“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.