 5K on Saturday.  Diana asked me if I felt like I had a “balanced gait”.  Well, clearly by nature of the question she doesn’t believe that I do.  Apparently I lean over when landing on my left foot, or am just flat footed on that side.  Thanks, super helpful input, I’ll see what I can do about that as we enter into week 4, and I’m sure by focusing on that will develop some other anomaly.

We, one of us in particular, have developed a binging obsession with “Bridgerton.”  It’s actually pretty funny and certainly better than “The Bachelor.”  I believe Diana finished up the series last night after I fell asleep.

It’s a mistake to pull out the “Year in Review 2020” blog book and read about what we were doing exactly a year ago.  Very depressing – we attended an Eric Lindell concert, had a work happy hour at Baker St. Pub, brunch at Comedor, and dinner at Winebelly, amongst several other fun activities.  Hopefully those places hang on until we can safely visit Austin again.

I finished up “The Strangler” by William Landay this week and did enjoy the conclusion of the tale.

Michael, the Harvard lawyer brother, suffers from routine migraines and I thought Landay’s description of their onset and impact were exceptionally detailed and effective.  I assumed that he must suffer from migraines until I read the credit at the end of the book to “Migraine” by Oliver Sacks, the wonderfully talented medical writer.

The relationship between the three Daley brothers, their mother, and her boyfriend is at the core of the book, and just as central to the evolution of the plot as the history of the Boston Stranglers.

“Ricky always went a little crazy with Joe.  All that firstborn’s confidence and facile conservatism, the dense, bullying, confrontational manner, the reflexive, arrogant, empty-headed, aggressive xenophobia…Joe was Ricky’s negative image.  If they had not been brothers, Ricky was sure, they would never have been friends.  As it was, they needed Michael as a middleman.  Alone, there was a relentless fractious undercurrent to their conversations, as if their thirty-year relationship had been a single ongoing argument.  But, in the way of brothers, Ricky could not completely escape admiring Joe, who had, after all, willingly accepted the weight of their patrimony.”

I’m making good progress on “Mad at the World – A Life of John Steinbeck” by William Souder.  Souder is a good writer and has quite interesting material to draw from.  The history of the part of California where Steinbeck grew up – Salinas and the Monterey coast – was just as interesting as the background on how Steinbeck became the famous author.

Here’s a piece from the first page that I know Diana will particularly enjoy (she detests the California coastal fog).

“Ninety miles long and shaped like a sword, it follows the course of the Salinas River, which runs north to Monterey Bay.  The valley is flat between the Gabilans and the Santa Lucia mountains that separate it from the Pacific.  Here, a different fog comes  in summer, when inland heating draws in a marine layer of cooler, moist air from the ocean.  The sea-born fog does not lie still on the land, but seeps over the folded hillsides, rising and falling along the river bottom.  When the fog comes and the mountains are hidden, the world is an abstraction and you  are alone with your thoughts.”

Some history of the region, which now produces much of the vegetable crops that feed America:

“In 1602, a Spanish explorer, Sebastian Viscaino, sailed up the California coast as far as the estuary of the Salinas River.  Captivated by the harbor near the river’s mouth, and by the panorama of mountains and rocky headlands that curled into the Pacific around the northern and southern ends of a great by, he named the place Monterey.  In 1769, a Spanish expedition coming overland from Baja reached the southern tip of the Salinas Valley and found it an unpromising place.  “The hills,” their report read, “gradually became lower, and, spreading out at the same time, made the canyon wider; at this place, in sight of two low points formed by the hills, it extends for more than three leagues.”  The soil, the report continued, was poor and offered “treacherous footing,” as it was “full of fissures that crossed in all directions, whitish in color, and scant of pasture.”

Who knew that the beautiful coastline around Pacific Grove was once owned by a Scot?  Can you imagine what those 100,000 acres are worth today?

“Rising from the water’s edge in sloping terraces to a high, forested ridge, Pacific Grove was wedged between the towns of Monterey and Carmel.  In the late 1800s, there was a quiet wilderness of woods and grazing lands mostly owned by a rancher named David Jacks.  Jacks had come to the peninsula in 1849 from Scotland with an unquenchable thirst for land.  Eventually he owned more than 100,000 acres.”

Some interesting history of Stanford University:

“Young, shy, uninterested in school, and reluctant to admit to anyone what he hoped to become, Steinbeck was unlikely Stanford material.  Opened in 1891 – its first student was future U.S. president Herbert Hoover – the university had begun as a monument to Leland Stanford Jr.  The only child of Leland and Jane Stanford, Leland Jr. had died of typhus at the age of fifteen.”

“Mors was the same age as Steinbeck.  He’d grown up in Los Gatos, only twenty miles away, and entered Stanford at the age of sixteen.”

Steinbeck wandered from city to city, taking odd jobs as he worked on his writing in the evenings.

“He also got Steinbeck a job as a laborer on a project in midtown Manhattan:  the construction of Madison Square Garden, which was being rushed to completion before the end of the year.  Steinbeck’s job was moving cement up the inside scaffolding with a wheelbarrow, load after aching load.”

An interesting fact about Monterey Bay.  I had no idea it was that deep:

“Monterey Bay was one of the world’s most active fisheries, owing in part to its unique subsurface contours.  Only a short distance from shore, the Continental Shelf splits, and the bottom plunges to a depth of nearly 12,000 feet in a sheer abyss called the Monterey Bay Canyon.”

I’ve been listening to an album called “Day of the Dead” while writing this post.  It’s a series of Grateful Dead cover songs and I really like most of them.  Here’s a sampling.  Highly recommended if you enjoy their music.

Nick Lowe has a song and an album called “Trombone?”  I better check that out.

And finally this week, for some reason Shuggie Otis popped into my head and I remembered his excellent show at the Kessler several years ago:

Stay safe, kind and calm.

“A Smooth Transition”

This was a pretty quiet week of working from home and not going anywhere exciting at all.  Well, Diana did sneak out twice – once to get her hair done and once to get her nails done.  Oh, and we had a Presidential inauguration.  As Rex Parker said in his New York Times crossword blog on Thursday: “OK, back to basking in this weird feeling of living in a county run by basically good, basically competent people.  Ahh.”  We both enjoyed the evening gala hosted by Tom Hanks from the steps of the Lincoln memorial.  Bruce Springsteen got things started (and apparently had a positive impact on pea-coat sales):

We watched the new Tom Hanks movie “News of the World” on Friday night, and then finished it on Saturday night.  Quite disappointing after the book – isn’t that usually the case?    The film completely missed what I thought was the core element of the book – the struggle of Johanna as she oscillates between her Native American upbringing and her return to the “civilized” American world.

I finished up week 2 of Couch to 5K on Saturday – everything is still feeling pretty good.  We received our “Year in Review 2020” blog book (300 pages) and Diana looked back to find how far I made it before the break – end of week 4 – so that will be a milestone to aim past.  I did convince McD to try something new mid-week – she went for a run in the rain with me – who knows what crazy activity is next.  After the run I had a short burst of energy for home tasks – installed the replacement Ring doorbell, tried to replace some porch lights but had the wrong shape of bulb, and replaced the steam shower aromatherapy bottle (a lot more work than it sounds) with some new lavender juice – my choice which McD has pronounced as a very “girlie” option.  New bulbs were ordered and that will be my task after this update is published.

Almost forgot – I made a drive over to Grapevine on Friday to the British Food Emporium.  My mission was to pick up some haggis for Burns night on Monday, but as usual I couldn’t help grabbing some other treats – a Turkish delight for Diana, meat pies for me, and some oatcakes to share.  If you’d like to read details  about the challenges with the Scottish haggis population, I recommend this article (I did chuckle when Brent observed that the hagglets look a lot like The Donald):

http://www.robertburns.org.uk/Assets/Documents/haggisarticle.pdf

I had been looking forward to a stop into Redefined coffee, a regular stop when I was driving to AIG, and right next to the British food place.  It wasn’t there anymore – typical, I thought.  A quick search showed it had moved just around the corner on to the main street.  A really good location and a much bigger and more modern shop – just didn’t seem to have the same character as the old place, but the coffee was still the same.

Continuing the British food theme – I shared Vince’s pastrami scotch egg recipe recently.  Here are some pictures of the end result that he shared this week:

Don’t those look delicious.  We’re hoping to sample some when we finally make a visit to his cabin in the Adirondacks.

I watched a documentary about the first person with Down Syndrome to complete an Ironman marathon.

Chris Nikic is such an inspiration.  He doesn’t have any real sense of how far he’s come or how much longer remains, but just keeps plugging away, taking regular breaks for hugs.  A massive achievement.

On a somewhat related theme, I was amazed at this video of a dog limping alongside its owner.  Apparently the dog was taken to the vet to be checked out.  Absolutely nothing wrong with the leg, it was just limping in sympathy with its owner.  Wow!  The owner seemed more focused on the 300 pounds he had spent on vet bills.

Norma in Guatemala was telling me about the “Yardi Gras” houses in New Orleans.  There are no Mardi Gras parades this year and so, in typical NOLA creative fashion, folks are decorating their yards to emulate parade floats.  Some are really amazing.

We received a late entry for the new cactus naming contest this morning, and we’re going with it.  Patty christened it “Mark 3.0” and we’ll just use “3.0” as a nickname.  Apparently the idea came to her in the middle of the night last night.  Our boss when we worked together was Mark and he had quite the prickly personality – so he became knows at “the cactus”.  When I worked with him more recently he proclaimed himself “Mark 2.0”, the kinder and gentler version.  Which was true most days.  Brent’s submission of “Squid Rock” has stuck after we tried it out this week.

I’m a bit more than half way through “The Strangler” by William Landay and am getting thoroughly sucked into the crime tale.  Landay is the author of “Defending Jacob” – we enjoyed the TV series and so I thought I’d try his earlier novel.  Here’s what Amazon says about it:

“Before the New York Times bestselling success of Defending Jacob, William Landay wrote this widely acclaimed second novel of crime and suspense, which was named a Favorite Crime Novel of the Year by the Los Angeles Times and several other newspapers.
 
Boston, 1963. Meet the charming, brawling Daley brothers. Joe is a cop whose gambling habits have dragged him down into the city’s underworld. Michael is a lawyer, always the smartest man in the room. And Ricky is the youngest son, a prince of thieves whose latest heist may be his last. For the Daleys, crime is the family business—they’re simply on different sides of it. Then a killer, a man who hunts women with brutal efficiency and no sign of stopping, strikes too close to the Daley home. The brothers unite to find the Strangler, a journey that leads to the darkest corners of Boston—and exposes an even deeper mystery that threatens to tear the family apart.”

I chuckled at this quote from the book.  Exactly what I had just said to Diana when recommending “Kind of Blue” as an album to send Alicia:

“Kat bobbed her head to the strolling rhythm. “You like it?”  “I don’t know.  Maybe.” “It’s Miles Davis.”  “I know who he is!”  “Here take it.”  Ricky got the dust jacket and offered it to her.  The record was “Kind of Blue”.  “Keep it.  It gets better the more you listen to it.””

And another interesting passage that also includes Miles:

“It was a limitation of human consciousness.  We live only in the future and the past, we cannot perceive now.  Now occupies no space, a hypothetical gap between future and past.  Only an exceptional few could feel now, athletes and jazzmen and, yes, thieves like Ricky Daley, and even for them the sensation was fleeting, limited to the instant of creative action.  Cousy knew the feeling; Miles Davis too.  The boundless improvisational moment.”

I’m looking forward to the conclusion.

I’ve been reminiscing about Austin this week by listening to the local Sun radio station.  They played this excellent new song by Rob Baird.  I’m interested to know who produced this for him as it’s quite a departure from his previous sound.

The Sun radio host went on a bit of Django Reinhart kick and I found these two interesting versions of his tune “Nuages”:

And finally, here’s one from a band with such a great sound that I don’t listen to often enough:

I’m off to try to replace those porch bulbs again, jump on the elliptical for a while, and then settle in for the final day of the NFL playoffs.

Stay safe, patient and kind!

Limping dogs

“Playoffs?”

I had only had one entrant for the name the octopus and cactus contest from last week.  Brent suggested “Squid Rock” for the octopus – get it?  (a play on Kid Rock – Brent would say it isn’t funny if you have to explain it).  Much better than “Blink” that I had come up with – he’s blue and shoots ink: bl-ink.  I know – much lamer creativity.  “Wily Peyote” was his best entrant for the plant.  I like that better than “Tortoise” – my idea based on carrying your house on your back in a self contained and mobile unit.  I’ll leave this open for one more week for late entrants before the official naming ceremonies.

Delbert McClinton was the special guest on the BoH Tuesday night supper club this week.  It’s hard to believe he is 80 years old.  I’ve mentioned before that I saw him at the sorely missed Caravan of Dreams club in downtown Fort Worth on my second night in Texas back in 1985.  I was in heaven.  Gordy told a similar story of going to see him at the classic honky tonk, Gruene Hall, in the late 90s.  He made his way to the front row with his girlfriend, now wife, and Delbert sang an entire verse of a ballad to her while holding her hand.  McClinton had a lot of good stories to share.

Vince and I have made a point of sampling many gourmet scotch eggs over the years on our work visits to New York.  The current first place winner is from the Dead Rabbit cocktail bar in downtown.  He sent me this recipe for a Pastrami scotch egg:

A Crunchy Remix: Try This Pastrami Scotch Egg Recipe

Here’s what the author had to say about these:

“Most Scotch eggs begin with loose sausage meat, befitting a dish with roots as an English roadside snack. But as I sat at Pastrami Queen on New York’s Upper East Side a few weeks back eating the city’s best deli sandwich (sorry, Katz’s), it dawned on me that pastrami had serious potential as a Scotch egg sausage swap-in. Crusted with a mixture of coriander, garlic, black pepper and mustard — and blessed with a prodigious fat streak — it has a spice blend that can stand up to even the best sausage meat, not to mention an immutable connection to the city I call my home.

Make sure you get the fattiest pastrami you can find (specify when you order a pound from your butcher), and please (I’m begging) don’t opt for turkey pastrami. You’ll also need to dust off the food processor for this one; giving the pastrami a high-speed whirl binds the meat into an ideal liaison, making it relatively easy to wrap around the eggs. Serve them with a mustardy dressing and your next New York deli-style craving may just be satisfied at home.”

I’m not a huge pastrami fan, but these do sound worth a try.

I received some uplifting news from Alex in New Orleans on Friday.  Finally something to put on the calendar to look forward to – Jazzfest has been rescheduled for the 2nd and 3rd weekends of October.  We’ll have to see about changing our flights that were booked for April.  Should we go for the first or second weekend?  Maybe just move into Denny and Anne’s cottage for both?

Diana had to wait until after 10am for her run on Saturday morning – that’s when the temperature broke into the 40s.  I went upstairs to the elliptical while she was working much harder on the road.  We rewarded ourselves with a trip to Filtered in downtown McKinney for coffee, crossword, and quiche.

After returning home, I was determined to try and fix Penelope’s cup holder cover latch.  This has been a recurring problem for years and I’m usually able to jiggle it just the right way and get it closed.  The last few days it has refused to play along.  A replacement of the whole unit is available for over $300.  With that information, it seemed like an hour or so of my time to attempt a repair was a good trade.

The hardest part of the endeavor was figuring out the location of the Allen bolts in the glove box that held the unit in place.  That was a solid 20 minutes of effort to extract the annoyance.

That little white piece in the middle is the guilty party.  It doesn’t seem to have quite enough weight to it to fall down and latch reliably.  Cleaning and lubing didn’t help.  I wonder what will happen if I attach a small piece of mounting tape on the top?

It certainly seemed to work with the top off and not mounted back in the car.  I decided to give it a shot.  Reattaching with the Allen bolts wasn’t quite as onerous as the extraction.  Et voila merci!

That was a fun project – made more rewarding by the $300+ saved.  I put air in Penelope’s tires (pressure too low with the cold weather), made some minor repairs to the convertible top, and bid her good night.

A nice steam shower session had me fully relaxed and ready to watch the Rams vs Packers playoff game.

We attempted to ordered Thai for dinner from the new “Spoon and Fork” restaurant – but no delivery option available.  The old stand by of Zin Zen with their fungi salad and shrimp pesto flatbread worked out just fine.

We finished up Saturday watching the documentary “Carter: Rock and Roll President”.  I really enjoyed this film as it showed how much Jimmy Carter enjoyed all kinds of music and what an impact various groups like the Allman Bros had on his election.  A highlight was Bob Dylan quoting “Simple Man” by Lynyrd Synyrd at the end of the film and applying the lyrics to Carter:

“Take your time, don’t live too fast

Troubles will come, and they will pass”

Sunday began with a somewhat earlier run for both of us – temperatures were well into the 40s by 9am.  Then we were off on some shopping return excursions to Target and Lulu Lemon.  The latter unsuccessful as the wait line to enter the store was too long.  The things I do…

I’ve been looking forward to the Saints vs Buccaneers playoff game all week.  This photoshopped picture from Tom Brady is great.  He will be the oldest quarterback to ever compete in a playoff game at 43 and Drew Brees is 41, making for by far the oldest quarterback combination in a game ever.  Both are playing at a very high level and this should be a good game.

I read “& Sons” by David Gilbert this week.  I really enjoyed Gilbert’s short story “Cicadia” in an August 2020 edition of the New Yorker and decided to try one of his novels – “& Sons” got great reviews on its publication back in 2013.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/08/24/cicadia

NPR said “Smart and savage…Seductive and ripe with both comedy and heartbreak, “& Sons” made me reconsider my stance on…the term “instant classic””

Do you ever look at the author photo inside the back cover of books and try to analyze what kind of person wrote this book?  I am somewhat guilty of that.  Here are two pretty different pictures of David Gilbert and then what he writes about one of the main characters of “&Sons”:

“A. N. Dyer stands in front of us as forever young, peering from his author photo, the only photo he ever used on all of his books, starting with “Ampersand.”  In that picture he’s pure knowing, his darkly amused eyes in league with a smile that edges toward a smirk, as if he’s seen what you’ve underlined, you fiend, you who might read a few pages and then pause and glance back at his face like you’ve spotted something magical yet familiar, a new best friend waiting for you on the other end.”

I loved these two descriptions from a section where one of Dyer’s sons thinks he has successfully pitched a screenplay to a studio, only to find that it’s a ruse to get him to convince his father to offer film rights to “Ampersand”:

“”Well he’s still dead.”  Rainer rose from his chair, like Oscar Wilde playing Winston Churchill getting bad news from the front.”

“The bubbles in the champagne shimmied up the flutes, a hundred phony smiles breaking the surface, like some Esther Williams routine, Richard thought, a memory of stinging sweetness flooding his mouth.”

I love the thought of champagne bubbles performing a synchronized swimming routine.

“He had always been a decent typist.  (Thanks to Exeter, we were all decent typists.)  The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy log.  Instead of sheep he tried counting foxes, the image of fox inspired by the crafty Mr. Tod.  Andrew loved Beatrix Potter as a boy, the fond memory of being read to aloud, the words coming on trails of smoke and scotch, his father’s wonderful voice.”

I was telling Diana about the beautiful illustrations in Beatrix Potter as we were reading a Winnie the Pooh story and admiring the drawings this week.  Something she missed out on that we’ll have to remedy.

I enjoyed the number of Talking Heads “Once in a Lifetime” references included in this paragraph:

“Twitchy and sweaty, with a brand-new retro haircut, horn-rimmed glasses, a vintage suit, a bow tie, he had the vibe of early-to-mid David Byrne, and what with Richard’s and Jamie’s appreciation for New Wave music and their teenage days watching those first videos on MTV, what with the water flowing underground and the large automobile, what with the early evening sky and its remains of light, you may find yourself hearing the same song and asking yourself the same question: How did I get here?”

This book was very large and broad in scale, albeit a bit pompous in places.  I did enjoy the read and being back in New York for a while.

“Greenlights”, the recent autobiography by Matthew McConaughey was a much quicker and lighter read.  It feels like sitting down and having a drink with the author and listening to entertaining and engaging stories about his life.

He attended the University of Texas in Austin to study law – hoping to be a criminal defense attorney, and while his grades were very good, he decided after 2 years that his heart really wasn’t in it and switched to the film school.

All the classic tales are in here – “Alright, Alright, Alright”, arrested for playing the bongos naked inside his house – later dropped for unlawful entry, the efforts McConaughey went to to land the lead role in Grisham’s “A Time to Kill”, and many others.

I particularly enjoyed a tale where he takes an impromptu trip to Mali in search of his favorite musician, Ali Farka Toure.  This was a big surprise – I wasn’t sure anyone else in the state of Texas was familiar with this musician.  I had been listening to Farka Toure’s excellent album with Ry Cooder earlier in the morning while starting the book.  Weird.

Open in Spotify

I enjoyed reading McConaughey’s love letter to New Orleans.

“Places are like people. They each have a particular identity.  In all my travels around the globe I’ve written in my journal about the culture of a place, its identity.  If a place and a people move me, I’ll write them a love letter.  New Orleans is one of those places.”

“Home of the front porch, not the back.  This engineering feat provides so much of your sense of community and fellowship as you relax facing the street and your neighbors across it.  Rather than retreating into the seclusion of the backyard, you engage with the goings-on of the world around you, on your front porch.”

“You don’t use vacuum cleaners, no, you use brooms and rakes to manicure.  Where it falls is where it lays, the swerve around the pothole, the duck beneath the branch.  Like a gumbo, your medley’s in the mix.”

I was pleased to read that on a recent episode of BBC radio’s desert island discs, David Gilmour, guitarist with Pink Floyd, picked the Kinks “Waterloo Sunset” as the number one disc he would take with him to a desert island.  This would be one of mine too, as evidenced by the Ray Davies signed soundwaves painting of this song hanging in the piano room – thanks Diana.

Paul McCartney released a new album a few weeks ago.  It’s the third installment in his series and is naturally called “McCartney III”.  I enjoyed listening to the record but it’s not one that I’ll be rushing back to.  I did enjoy this video by Roman Coppola (Francis Ford Coppola of Godfather and Apocalypse Now fame’s son).  Coppola made this completely remotely from the family vineyard in Napa – utilizing 46 remote cameras to capture McCartney as he played all the instruments and built up the track.  Oh to have ten percent of that talent.

That and the Coppolas – Sofia’s “Lost in Translation” with Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson is one of my all time favourite movies.  I use this Teams backdrop sometimes and put myself at the bar of the Tokyo Park Hyatt having a drink with Scarlett and keeping her safe from Murray:

I had the luxury of quite a bit of quiet reading time this week.  I found myself on a Bob Dylan kick early in the week and a Brian Eno kick later in the week.  Two entirely different artists for sure.  I think I was looking for some calm and soothing escape as the week unfolded.  I decided on a chronological Dylan exploration.  Having never listened to “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” from 1963 from start to finish, I was astounded by the number of all time classics on this album – “Blowin’ in the Wind”, “Girl form the North Country”, “Master of War”, and this favourite:

Brian Eno has a catalog almost as vast as Dylan’s, with quite a variety from his ambient albums, to soundtracks, and numerous collaborations.  Here’s one that I hadn’t heard before and really enjoyed:

Open in Spotify

The weekend brought some jazz, having just introduced Alicia to the classic “Kind of Blue” by Miles Davis, I explored some not heard before John Coltrane:

Open in Spotify

And another 80 year old, the guy with the amazing sax tone – Charles Lloyd:

Open in Spotify

Stay calm and patient with everyone.