The Arrest - Dystopian Time

With the mentally deranged impeached ex-president madman attempting to start a civil war during the height of a global pandemic I thought it would be a good time to read another dystopian novel. 

This was a wild one. Things just stop working... car, computers, airplanes, guns, etc. and everything is different. Speculative fiction at it's best and very well written.

Sonny Rollins - Morning Listening

I was listening to some Sonny Rollins this morning and it got me thinking how much I love his music and the deep sound of his tenor saxophone. The album I had on was Sonny Rollins with The Modern Jazz Quartet from 1956. It really is a wonderful album. 

I would put Sonny Rollins in the Parthenon of jazz tenor sax players. Whenever I've made a jazz mix I've always made sure there was some Sonny Rollins.

Most of the Sonny Rollins albums in my collection are compilation collections based on record labels. I only have a few of his regular studio albums and only one live recording album which was the double CD Night at the Village Vanguard recorded in 1957.

Here is a list of Sonny Rollins albums in my collection.

• The Bridge
• Sonny Rollins with The Modern Jazz Quartet
• There Will Never Be Another You
• The Best of Sonny Rollins: The Blue Note Years,
• The Essential Sonny Rollins: The RCA Years, 2 CDs
• The Freelance Years, 5 CDs
• A Night at the Village Vangard, 2 CDs
• Prestige Profiles: Sonny Rollins

Reading About Dylan

 

I've read a lot about Bob Dylan over the years and I'm reading another one now. This particular book The Dylan Companion was published in 1990. It's a compilation of commentary writings on Dylan from all phases of his career up until the time of publication. That means of course a second volume is needed.

Some of the people in this book writing about Dylan included Pauline Kael, Robert Christgau, Joan Baez, Lester Bangs, Ken Kesey, Allen Ginsberg, Kurt Loder and many others. Over fifty pieces are included in the book. Enjoying this very much.

Probably the best book written about Dylan was the one he wrote himself. Chronicles: Volume One came out in 2004 and I read it in September 2005.  It was a remarkable book and reflection on life that jumped all over the place. 

Still waiting for Volume Two. In the meantime I've been reading several other books about Dylan.  In August of 1975 I read my first biography of him... Bob Dylan: A Biography by Anthony Scaduto that was published in 1972. I've also read some books about his song lyrics.

Revolution in the Air: The Songs of Bob Dylan, 1957-1973 by Clinton Heylin, 2009. I read it in September 2010.

Still on the Road: The Songs of Bob Dylan, 1974-2006 by Clinton Heylin, 2010. I read it in February 2012

Bob Dylan All the Songs: The Story Behind Every Track by Philippe Margotin, 2015. I finished it in November 2017 but this is the kind of book I keep handy and have referred to it a lot of the past few years.

One other interesting Dylan related book was Grown-Up Anger: The Connected Mysteries of Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, and the Calumet Massacre of 1913 by Daniel Wolff, 2017 which I read in September 2017. This book deserves it's on post.

Rufus Harley - Jazz Bagpipes

Rufus Harley was a jazz bagpipe player from the Germantown section of  Philadelphia. My friend John was into him and when I got out of the Navy and was living with John in Germantown he got me to go out and see Rufus Harley. We saw him several times and once at one of those concerts in a neighborhood park where he shared the stage with that other neighborhood jazz player Sun Ra. That was quite the show.

He traveled all over the world as a jazz bagpipe player wearing a kilt and he always talked about Philadelphia. He also gave out little statues of the Liberty Bell wherever he went.

He was active right up until his death in 2006. He played with many other artists including John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon, Sonny Rollins, Herbie Mann, Sonny Stitt, The Roots and Laurie Anderson.

Courage: The Atlantic Recordings compilation was released by Rhino after his death.

There is a great clip of him on the old TV show I've Got A Secret in 1966 on YouTube here.

Random Thanksgiving Music

We started off the day with a nice mix of classical music which included some interesting vocal groups, solo piano, string quartets and avantgarde cello music. Yesterday we had been listening to reggae compilations all day. So after the classical music I was trying to decide whether to play more reggae or put on some soul music. I compromised with an album of reggae artist coving classic soul music.

After that I put on a best of Nina Simone album. Then things got interesting. I was now playing off my iTunes collection on the hard drive and the albums were arranged alphabetical by album title which makes for an interesting randomness if you just let it play which I did.

Later in the evening we watched a movie keeping in the reggae theme of the afternoon. Babylon, a British film released in 1980. We had seen back in the early 80's and saw that it was available on our Criterion Channel. So we watched it before going to bed after a strange and different Thanksgiving.

So here are the albums I listened to throughout the evening before watching the movie... they were all best of albums by

• Nina Simone
• Old Crow Medicine Show
• Ornette Coleman
• Peter, Paul and Mary
• Poi Dog Pondering

Made for some interesting listening into the night.

Happy Thanksgiving 2020

Thanksgiving dinner for two. Becky made a wonderful traditional turkey dinner for us along with homemade apple pie and some vanilla ice cream. Normally we would be around the corner at Dave and Donna's house for tukkey dinner along with about twenty other people but not this year. 

We had a wonderful zoom session with much of our family in Philly today. Normally we would have made a phone call at some point to wish them a Happy Thanksgiving and this is the first time we actually did a holiday video chat. Maybe we should do that more often beyond the pandemic. There are probably a lot of people cooking a turkey for the first time this year.

It was also our granddaughter's birthday today. We are really sad that we can't be with her today but spent some time video chatting. Actually three different chats throughout the day. 

Really enjoyed Clara eating her birthday cake.

America is Back

The new slogan for President Elect Joe Biden. America is back has some real meaning to a lot of people. He is saying that America is back on the stage of foreign policy. America is back as allies of our traditional friends on the world stage.

He is also talking about building America back better and here is refers to rebuilding our infrastructure which includes roads and bridges. Jobs for working Americans.

People also see this as America back to sanity. Back to decency. Back to telling the truth and transparency. Back to believing one another. Back from corruption on an unimaginable scale that has plagued the nation.

There is a sense that after the horridly incompetently response of the administration to the covid pandemic that Biden will bring America back from the brink of disease and chaos.

People see Trump's response to losing the election of a further need to bring America back to sanity.

More Cans in the Rafters

Last night I was down in the basement with a flashlight looking into the deep recesses of the ceiling rafters along the walls and found more cans stashed away in a different area. They feel empty and I wonder why they have been there for nearly a hundred years. I guess these cans could be cleaned up and sold on eBay as mantiques.

All of the cans I've been finding are empty and cleaned out. I don't know why they've been hidden away for so many decades in dark out of the way places among the ceiling rafters. There are lots of readily available shelves in three rooms down there for easy storage. A mystery.

They are some cool looking cans and are all from the 1920's.

Listening to New Music

There was a conversation going on today about people not listening to new music beyond their 20's. That everyone was stuck listening to the music of their youth for the rest of their lives according to some study done in England. Of course most of the people in this particular Facebook group were music nerds of some sort and all had large collections. While most disagreed with the study everyone knew someone that was musically stuck in a genre or time period. I commented with a short statement to the group but I could have gone on and on like I'm doing here.

A few years ago I was at a party in Philly with a group of people from our old neighborhood and on the stereo was a mix I made of music we listened and partied together back in the day. It was classic rock and soul music from the 60's and early 70's. They loved the music exclaimed it was the best music ever and there has been nothing as good since then. A couple of people went on to mock everything post 1976 and then asked me what's my favorite music. I replied that it would be something new that I hadn't ever heard before.

I've always liked exploring new music. I was doing it as a young teenager and I'm still doing it now. I've always had a Friday ritual of checking out my regular several sources of new music releases. I've been doing it for decades. 

It's getting close to the end of the year and almost time for my annual ritual of looking at every end of the year best of new music releases I can find. I would take those list to put together a list of music to explore during the new year.

Back in my teenage years and well into early adulthood one of my great sources of new music was the local record store. I loved browsing the album bins and especially liked the section under the heading of New Releases. I also got to know the people in the record stores and encouraged them to tell me about great new music. Also from a very early age I was obsessed with reading record reviews not just in music magazines but also regular magazines and newspapers too. I used to write down in notebooks the names of new groups and albums I was interested in checking out. 

Of course there was also the radio stations that were playing new music. Many of the stations I had been listening to throughout my life up until that point suddenly switched formats to classic rock in the mid to late 70's and the only new music they played would be something that sounded like the music they were already playing. There was also a racists backlash at these stations against black music when disco became popular. That was a turning point for me. I couldn't listen to any classic rock format stations anymore.

Around that time I was seriously exploring back catalogs and new releases of blues, reggae, jazz and even classical music. I was all over the place. I was also listening to a lot of punk and new wave at the end of the 70's. By the early 80's I was very much into anything new and also playing records in bars. I played a mix of old and new during my late night sessions in the sound booth.

During the past couple of decades I've been using a variety of websites to discover new releases in addition to my older sources which by now have all moved to the web. For the past few years I've also been using Spotify which has regular playlist of new releases. In addition I have been adding new releases I find in other sources such as the weekly list in the AllMusic site to add to my albums list in Spotify. The algorithms used to create personal playlist have been a good source of new releases for me because of these albums I've entered into the system as something I want to listen to.

Also every week I listen to the Spotify generated playlist new classical releases and enjoy in very much. 

The picture in this post is of the Rolling Stone 500 albums which I very much disagree with but I do use it and other lists like it to scan for any new music I might have missed along the way. I like looking at those types of list from more obscure publications.

Another Hidden Vice

I recently posted a picture of a couple of old whiskey bottles I found hidden away in a nook above a workbench in the basement. Last evening I was down there on the stationary bike, headphones on with an old new wave mix in my ear and spacing out when something up in the ceiling rafters above the laundry appliances caught my eye. A flash of color in the dark.

I found something to stand on and reached into the small space between the wood rafters to finally pull out a dirt covered what turned out to be a can of tobacco.  A Sir Walter Raleigh container of loose pipe and cigarette tobacco from the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp, Louisville Kentucky. An quick online search determined the can was from the 1920's and maybe specifically 1926. We'll get it cleaned up and see if it might be worth a little something.

It is interesting that this is the second container of a hidden vice I found in the basement. I might grab a flashlight and do a systematic survey of the basement rafters. I recently met a couple of people who grew up in this house in the 1940's thru the early 60's and I know the man of the house in the 20's was a dentist who had an office around the corner in a building that now houses a restaurant across the street from the zoo. Apparently the dentist liked his whiskey and tobacco but perhaps his wife was a member of the temperance union.

I posted about this on FB which generated some conversation. A couple of folks suggested I needed look for cash that might have been hidden away. Alas, no cash.

There were also comments about the old phone prank joke where someone calls a phone number and ask "Do you have Sir Walter Raleigh in a can?" and if the person says yes the reply would be "you better let him out". 

The last photo is the place in the right corner of the rafters where the can was found. 

Stereo Dilemma

When we moved into our house one of the first things we did was to set up the stereo system. We found a spot in the foyer next to the living room for the equipment cabinet, drilled a hole in the floor and then ran the speaker wires down to the basement. One set of speakers went in the living room on either side of the television and across from the couch. The second set of speakers were installed in the kitchen on top of the cupboards. The speaker wires were run from the receiver, down the hole in the floor, along the basement rafters, through another couple of sets of holes in the floor and then connected to their speakers. The kitchen ones were particularly tricky coming up behind the cupboards but everything worked fine.

Eventually we decided to move the turntable up to the third floor were the records were stored. We really didn't have a place to keep lots of records downstairs. I put a connected laptop on the stereo shelf and we used it to play music from the iTunes and then later from online streaming services. Currently we use Spotify. 

Several years ago we added a stereo surround sound receiver to the new television we had recently put in the living room. Dave came over and helped us install a surround sound speaker system which included two additional speakers in the room. One was a bass speaker. Both were installed on either side of the couch and more holes needed to be drilled in the floor. There were different settings to get the surround sound to work and over the years we stopped using those functions. 

I also didn't like losing the easy function of the A and B speakers on the stereo system for controlling which room had the music playing. With the new system if we wanted to have music in the living room then it was necessary to change the TV system settings to aux for the speakers to play from the stereo system and then the volume needed to be significantly adjusted. The TV also needed to be on during this process. 

So I recently attempted to make adjustments to the system and disable the extra speakers for the TV and go back to the original setup where it was easy to go back and forth between room speakers. There have been many times recently that I wanted to turn off the TV and play the music on the stereo in all the rooms. And do it quickly.

I pulled the stereo cabinet away from the wall to get at the wiring in the back and I did the same to the receiver on the TV cart. I disconnected the two older speakers from the TV and made sure the other speakers from the TV were still connected. I was not looking forward to going down to the basement and restringing the speaker wires from the TV receiver back to the regular stereo system receiver. However, before I could do that I tested the TV for sound and I was unable to get any sound from the TV. Not from the built-in speaker, not the center speaker and not the other two surround sound speakers. It was like disconnecting the two main speakers ruined everything. I spent about an hour messing with the system trying to get it to work the way I wanted it. 

I finally reattached everything the way it had been and fortunately everything worked again as it did earlier in the day but I was frustrated and angry. But I was glad I didn't need to go down to the basement and mess with all those speaker wires again. 

So I had a stereo dilemma and I started thinking about alternatives. I came up with a new plan that included getting some bluetooth speakers which run around $40 each. I would pair them from a laptop that could play iTunes, stream online services like Spotify or play mixes from a flash drive which I had been making for use in the car. I was even considering bringing the turntable back downstairs. There are also bluetooth receiver devices that can connect to an old home stereo system and send the music to a paired bluetooth speaker. 

Many people today have no speaker wires whatsoever in their homes and that looks like where I am finally heading.

Post Election Meltdown

 

The trump administration post election meltdown has become literal. Everyone on social media has been having fun with this one.

Rudy is out there making a case for Trump's wild accusations of voter fraud and looking like an idiot. Saying stupid things and looking even more stupid with his hair dye running down his sweaty face.

Here is a very funny parody video.  

Kindred

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler, 1979

Finished reading in November 2020

I had been reading a few Octavia Butler novels recently and thought I should get to her most famous one.

Considered the first science fiction novel written by a black woman and a cornerstone of black American literature. How did I miss this for so long. This book was more fantasy than science fict  ion and also a slave memoir and historical fiction. 

It was a fascinating time-travel story that was very different from other in the genre with no scientific explanation whatsoever. It was more like a horrid fantasy story that explores American racism and slavery leading to a national identity.

The book was incredibly researched and I enjoyed reading the essays and other materials that were included with the novel. The book is a classic.

The Jukebox

A good jukebox was a prime motivation for going to a particular bar back in the day and often the center of a bar. We loved playing the jukebox. The jukebox was a place we people met and interacted. Where people talked about the music and where people danced to the music. We always made sure we had some extra change for the jukebox but of course there were many times when we got change from the bartender. We always hoped there were no really bad songs because sometimes some drunk would play something awful over and over again. 

Some bars owned the records that were in their jukebox and had full control over the music. They would pride themselves with their good taste. However, most bars rented the jukebox and had a service come in to add and delete records that were often just reflecting the top 40 radio stations. A bar could also have an emphasis on country or soul music. Very occasionally we would run across a bar with some good jazz or blues on their jukebox.

We also liked going to a restaurant with a good jukebox and especially a diner with good food and those little remote control boxes at each table.

In the 90's jukeboxes appeared that played CDs but by that time I was not hanging out in bars where the primary music was coming from a jukebox anymore. Most of the places I went to had live music or there was a sound system with music coming from a CD player behind the bar. The individual bar customer no longer had control of the music except the few bars with the new jukeboxes.

Later still in the 2000's there were jukeboxes that played streaming music from over the internet where the customer had access to thousands of songs. Almost too much. Who had the time to go through what was available or you walked up with something very specific in mind. There was no longer the distinct character of the old time jukeboxes. I really do mix those good jukeboxes.

The Queen's Gambit

We watched The Queen's Gambit TV miniseries on Netflix this past week or so which was well done and highly entertaining. We enjoyed this show very much. I especially loved the late 1950's and 1960's era sets, clothes, cars, etc. 

It was a interesting coming of age story and a fascinating look at the world of competitive chess. It also explored themes of adoption, drug abuse, alcoholism, and feminism.

Anya Taylor-Joy who plays the child chess prodigy Beth Harmon is a very good actor and really carried the show.  

The scenes with the Soviet chess players and the tournament in Moscow were an intense flashback to the chess craze of the sixties when it became a East vs West, Cold War by chess political confrontation. 

I also found out the TV show is based on a novel of the same name written by Walter Tevis in 1983. So today I went on the public library app and placed a hold on the novel. I should have to read in about 10 weeks. I guess there is a high demand for the six copies available from the library.

Lovecraft Country

Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff, 2016

Read in April 2020

This book was a brilliant and mind bending merging of historical fiction, pulp noir, and Lovecraftian horror and fantasy taking place in the shockingly racist Jim Crow America in the 1950's. A very weird book that is eight interconnected stories.

I had heard of The Safe  Negro Travel Guide but this was the first time seeing it incorporated into the plot of a fictional story that revealed the horrible racism that made such a book necessary for black people traveling in America at the time. It was a despicable the way Americans treated fellow citizens and haunts us today. I was surprised that a white man had written this book.

A 10 episode television series on HBO was made from this novel.  I'm about half way through the series right now. It was one thing to read about America as a racist country but another thing to experience it through this television show. Truly horrific and much more so than all the monsters, black magic and creepy cult members. Racist white Americans are the true monsters of this story.

Pandemically Fortunate

The pandemic has been raging now for about nine months and eight months here in Buffalo. Once again when we consider the situations of most people in our country, of working people, families with school age children then we feel very fortunate.

We had been retired for about three and a half years when the pandemic shutdowns began. We already knew how to spend lots of free time in our home. That's not to say we were not adversely affected because we had also been going out to restaurants at least twice a week and have been traveling to Europe for weeks at a time. We had been visiting Philadelphia regularly to spend time with our grandchildren. 

But we were not losing any income. We were not struggling to put food on the table. We didn't need to help children with distance learning for the first time. We were not essential workers or on the risky healthcare front line. We didn't need to go out and confront the virus every day. 

We could stay at home and watch movies on TV, read books, explore our music collection. Becky was able to go to her art studio everyday and work without being near other people. We could sit in our beautiful backyard or on the front porch seeing neighbors walking their dogs or children in strollers. We had each other.

I've found ways to keep busy including writing in this blog. I've been expanding my mega mixes playing CDs and vinyl records that I've not listened to in a while. I've been working on projects around the house although nothing really major like I did when we first retired. 

I feel fortunate when I see the many neighbors on the block that live in alone in apartments.  It's hard to imagine going through this pandemic shutdown ordeal alone. We also have neighbors with school age kids that are struggling with the learning from home but also with the need for childcare every day. Some people can't work because they need to stay home with children who are doing online schooling. I can't imagine what that must be like with several kids in the house each with different online schedules.  Well, we have friends and neighbors doing that so we sort of do know from afar. 

We recently spent ten days in Philly visiting Katie and the kids. We saw what they are doing with Henry's preschool program both from home and the outdoor classes he has a couple of times a week. We had decided to drive down in October when it looked like things would be ramping up again as winter approached. It was a good decision now that we see everything getting bad again.

We will be staying home for Thanksgiving this year and probably also Christmas. Philadelphia is on the verge of shutting down again and Katie should stay home. Sean and Ashley should also stay home to protect the baby coming in the spring. We can all get together later when the vaccines become widely available.

Every Anxious Wave

Every Anxious Wave by Mo Daivau, 2016

Read in November 2020

This is a book every music nerd science fiction fan can love. A thirty-something bar owner and former rock musician finds a time traveling worm hole in his closet that he uses to go back in time to attend shows in the past. Him and a computer wiz friend develop a business of sending people back in time to see shows by their favorite bands. People bounce around time meddling with the past, having romances and changing the future. One character attempts to go back to 1980 to stop the murder of John Lennon but a type error sends him to that Manhattan street corner outside the Dakota in 980 instead where he eventually lives with the native clan in the area. Another character gets a glimpse of a dystopian future. 

A highly entertaining novel that's brilliantly done with lots of silly ideas that somehow work.

Elton John 11-17-70

Vinyl Spins - 17/11/70 by Elton John, 1971

I gave the 1971 Elton John album 17/11/70 a spin today up on the third. Today was the 50th anniversary of the live radio broadcast show recorded on 11/17/70. It sounded great. This was the first Elton John album I bought. I first had it on cassette for playing at sea on a Navy ship. When I got out I got the vinyl version along with a couple of other albums from the early 1970's.

This album certainly holds up well so many years later and I think it is one of his best records.

Sapiens

 

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, 2011

Read in November 2020

This was a very provocative history that spans the entire existence of humanity and challenges everything about being human. The book begins with a fascinating discussion of very early human history and the beginnings of the human species culminating in the rise and domination of homo sapiens. A lot of the rest of the book is the author's musings on the human condition throughout history with much of it glossed over but there were some really interesting points being made throughout and many thoughtful epiphanies. 

Some parts I read through quickly but there were many others were so compelling I needed to stop and ponder. The author was also good at presenting unbiased complex ideas in simple terms that also engendered a sense of wonderment. He also made the case that throughout human history the expansion of homo sapiens was an ecological disaster for the planet. 

Vincent Price

 

The actor Vincent Price was an icon for my generation. He seemed to be in an awful lot of the scary movies we saw as kids at our neighborhood theater on Saturday afternoons. I especially liked the string of great movies he made from about 1958 through 1963.

Then in the mid sixties he was in a bunch of teenage beach movies as some oddball villain. Very weird.

Then he came roaring back in 1971 as the very creepy Dr. Phibes.

All through those years he also made many appearances on many television shows and he was usually the villain.

He certainly mad a lot of memorable films. He was also a serious art collector and art historian. However, after his film work he was probably most known as a gourmet chef and the many cookbooks he has written. Definitely a man of many talents.

Some of the movies of Vincent Price that made an impression on me.

• The Song of Bernadette, 1943
• Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein, 1948
• The Three Musketeers, 1948
• House of Wax, 1953
• The Ten Commandments, 1956
• The Fly, 1958
• House on Haunted Hill,1959
• Return of the Fly, 1959
• The Tingler, 1959
• The Bat, 1959
• House of Usher, 1960
• The Pit and the Pendulum, 1961
• Tales of Terror, 1962
• The Raven, 1963
• Beach Party, 1963
• The Haunted Palace, 1963
• The Comedy of Terrors, 1964
• The Last Man on Earth, 1964
• The Masque of the Red Death, 1964
• Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, 1965
• Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs, 1966
• The House of 1,000 Dolls, 1967
• The Trouble With Girls, 1969
• The Abominable Dr. Phibes, 1971
• Theater of Blood, 1973

He had that fantastic role of the narrator in Michael Jackson's Thriller;

Throughout the sixties and seventies he seemed to pop up on TV shows all over the dial and was usually a villain of some kind. Here is a partial list of some of the shows he appeared on.

• Man From UNCLE
• Batman
• Have Gun Will Travel
• Alfred Hitchcock Presents
• F Troop
• Get Smart
• Mod Squad
• Night Gallery
• The Love Boat
• Columbo
• Brady Bunch
• The Bionic Woman
• and on and on

Transition Team

 

By not recognizing the Biden transition team Trump is throwing a tantrum. He has been terminated from office and will soon be consumed by lawsuits, deep in debt and will have lost his power in the party.

East Mt. Pleasant and Boyer

My daughter's house in the Mt. Airy section of Philadelphia is on the busy corner of East Mt. Pleasant Avenue and Boyer Street. It's one of the few uninterrupted cross streets in the neighborhood that runs from the Cheltenham Avenue shopping area through Mt. Airy and on to Lincoln Drive and the connector to the expressway to downtown so it gets a fair amount of traffic. It is also a bus route. I like sitting on the porch watching the world go by.

One day last fall I was sitting there when this praying mantis came by and hung out with me for awhile. She moved about on the porch railing and then slowly climbed up the column to the porch roof. She was a momentary distraction from the traffic and the people going by on the sidewalk. She was also a distraction for Henry.

It's a busy intersection. There are people waiting for the bus on that corner. It's a bus that I rode many times when I was growing up in Germantown. I sometimes rode that bus up to Cedarbrook Mall which was one of the first malls in the area back in the early 60's. I went by that corner many times. An interesting thing about riding the buses now is the phone apps that people have that tell them when the bus will arrive on their corner using a GPS mapping system. Select your bus and you can see it moving along the map. People arrive at the bus stop just before the bus arrives and you can see them checking their phone for the progress of the bus. I put the SEPTA public transportation app for Philly on my phone so I could follow the progress of the commuter trains while we were visiting.

I liked sitting on their porch in the afternoon with a book. There were people constantly working by. It felt like home. They live in a very walkable neighborhood. The train station is a couple of blocks away in one direction and Germantown Avenue is just a couple of blocks the other way. Both attract a lot of people walking by their house. We love that they are close to the avenue where there are lots of bars, restaurants, stores, shops, cafes, the library, playgrounds, the supermarket.  There is also a nice brewery. Lot's to do there in the evenings after being with the kids all day. Well, up until the pandemic that is.

We were fortunate to have some time there in October. We had been planning to go down for Thanksgiving but that didn't work out. We can't get wait to get down there again during the coming year. Hopefully in the late spring we will have been vaccinated. 

Janis - The Bio

Janis: Her Life and Music by Holly George-Warren, 2019

Read in November 2020

I just finished this biography of Janis Joplin. It was a sad, authentic and stunning portrait of a great talent and flawed person. The author delved into her personal and musical life as she explored the creative process. Often with drugs and alcohol. It was also a wonderful chronicle of the late 1960's.

She was intellectually curious and artistic. I was surprised to discover she was a voracious reader who always had several books in her bag along with her always present bottle of Southern Comfort. She read classic novels and did serious research into music. She embraced the Beats, was racially progressive and a hard working trailblazer. It was so sad that she died alone in a hotel room from an accidental overdose of heroin.

The author had incredible access to Joplin's family, friends, band-mates, letters, interviews, archives, 

Buried Alive:  The Biography of Janis Joplin by Myra Friedman, 1973. I read this biography of Janis back in March 1975.

I also wrote about Janis last month on the 50th anniversary of his death. Janis Joplin 50 Years Ago

Record Store Memories - Sly

On a November Saturday afternoon in 1967 I was browsing the bins at one of my favorite record stores a few blocks from my house in the Germantown section of Philadelphia. There were probably about ten people in the store looking at records. The store clerk was playing music on the turntable and was talking with some customers. Then he said I got something here that came in yesterday that you should hear. He put on Dance to the Music by Sly & The Family Stone. Nobody in the store had heard it before and it was like an electric bolt shot through the space. Within moments there were people dancing in the aisles. Everybody who was in that store at that time bought a copy of that single... including me.

The record was released and in stores on Friday November 17th so this incident happened on Saturday November 18, 1967

Pandemic Milk

This is a photo of a bottle of milk we got from Wegman's this week. It's one of the ways we have been getting food during this pandemic. Becky goes online and creates a shopping cart of food we need and then places the order. We then go to Wegman's and pull up to the special door after receiving a text message that the food order is ready for pickup. You text the store that you are out there at the pull up spot and then someone comes out and puts the bags of food in your car.

This particular bottle of milk has the label on it designating it for Becky Emery because it was not in a bag and was standing alone. You can see on the label that it was one of 11 items or bags. It has been a very efficient way of shopping that enables one to not enter the store itself.

Over the past 8 months of the pandemic we have also used the food delivery service from Prime Whole Foods which brings your order right to your door. The delivery person will text you when the delivery is taking place and you do not need to be there. They will leave the food on your porch. That is unless there is booze in the order. Then you must be there with ID.

Becky has also been using Dash's and the Lexington Coop which are both located right down Hertel Avenue from her studio. She is able to drive by and check out how busy they are by the number of cars in the parking lot. Most of the time she stops by there just after the lunch hour and is able to go in there and get some essentials on a regular basis.

The Coop is always fine but sometimes in Dash's she runs into people not wearing masks properly. They are usually older men with their mask down under their nose or dangling on their chin. Really dumb. Overall however we've been in good shape with groceries.

Now winter is coming and things are getting bad again.

Veterans Day Post

This is a copy of a social media post I made to a Navy veterans group today.

Happy Veterans Day. This is the USS Little Rock which was my flagship for a couple of Med cruises in the early 1970's. It's now at the Buffalo Naval and Serviceman's Park along with the USS The Sullivans and the USS Croaker which is about 10 minutes from my home. I walk through that park many times throughout the year and I have annually gone onboard the Little Rock to salute the flag on the quarterdeck, walk around and pay my respects. I always make sure I go to the berthing areas, the engine room, the mess decks and the dental office.

The first time I was on the Little Rock was in the Bay of Naples in 1972. I needed some dental work done and I took a boat from my ship, the USS Plymouth Rock which was anchored in the bay over to the Little Rock. I went up the ladder to the quarterdeck, saluted the flag and was taken to the dental office where I sat down in the chair and had two wisdom teeth removed. That chair is still there and every year I look at that chair remembering that day in 1972.

This year access to the ships has been closed because of the pandemic. I was down there a few times but no one could go onboard. Directly across the pier from the ships is one of my favorite area pub restaurants the aptly named Liberty Hound which specializes in seafood and local craft brews. I love sitting there on the patio gazing at the ships, the waterfront and Lake Erie. I always stop there for a couple of beers after my annual visit to the Little Rock and often have conversations with many old salts who come to town to visit the ships.

If you are ever in the Buffalo/Niagara Falls area visiting the Naval Park drop me a text and we can have a beer together at the Liberty Hound.