“Cowboys Lose”
I took Finn to get his wisdom teeth out early Tuesday morning. All went smoothly except for his seizure type thing at the beginning, when he saw the needle. Just like his first COVID shot experience. The dentist was all over it – “I just cranked up the oxygen and raised his feet above his heart.” Apparently Finn apologized when he came back around. Poor guy. He slept for a few hours at our home, and then wanted to rest in his own bed. Isn’t that a nifty ice pack setup that straps around your head.
We had an outing to Denton on Saturday afternoon. “A Taste of Herb”, a Herb Alpert tribute group, was playing at Dan’s Silverleaf. It’s been a while since we made that drive, and I almost turned around. The traffic with all the new building North of us was brutal.
Speaking of Pacifica, we chuckled on receiving a note that Eric Lindell is playing at the Longboard margarita bar when Diana is next visiting. That’s the dive bar where I went to watch football over the holidays. Apparently Lindell’s Mum lives in Pacifica.
Sunday ended poorly. The Cowboys lost to the San Francisco 49ers. Most everyone played well except the quarterback, with two costly interceptions. Campbell says he might not be able to support the Cowboys next year if they have the same quarterback.
I hope Will didn’t waste his money on these Cowboys items for Ollie – no more opportunities to wear them in support of the team this year.
I started “The Hero of this Book” by Elizabeth McCracken this week, and am really enjoying it so far. Here’s the online summary:
“Ten months after her mother’s death, the narrator of The Hero of This Book takes a trip to London. The city was a favorite of her mother’s, and as the narrator wanders the streets, she finds herself reflecting on her mother’s life and their relationship. Thoughts of the past meld with questions of the future: Back in New England, the family home is now up for sale, its considerable contents already winnowed.
The woman, a writer, recalls all that made her complicated mother extraordinary—her brilliant wit, her generosity, her unbelievable obstinacy, her sheer will in seizing life despite physical difficulties—and finds herself wondering how her mother had endured. Even though she wants to respect her mother’s nearly pathological sense of privacy, the woman must come to terms with whether making a chronicle of this remarkable life constitutes an act of love or betrayal.
The Hero of This Book is a searing examination of grief and renewal, and of a deeply felt relationship between a child and her parents. What begins as a question of filial devotion ultimately becomes a lesson in what it means to write. At once comic and heartbreaking, with prose that delights at every turn, this is a novel of such piercing love and tenderness that we are reminded that art is what remains when all else falls away.”
Here’s a passage on what it feels like to walk around Texas in areas that are only really intended for driving:
“The sidewalk of my suburban youth was like God, omnipresent and irregular. In Texas, where I’d lived for a decade, walking was seen as a form of peculiarity, perhaps a sign of northern-ness, even among my largely unarmed Texan friends. Sometimes in Texas as I walked, I would suddenly feel the presence of all the hidden guns around me, as though I were an x-ray machine.
Here in London, I knew that not a single civilian or police officer, for that matter- was armed.
Already I was lost. But there was a sign at the edge of the ungreen green that showed the neighborhood: what was within a five-minute walk of You are here, what within a fifteen-minute. Some things only the city itself can tell you, and other things you must learn from a map.
In Austin there are enormous streets called Lanes, as well as Drives and Streets and Circles and Boulevards; in my mother’s suburban Boston neighborhood, dead ends called Terraces. Trevor’s place was on a Close, and I was headed for Jerusalem Passage. Surely I would be changed upon it. I passed the Belgian bar Trevor had mentioned, now closed. A shared workspace, closed. Early Sunday morning in the business district: Everything was closed.”
Here’s a song that popped up to remind me of my time in Basingstoke – this album got a lot of play:
I get email invites to a house concert series in Austin, but have never gone. This one sounded interesting. Werner has entertaining lyrics about New Orleans.
And finally, something from Funky Friday on our local radio station, 91.7 KXT:
Coexist peacefully, with kindness and compassion for all.