August 7, 2022 – Keith Robertson

“Home Alone, Again”

We dropped Tim and Dee at the San Francisco airport on Monday morning, and then drove back to Clorinda’s home to relax and regroup. I had a short Board meeting update in the afternoon, and then we braved all the kids at Amy and Adamo’s home. They were in typical bouncing off the walls form. Amy made us some delicious soup for dinner and we called it an early evening.

My Tuesday began early with the time difference – a four hour Board meeting starting at 6am – hooray! Thankfully the news for the quarter was all good and so the meeting was relatively benign. Everyone at work is in a good mood with our positive results and the impact those have had on our stock price.

McD dropped me at the airport in the afternoon and I was back home in McKinney by 8:30pm. I enjoyed the “Family Squares” movie on the flight – a somewhat black humour take on families communicating over Zoom.

After all the corporate Board meetings and earnings announcements, I was ready to hang out with the rich and pretty people at Dan’s Silverleaf in Denton on Thursday night. Just kidding – it’s a dive music venue filled with people who love and appreciate the same kind of music that I do. Kevin Galloway was doing a release party for his new album “Secondhand Starlight.” He recorded the album with Austin band Doug Strahan and the Good Neighbors, and they were the backing band for the evening. They opened the show with a varied set of songs – great musicians:

Galloway joined the band after about 45 minutes and put on an excellent show all around. Diana and I saw him solo (or with cello) in Austin a few times – this was a much more lively event (although it did include Gumby on the cello for a few songs.)

I always enjoy “Taking in the View”, a Galloway song that he originally performed with Uncle Lucius – perhaps his most famous composition:

And lastly, “Keep the Wolves Away”, a song about Galloway’s father surviving a chemical accident in Galveston. This was the only song with accordion and I think the combination of that and the cello really add to the haunting nature of the lyrics:

If you’d like to hear a story about that song and how Galloway has made some good money and obtained a gold record, courtesy of the “Yellowstone” TV series, then check this version out:

What a beautiful night of music – great musicians, sound mixing, venue, people – and all for $20. Well worth the 40 minute drive over to Denton – and all those traffic lights on highway 380 – there must be at least 30 of them.

Friday was a relatively busy work day for me. I met up with Finn for lunch and enjoyed his stories about work. He’s changed his shift so that he works a bit later in the afternoon, with the goal of training the “closers” properly so that things are set up properly when he gets there in the morning. I think every time I talk with him he’s working on some kind of improvement idea. So nice to see.

Meanwhile Diana slaved away in the Pacifica kitchen, making special Florentine cookies for patient Marco. She had to work hard to make sure that Clorinda didn’t snag too many.

I count six batches – that’s a very busy D! Here’s a video of Clorinda selecting “her cookies.”

Olivia joined them in the evening to celebrate her birthday.

There was a near “incident” when Diana went out for her run on the hill on Saturday morning. On her way back down the hill, I’m sure at top speed, she spotted the momma bobcat and babies in front of her. When I received the text update, I recommended going back up the hill and waiting a while, or having Alicia pick her up in a car. I got back a “Yeah, doing that”, with the implication of “I’m not a complete idiot.” Or maybe I just read that into it. Either way – D made it safely back to Clorinda’s home without incident.

Having avoided the “incident”, Diana drove down to visit Julie (day after her major surgery) and Marco. She reported that Julie is doing surprisingly well, although in a decent amount of pain. Oh – and she delivered the cookies (or those that Clorinda hadn’t snagged) to Marco.

Aimee met up with Diana at Clorinda’s home on Saturday night – it sounds like they had a nice time catching up until the wee hours.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was planning to read one section of George Saunders “A Swim in a Pond in the Rain” each week. I’ve been delinquent for a few weeks, but did complete one “lecture” this week. As a reminder, this is a book that follows Saunders’ class at Syracuse University. The subject this week was “The Singers”, a short story by Ivan Turgenev from 1852.

The gist of this story is that two guys are having a singing contest in a remote bar. Turgenev goes into a lot of detail on various characters who seem superfluous to the plot, but Saunders explains why they are not necessarily so. The detail on the singing contest is quite moving, one contestant is very technical while the other doesn’t have the same skills but conveys much more emotion, ultimately winning the contest. It reminded me of my thoughts about Andy Wood who I saw doing a clinic at the Guitar Sanctuary a couple of weeks ago – a great guitar shredder who really didn’t do anything for me. I compare that to the guitarist in the Jerry Garcia cover band that I saw two Sundays ago – he probably couldn’t play as fast but certainly did a great job of capturing the emotion of the songs.

“What does it mean, that Yashka has won? To answer, we try to distill the essential characteristics of the two performances. Broadly speaking: the contractor was technically wonderful but produced no feeling in his audience except amazement at his proficiency. Yashka, a little wobbly on technique, evoked undeniably deep feelings in his audience and caused a startling, not entirely rational memory to arise in the mind of the narrator. So, we feel the story to be saying something about technical proficiency vs. emotional power, and coming down in favor of the latter. It is saying that the highest aspiration of art is to move the audience and that if the audience is moved, technical deficiencies are immediately forgiven.”

I really enjoyed the way Saunders broke down this short story. He was originally an engineer, and created a table by page of useful insights that mattered to the singing contest outcome. He reports that when first asked about this story, his students typically respond that there are too many diversions and irrelevant details. He then goes ahead and rebuts that (very convincingly) over many pages.

I would have enjoyed studying English with Saunders. Is it too late?

I also enjoyed a couple of stories from Lauren Groff’s short story collection, “Florida.” She is such a wonderful writer and conjures up such wonderful pictures of her native state.

Here’s what Goodreads has to say:

“The stories in this collection span characters, towns, decades, even centuries, but Florida—its landscape, climate, history, and state of mind—becomes its gravitational center: an energy, a mood, as much as a place of residence. Groff transports the reader, then jolts us alert with a crackle of wit, a wave of sadness, a flash of cruelty, as she writes about loneliness, rage, family, and the passage of time. With shocking accuracy and effect, she pinpoints the moments and decisions and connections behind human pleasure and pain, hope and despair, love and fury—the moments that make us alive.”

I have a long way to go in this collection, but based on the first couple of stories, I give it two thumbs up and am looking forward to digging into more. Maybe this afternoon – after I finish up a project that I need to have done before McD returns.

I spent a decent amount of time listening to Radio Paradise this week. This is a radio station that plays a very wide variety of music that I mostly enjoy – with a very high bitrate stream that sounds great. Here’s one from their “Mellow Mix:”

Here’s another from the same source, this time from a Scottish band named “Admiral Fallow.” You can hear the accent clearly – not quite at Proclaimers level though.