Readings 2021 - Nonfiction

I read some really wonderful nonfiction books this year although half as many as last year.

I only read one biography this year which is very unusual for me although it was of a very significant historical figure... Osama bin Laden.

Several of the novels I read this year were of the black American experience and I also read Isabel Wilkerson's which told the stories of black migrants from the South which had a very strong impact on me. The collection of essays on ACLU cases also contained many important experiences of black Americans over the years. I really loved it so much that I bought the book after reading a few sections of the library copy.

There was also more to read about the pandemic and the recent traitor in the white house but both felt like they were really just the first chapter of a long eventful story with so much more to learn.

I read a lot of books on American history that focused on the many aspects and events that have been hidden or mythized over the years including books about the CIA, the Secret Service, the influence of corporate intrigue on foreign policy and the false history of the Alamo. Forget the Alamo was a real eye opener. I knew a lot about the myth of that so called historical event but this book tied it all together and really destroyed all those false images of my childhood.

• The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration - Isabel Wilkerson, 2010
• Forget the Alamo: The True Story of the Myth That Made Texas - Bryan Burrough, 2021
• If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future - Jill Lepore, 2020
• Fight of the Century: Writers Reflect on 100 Years of Landmark ACLU Cases - Michael Charbon, et el, 2020
• The Quiet Americans: Four CIA Spies and the Dawn of the Cold War - Scott Anderson, 2021
• The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid - Lawrence Wright, 2021
• Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service - Carol Leonnig, 2021
• Rock Me on the Water: 1974 - The Year Los Angeles Transformed Movies, Music, Television and Politics - Ronald Brownstein , 2021
• The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden: The Biography - Peter Bergen, 2021
• Songs of America: Patriotism, Protest and the Music that Made a Nation - Jon Meacham, 2019
• Peril - Bob Woodward & Robert Costa, 2021
• Below the Edge of Darkness: A Memoir of Exploring Light and Life in the Deep Sea - Edith Widder, 2021

Readings 2021 - Fiction

The first thing I realized when compiling my end of he year list of books was that I read a lot less this year. I read about thirty less books in 2021 than in the previous several years. I think the reason was because I was spending a lot more time writing in this blog.

I read my usual mix of science fiction, crime novels, Irish fiction and more books on the black experience in America. There were a few authors that I have gone back to read again including Benjamin Black/John Banville, Tana French, Jonathan Franzen, Cara Black, Don DeLillo, Adrian McKinty, Joe Ide, Martha Wells, Douglas Preston and John Sanford. I also went back and reread a couple of H.G. Wells novels and also a collection of Ray Bradbury stories. This year I started reading short crime story collections that are city noir themed. I started with Belfast Noir, then Manhattan Noir and Havana Noir. I'm looking forward to reading more of them.

This year I read the first four books of Adrian McKinty's Belfast crime novels and also his newest novel that takes place in the US.  I read a Walter Mosley crime novel from 1990 and I'd really like to read some more of these classic black detective crime stories. I finally read We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, a dystopian novel from 1924, that had been on my to read list for decades.

• The Midnight Library - Matt Haig, 2020
• The Secret Guests - Benjamin Black, 2019
• Crossroads - Jonathan Franzen, 2021
• Belfast Noir - Adrian McKinty, et al, 2014
• Havana Noir - Achy Obejas, et al, 2007
• Manhattan Noir - Lawrence Block, et al, 2006
• Three Hours in Paris - Cara Black, 2020
• The Searcher - Tana French, 2020
• Snow - John Banville, 2020
• The Cold Cold Ground - Adrian McKinty, 2012
• I Hear the Sirens in the Streets - Adrian McKinty, 2013
• In the Morning I'll Be Gone - Adrian McKinty, 2014
• Gun Street Girl - Adrian McKinty, 2015
• Murder in the Marais - Cara Black, 1999
• Recursion - Blake Crouch, 2019
• 2034: A Novel of the Next War - Elliot Ackerman, 2021
• Devil in a Blue Dress - Walter Mosley, 1990
• Ring Shout - P. Djeli Clark, 2020
• All the Devils are Here - Louise Penny, 2020
• Appleseed - Matt Bell, 2021
• Babylon Berlin - Volker Kutscher, 2007
• The Chain - Adrian McKinty, 2019
• Squeeze Me - Carl Hiaasen, 2020
• The Cactus League - Emily Nemens, 2020
• To Sleep in a Sea of Stars - Christopher Paolini, 2020
• Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales - Ray Bradbury, 2003
• Axiom's End - Lindsay Ellis, 2020
• Smoke - Joe Ide, 2021
• Weather - Jenny Offill, 2020
• The Silence - Don DeLillo, 2020
• We - Yevgeny Zamyatin, 1924
• Blue Labyrinth - Douglas Preston, 2014
• White Fire - Douglas Preston, 2013
• Hidden Prey - John Sanford, 2004
• Fugitive Telemetry - Martha Wells, 2021
• A History of What Comes Next - Sylvain Neuvel, 2021
• The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson, 2020
• The Three-Body Problem - Cixin Liu, 2006
• The Andromeda Evolution - Daniel Wilson, 2019
• The War of the Worlds - H.G. Wells, 1897
• The Time Machine - H.G. Wells, 1895

New Year's Eve Dinners

Well, this New Year's Becky and I are having a quiet night and an early bedtime after a hectic day taking care of Henry and Clara while their mother is in the hospital recovering from her c-section birth of our granddaughter Violet. Thankfully for her Todd has been able to stay there with her overnight the past two nights.

So no dinner for us tonight. We had planned on a nice meal of snack foods but the sudden birth of Violet and our need to get down to Philly yesterday changed our plans.

Last year we also had a very quiet covid New Year's Eve with some nice snack food and drinks. Before the pandemic we had been going out to dinner on New Year's Eve for the last ten years or so. We have been having a nice dinner earlier in the evening and then going home before midnight to avoid all the crazies. Our days of going out and partying on New Year's Eve until late at night had been long gone.

Facebook today had also reminded me about places we've have gone out to dinner the past few years through the FB memories function. Four of the last five years we've gone to either Shango or Coco for dinner. The other year was at CRaVing. 

Hopefully next year we can go back to Coco or Shango.

It was fifty years ago today that I spent a New Year's Eve onboard a Navy ship somewhere in the Caribbean Sea. I really don't remember where we were and what I was doing. I just know that I was at sea on December 31, 1970.

This is the first time in many decades that I will be in Philadelphia for News Year's Day. I think probably 1978. So today I saw that the New Year's Mummers Parade has been moved from Saturday January 1st to Sunday January 2nd because of the weather. It is supposed to rain all day tomorrow.

Five Farms Irish Cream

Becky got me a bottle of Five Farms Single Batch Irish Cream Liqueur from County Cork Ireland. On the bottle it describes the product as fresh dairy cream from five family owned farms expertly blended with triple-distilled Irish whiskey exclusively sourced in County Cork, Ireland. 

I poured this glass of this wonderful Irish cream the evening before we were surprised by Katie's early morning phone call and our day long drive to Philadelphia. I'm glad I got a taste in before we left and put the bottle in the refrigerator. We were planning to have some of it on New Year's Eve but I couldn't wait for that little taste.

We have been getting a bottle of Bailey's or Emmet's around my birthday or Christmas for several decades. It has been a long standing tradition for us to enjoy a bottle during the holidays. For the past several years we have had some of this nice special small batch Irish cream. 

I wrote about this single batch Irish cream last year here.

The book in the photo is a gift from Katie. It is the catalogue of the Jasper Johns show we saw in Philadelphia. 

Violet Orla

Happy Birthday Orla. Our granddaughter was born today and given the name Violet Orla. She was five pounds and eleven ounces. A little one who decided she wanted to be a 2021 baby instead of the scheduled c section on January 14th. I wrote about the early morning phone call and the all day December drive to Philadelphia here.

The baby's name has an interesting story. Katie and Todd both wanted to have the first name be an older currently uncommon name like they did with Clara and they came up with Violet. Henry and Clara both had strong opinions about what to name their new baby sister. Henry wanted Princess and Clara wanted to name her Sunshine. Katie and Todd spent some time researching names and came up with the ancient Celtic Irish name Orla which has had a somewhat resurgence in Ireland the past few years. The name goes back many centuries and means Golden Princess. It was a very popular name in 12th Century Ireland.

There is an entry in Wikipedia for the name Orla.

December Drive To Philly

Getting to relax a little with a can of beer... Dale's Pale Ale. It's been a very long stressful day. Got a phone call this morning at 6:30 am from Kate telling me her water broke, she was starting labor and heading to the hospital. We would later in the day find out that they dropped off Henry and Clara at their neighbors house down the street.

Becky popped out of bed when I gave her the news about Katie and we started making plans. I checked with the airline to see if it was possible to switch our plane tickets to an earlier flight. We had tickets to fly to Philadelphia on January 12th in plenty of time for her scheduled c section birth of the baby on January 14th but none of that mattered now. Of course there were no seats on the morning of December 30th or anytime within a few days so we immediately began packing our bags for a drive to Philly. Fortunately I just filled the gas tank the day before and we were ready to go.

We had just been to Sean and Ashley's house for almost a week and had only been back home for a couple of days. Our suitcases were handy and we both started packing. I contacted our neighbors with a text message to Jody and a note in Pat's door telling them of our changing situation. I also went online and did a stop mail form at the post office site. Then I loaded the car while Becky packed some sandwiches and snacks. We set a personal record for getting ready for a trip.

We were on the road and actually driving down the NY State Thruway before 9 am. Becky was checking the weather on her phone but it really didn't matter. We were committed to driving down to Philadelphia today and being there for Katie and Todd to help them with the children. We had a couple of texts as they tried to keep us up to date on what was happening. We knew that the hospital staff would be performing the c section sometime that morning.

Fortunately the weather was not bad. There was no snow or rain. Just lots of clouds as we crossed New York State. We did run into some fog around Syracuse. We were also lucky that there was no road construction to slow us down and no traffic accidents or problems either. The traffic was relatively light going across the state. As we dropped down route 81 we did run into more fog off and on all down through to the Poconos and the PA Turnpike. All along the thruway we saw snow plows and salt trucks at the ready.

We stopped to eat our lunch just inside Pennsylvania at a rest stop and got a text from Todd announcing the baby was born a little after 10 am and named Violet Orla. I took the opportunity to post a message on a FB chat with family members that had been going on all day about a family covid spreader event at Christmas. I told everyone that we were unexpectedly driving down to Philly for the early birth of Katie's baby. Within moments I got a phone call from Betsy so we had a chat while we were eating our lunch.

Back on the road we ran into a lot of fog again but the temperature was in the 40's which meant no snow which had been my biggest worry about driving down to Philly in late December. The fog went away as we got past the Poconos and started driving south into the Delaware Valley. We had made very good time all day long. I thought about getting off the turnpike a little early but I missed the exit I wanted to take Sumneytown Pike down to the city. I drove on down the turnpike and then missed the exit again for Plymouth Meeting and Germantown Pike. I must have been tired and the signage has changed over the years. I kept on going right down to Schuylkill Expressway which I originally wanted to avoid because of traffic in the late afternoon. There was a lot of traffic but I just kept going down along the river until I saw the exit for Lincoln Drive. The last thing I really wanted to do was to drive on that road at the end of a very long stressful day of driving but it was very familiar and in a way taking this route was a lot quicker getting into the city and Katie's neighborhood than what I had originally planned.

I actually got into the Mt Airy neighborhood a little after 4 pm which was amazing. I can't believe how good of time we made on this trip. It was about 4:15 when we parked the car in Katie's driveway. Todd had texted me the address of their neighbors and we walked down the street to pick them up and get the house key. They had been playing in the backyard because of a covid scare in that household that happened after the kids were dropped off there but that is another story. 

The kids were very happy to see us and we got them home to make them dinner. We had a great time with them and they were both very good. When it was getting close to bedtime they both told us individually that they were tired and wanted to go to bed. The bedtime process went very smoothly and they both went to sleep immediately.

Becky and I sat on the couch and relaxed. It was such a long stressful day. Thankfully there was a can of Dale's Pale Ale in the frig for me to enjoy before going to bed.

New TV Sound

Earlier this month we finally bought the new TV that we had been needing for many months which I wrote about here. For the past month we have been using our new TV with the speakers that were built into the set. It has been OK but we really needed to upgrade the sound. I've been looking at some options online including soundbars. Our existing sound system which was an analog home theater setup was not working with our new television. The equipment was incompatible. We needed something else that would work with our new smart TV.

On Christmas Day at Sean and Ashley's house I opened a Christmas present from them that contained a Samsung Soundbar and Subwoofer set. We drove home from our visit with them on the Monday after Christmas and on Wednesday I spent a couple of hours setting up the new sound system. 

First I had to dismantle the existing system which we had for about ten years. Dave had installed it for us as a Christmas present that included a audio/video receiver, a couple of sets of speakers and a subwoofer. It never really worked well for us and one of the sets of speakers and the subwoofer were never really used. It was just too much trouble to get them working correctly and we never felt we needed them. We seldom wanted to watch some big surround sound action movie. The two stereo speakers on either side of the room plus the speaker below the TV worked fine for us.

Another issue we had with this existing sound system was the need to make significant changes to the settings when we wanted to play music in the living room on those speakers. We had to turn off the TV sound, manually change the input on the receiver from video to aux, then turn the volume down a lot on the receiver or the music from the stereo in the other room would blast very loud in the living room. None of this could be done using a remote. 

So the first thing I did when setting up the new system was to pull out all of the existing equipment. I disconnected everything from the receiver and removed it from the TV stand. I disconnected all of the speaker wires and fished them down through the floor into the basement. In the living room near the fireplace I created a pile of speakers that included the two on either side of the couch, the two on either side of the TV stand, the receiver and small soundbar. I kept the subwoofer next to the couch for the time being because Becky uses it as a table for her coffee cup. It will go when she gets a new table for that spot.

Then I unpacked the new soundbar and subwoofer and installed them after cleaning the TV stand. It took some time to get it all connected and I was surprised I needed the speaker remote to make everything work together. The subwoofer only connected to the TV using Bluetooth. The soundbar used a cable.  When everything was working I tested the speakers using a YouTube concert video and I was shocked at how much better the TV sound was coming from the new speaker system. I was very happy and Becky was too when she came home from the studio and she gave the system a listen.

The next thing we need to do now is to upgrade our stereo system with a new receiver that has Bluetooth capability because we want to have speakers in the living room that are not connected with wires going through the floor and running along the ceiling in the basement. I'm so done with all that. 

Family Covid Spreader

We spent the Christmas in Glenville NY at the home of Sean and Ashley. We had a wonderful time with our 9 month old grandson Andrew. On Christmas Eve we were invited to a holiday dinner party at Ashley's mother's house which normally would have been fine but this is a time of another pandemic surge and health officials were recommending limited family gatherings and especially making sure everyone attending was fully vaccinated. Unfortunately Ashley sister is a radical conservative anti-vaxxer who would be there along with her anti-vaxxer boyfriend and their children. Becky and I declined to attend the party and spent another Christmas Eve by ourselves. Of course Sean and Ashley came home early with the baby after spending the afternoon and evening with her family. 

We didn't want want to expose ourselves to Covid because we have plans to fly to Philadelphia in two weeks for the birth of our newest grandchild. We would not take the chance of getting exposed by an unvaccinated prison guard regardless of the number of tests that person is getting. We got tested ourselves before driving to Sean's house.

Betsy and Joe got together with their kids and grandkids at their home on Christmas Eve. They would be seeing them again on Christmas Day at Chris and Kim's house along with a lot more of the extended family. There are usually about forty people at their house on Christmas Day but there was going to be somewhere between twenty and thirty people there this year including Katie, Todd, Henry and Clara. The day before Christmas Eve Katie decided not to attend because she did not want to risk getting exposed so close to delivering the baby on January 14th even though everyone attending was vaccinated.

We found out Dan and his family were not going to the party because Marissa tested positive for Covid after getting some symptoms. They were all potentially exposed so they were not going. A couple of days after Christmas a few other people attending the party at Chris and Kim's got sick and tested positive including Ariele, Michelle and Eric. Then more including Kim and Courtney. Everyone attending got tested again. Joe came back positive too which was a big concern because of his many ongoing health problems. 

The Christmas party had turned into a family Covid spreader event. I was so happy and relieved that Katie had decided not to attend and risk exposing unvaccinated Clara and potentially the baby too.

Appleseed

Appleseed by Matt Bell, 2021

It took me almost a month to get through this book and I had to check it out of the library twice. This was a very fascinating and ambitious book that is both a dystopian science fiction novel and a historical story of manifest destiny and climate change. It is also a very intense tech thriller.

The book jumps around between the distant past, the near future and the distant future. It includes many reimagined myths, legends and fairy tales. It was a very memorable book about the natural world and the corporate devastation of it.

The second part of the book takes place fifty years into the future and makes me cry for my grandchildren.

Glass of Beer - Fuggly Sweater

A brew on Christmas Eve at Sean's house. Fuggly Sweater, a dark lager brewed with ginger cloves, nutmeg and cinnamon by Ithaca Beer Co, NY. 

Very tasty. This was my first time having this relative new beer. I had this after Sean and Ashley came back from their Christmas Eve gettogether at Ashely's mother's apartment and then got Andrew to bed. It was a very nice beer to relax with.

I also like Sean's beer glasses. I need to get a few of them.

Guinness at Christmas

Becky and I drove across New York State on the Thruway to spend the long Christmas holiday weekend with Sean, Ashley and little Andrew. It had been a few months since we've seen our newest grandson.

After we settled in at their house I had a nice relaxing glass of Guinness.

My Christmas Mixes

Becky and I have been hosting our Christmas Eve party for nearly forty years. Last year, pandemic Christmas 2020, was the first time we ever spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day alone. We still could play my Christmas mixes like always.

I had been making Christmas mixes since the early 1980's and of course back then they were on cassette tapes. Eventually like all my mixes I migrated them to CDs in the 90's. As I accumulated more music over the years I kept reworking the mixes and adding to them every few years. In 2013 I started posting them to this blog and added a couple each year and by 2016 I had ten CDs in the collection. Each had a different Christmas tree on the cover.

Recently I reworked them again into very large mega mixes. I also migrated them to Spotify in 2017 and linked to it at the end of this post.

I'll be playing them a lot over the next few days and will take them to Sean and Ashley's house for Christmas weekend.

I previously posted those CD mixes to this blog.

• Merry Christmas Baby
• All I Want For Christmas
• Christmas Time Is Here
• Christmas Must Be Tonight
• Christmas Time This Year
• Holly Jolly Christmas
• Getting Ready For Christmas Day
• Christmas Day
• We Need A Little Christmas
• Another Christmas

Christmas Music All Day and All Night... on Spotify.

Glass of Beer - Delirium Tremens

Delirium Tremens, a Belgium Strong Golden Ale from Huyghe Brewery, Belgium

Bought a four pack of this wonderful beer while Christmas shopping on Elmwood Avenue at The Beer Keep which is a new bar/beer store in town. A place where you can sit down at the bar or go in and shop for take out beers. We were carded for full vaccinations when we walked in the door fully masked.

This has been one of my favorite Belgium beers for the past few years. I first had it during a visit to New York City in 2016 at a bar called Delirium that was down the street from our hotel. There was that pink elephant on the sign outside the bar. We stopped in there twice on that trip.

The Jumping Turntable

For the first forty or so years of my life the turntable has been my primary source of music. I collected a lot of vinyl LPs. Sure, I listened to the radio a lot as a teenager and carried that transistor everywhere but that to find more stuff to play on my record player.

The ongoing problem with a record player was somehow making it jump or shake which caused the needle to skip across the record. The biggest cause of that was dancing. Another big cause was kids running across the floor.

We had a record player in our basement rec room growing up on Greene Street. We would have teenage parties down there with lots of dancing to a stack of 45's on the turntable. We learned to put a coin on the needle cartridge to keep the player from skipping to the dancing.

Later in the 70's in our house on Seymour Street we also had a problem with the records skipping because of dancing. We eventually built a shelf above the stereo system that was attached directly to the wall and held the turntable. That kept it from jumping around at parties which we had a lot of during those years.

Later on in the 1980's the cause of the jumping turntable was the patter of little feat. Suddenly we had a toddler running around that really had an impact on our record playing. When Katie was about three and a half years old we bought our first CD player. That was the beginning of solving the problem but it would take many years because we still had hundreds of LPs in our living room next to the turntable and CD player.

When our second child came along the jumping turntable problem became more acute because now the kids were running around together creating havoc with our record playing. I was also playing a lot of cassette tapes at this time to try and get round the turntable problem. We were also just buying CDs now and not getting any more LPs. 

In 1997 we moved to our new house on Crescent Ave and at that time the turntable was located in the front foyer away from the living room. The kids were also older now and not running around although Sean was eight and still throwing himself about the room while playing. Several years later I moved the turntable and the vinyl records up to my office and music room on the third floor where it still is today.

I have continued to play records up there on occasion and I have been thinking about moving the turntable back downstairs for a final last few years playing my old records one more time before getting rid of them. The kids don't want them so I will probably take them over to one of the used record stores after my last spin.

Christmas Shopping on Elmwood

Becky and I went Christmas shopping on Elmwood Avenue today. It was surprisingly  good weather. Sunny and relatively warm. There were lots of people walking on the avenue and we were surprised to actually see several people wearing shorts.

We like to do some of our shopping locally every year and it seemed even more important this year. We enjoyed our afternoon going to mostly gift shops looking for something for the kids.

While shopping we ordered some take out sandwiches from a new sub shop on the avenue owned and operated by some friends of ours. The food was wonderful.

We also stopped in a new business on Elmwood that had just recently opened. The Beer Keep which is one of the new combination bars and beer store that are new to New York State. I wanted to check it out briefly and we were required to show proof of vaccination to enter. We didn't want to hang out which was too bad as it looked very nice with food and a great assortment of beers. There was a large take out area which is something new to the state and I bought a four pack of Delirium Tremens beers.

Termination Shock Pt. 1

Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson, 2021

I just read the first half of this e-book and then had to return it to the library. It's another great book from Stephenson and I've read a lot of his novels but I just couldn't read it fast enough. This book is a near future science fiction story but it feels like the news today with the crazy storms and pandemic. Yes, the coronavirus is still rampaging through the country years from now in this book and there are many interesting technological processes and devices to cope with the virus. The main plot is also an attempt to deal with climate change. I'm really looking forward to getting back to this book ASAP.

I put a hold on it but it will take about seven weeks before I can get it again because there are so many people waiting for it.

This is one of the negatives of downloading e-books from the library. They will just disappear from your device when they become due. No more keeping it a few extra days and then paying an overdue fine.

I did have two more books lined up to borrow that I had started earlier and didn't have enough time to finish. I will complete those books now. I also have that recent Bob Woodward book ready to get in a few days. I've waited a long time for that one and I'll try to read that as quick as possible.

Miles on Miller

Becky and I were recently listening to a Steve Miller song that was on one of my mixes. It reminded us of a famous Miles Davis quote which I had read about in his autobiography. Here is the quote:

 “I remember one time - it might have been a couple times - at the Fillmore East in 1970, I was opening for this sorry-ass cat named Steve Miller. Steve Miller didn't have his shit going for him, so I'm pissed because I got to open for this non-playing motherfucker just because he had one or two sorry-ass records out."

Miles never minced words. The funny thing about this situation and quote is that I was saw these guys together on that tour back in 1970. I was actually going to that particular show to see the headliner that both Miles Davis and Steve Miller were opening for and that was Neil Young and Crazy Horse. I saw the show at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago when I was stationed at Great Lakes and taking the train regularly into town to see music. I wrote about that time here.

That was a very good show. Miles Davis began the night playing his recently released Bitches Brew album. On stage with him was Chick Corea, John McLaughlin, and many other famous jazz musicians. Then Steve Miller Band came up and played lots of songs from their 1968 and 1969 albums. It was very entertaining. This was also several years before Steve Miller would become a massive hit maker later on in the 1970's.

Then of course came the headliner Neil Young backed up by Crazy Horse. Miles certainly didn't have anything to say bad about Neil. He put on a great show as I recall. That same summer I would see him again with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Coincidently I would see him solo again in 1974 followed a few months later again with CSN&Y. That would be the last time I saw Neil Young.

Another Sunny Afternoon

Today was a sunny mild mid-December day with a temperature in the mid-40's. We took a walk through the neighborhood, on into the park and around the zoo. It was also during the week and the park was mostly empty of people. As we walked past the zoo I took some pictures. I've recently taken a few of the gate statues but today I focused on one of the small towers near the gate with a view that is usually covered by the leaves of the surrounding trees. I think I noticed this structure today because I had been reading some social media articles about Buffalo and Philadelphia architecture, preservation and the many buildings that have been torn down over the years in both cities but particularly in Buffalo.

Becky and I talked about Buffalo architecture for the rest of our walk back home. 

A Car on the Edge of Niagara Falls

Ever since we moved to Buffalo I've been fascinated by the spectacle of Niagara Falls. It's not that I like going up there every chance I get but my interest has been more of what is consistently reported in the newspapers and television stations about events that happen that are particular to the Falls.

The thing that I found so weird was all the suicide activity. There was always someone going over Niagara Falls. Sometimes in was a daredevil stunt but most of the time it was someone trying to kill themselves spectacularly. So for over 40 years now I've always seemed to notice when there was something going on at the falls but the events this week with the car going over the falls was something new.

Apparently a woman purposefully drove her car into the water at Goat Island above the falls. The car was stuck on the brink of the falls for several days. Finally the Coast Guard made a rescue attempt and lowered an officer from a hovering helicopter but they found a dead body in the car. The rescue attempt was perilous because of the icy high winds on the river. The car went over the falls a couple of days later and hasn't been seen since.

Some Closings 2021

The pandemic has taken a toll of many businesses over the past couple of years. There have been some long lists of restaurants no longer operating and some have been places we went to often for dinner. I listed a few here and most had other issues but the pandemic pushed them over the edge.

The favorite on the list is probably 100 Acres at Hotel Henry. We loved going to that restaurant and went there many times in recent years for all kinds of different occasions and often just the two of us because we liked it so much. It was also very close. The food was wonderful, the space was comfortable and interesting and there was a good bar too. The hotel closed but we've heard there is a new owner who will be getting in back in business soon. I hope that includes the restaurant. I wrote about the closing of the Hotel Henry earlier this year here.

There were many different rooms to dine throughout the restaurant. The bar was also very nice.

We also have spent a lot of time at The Steer over the years. It was one of our go to restaurants for all kinds of reasons. It was very close by, the food was always good, a great selection of beers, a nice fireplace. I wrote about the Steer a couple of times before. Once about the restaurant itself here and then earlier this year when I heard it was closing.

The Lake Effect diner was always a pleasant place to stop in for something to eat although we seldom went there for dinner. This dinner was actually moved from the outskirts of Philadelphia where it was the Wayne Diner. I had been there a few times back when I was a teenager. It was moved and lovingly restored next to the Steer.

Another restaurant we went to many, many times was Cantino Loco down on Elmwood and Allen Street in the Allentown neighborhood of Buffalo. It was another go to nearby restaurant.

The last one on this list is Mac's on Hertel. We would go there to hang out and have a couple of beers. The food was OK but nothing special. It was the Empire Grill before that and never made it as a very successful place on Hertel Ave. There was too much competition so I'm not completely surprised that Mac's closed. It's a good location and I'm sure something else will make a go of it there as will all of the places on this list.

• 100 Acres at Hotel Henry
• The Steer
• Lake Effect Diner
• Cantina Loco
• Mac's on Hertel

What to Listen to Next?

I like listening to music. All the time. All day. Every day. And I have since my teenage years walking around with that transistor radio.

These days I have many more choices of what to listen to and how. I have my fifty plus years of collecting albums scanned on to my computer hard drives taking up almost 2 TB of music that can play through my home sound system where I mostly use it in the kitchen. I have my iPod always loaded up with music to take anywhere. I always have some CDs sitting near my home stereo system in addition to the system and shelves up on the third floor. Also on the 3rd floor is my collection of vinyl albums. Sometimes it's nice to go up there and play something on the turntable although I'm thinking about moving it down to the first floor. I have a couple of other portable players scattered around the house that can play my iPod and or CDs. I also have a player in the backyard sunroom that can play my iPod, CDs, or flash drive. 

Yes, the flash drive has become a thing recently. Our new car has a media player and no CD player. I can attach the iPod to it or put in a flash drive. I recently copied quite a few of my long mega mixes on to flash drives for use in the car. I also recently got a Bluetooth speaker that can play music off of a flash drive in addition to connecting with other devices.

I have recently been riding our stationary bike everyday in addition to our daily two mile walk. I want to keep my body moving now that I'm 70 years old. I bring down my iPod and I play music while I pedal the bike. I also have my tablet with me and I read while on the bike. I guess this is multitasking. 

So far I've been writing about how to listen and not what to listen to next which is the title of the post. I've been listening to a lot of my albums in my collection. I play the vinyl, or play the CD or I listen on iTunes. I've been doing a lot of random album playing using the alphabetical setting for albums and just letting them play.

I also have a lot of my new mega mixes on my iPod, as playlists on iTunes and loaded on flash drives for playing in the car or another device. 

Of course there is also Spotify that I've been subscribing to for the past five years. I listen to lots of new releases there, to playlist that I've uploaded there and to system generated playlist created for me personally. I also regularly listen to their created playlists like the weekly Classical New Releases.

I wrote earlier about my music listening patterns.

Nana & Grandpop in Our House

My mother's elderly grandparents lived with us when I was growing up. They were always a presence in our home. We called them Nana and Grandpop. They had the front bedroom on the second floor. 

Nana and Grandpop's names were Ada and Tom Morris and they were the parents of my mother's father Tom Morris.

Nana liked to talk about growing up and the first time she ever saw a car going down the street. 

Nana was always trying to help around the house but Grandpop seemed to only sit on the couch reading the paper and smoking. He had those two yellow fingers on the hand he held his cigarette. Pall Mall non-filter in the red pack. Yes, we grew up playing on the living room floor under a cloud of smoke. Mom smoked Kent cigarettes but only occasionally. I never knew Dad to ever have a cigarette nor did Nana.

One of my early chores was to walk with him down to Sherb's, the little corner store down the street at Greene and Rockland, to buy his pack of Pall Malls. I got to get some penny candy for my efforts. It got him out of the house for a bit to shuffle down the street but eventually he couldn't do it anymore and I would walk down myself to get the smokes. I was one of the few kids in the neighborhood allowed to buy cigarettes from Mrs. Sherb who knew me from the years coming into the store with Grandpop. 

Grandpop spent most of his time on the couch and really only got up one time famously to let some drunk guy in our house which I wrote about here.

They both died within a couple of years of each other in 1962 and 1964. After they were gone Tom and I moved into their room in the front of the house on the second floor. Then we had Dan's crib in the room too. Good thing it was a big room.

Betsy moved into our room and finally had a room of her own. Life changed in our house without our great-grandparents living there with us.

The Monkees

The recent death of former Monkees singer, songwriter and guitarist Mike Nesmith has motivated me to take a look back on that band. Overall I had mixed feelings about The Monkees because even as a young teenager I was aware of their completely made of nature of their band, their music, almost everything about them was bullshit except... it worked. The television show was funny. The music was mostly good. You just needed to get past the fake nature of their made for TV act. It was also weird how the TV people assigned the instruments. It as all so seemingly random.

The group was conceived by some Hollywood producers as a music based situation comedy with lots of slapstick modeled after the early Beatles movies A Hard Day's Night and Help. The TV show aired from 1966 to 1968. It was on in our house every week and I probably saw most of those shows. Well, at least the first year or so. Initially the actors didn't have anything to do with the music which was written and performed by studio musicians but eventually they got control of the music.

I did buy some of their singles back in 1966. There were certainly a part of my teenage years. By 1967 there was a lot of anti-Monkees sentiment out there because people had learned about faux nature of the band. There were too many good real bands out there for people to be hoodwinked by some Hollywood make believe band. Sure, the TV show was funny but why would anyone want to go to a Monkees concert. I thought it was very funny when Jimi Hendrix toured with them as their opening act. That was a crazy publicity stunt and got some early exposure for Hendrix... as if he needed it.

However, Michael Nesmith was a true talent. His solo albums were all very good and he was instrumental in the creation of country rock and what would later be known as cosmic cowboy music. In 2017 I read his wonderful autobiography Infinite Tuesday: An Autobiographical Riff. 

Michael Nesmith had well over twenty well received solo albums throughout his career. I have a couple of his compilation albums.

The Monkees had six albums between 1966 and 1968. 

I have a few of their albums in my collection:

• The Monkees, 1966
• More of the Monkees, 1966
• Headquarters, 1967
• Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones LTD, 1967
• The Birds, The Bees, and The Monkees, 1968
• Head, 1968
• The Monkees Anthology, 1998
• The Monkees 50, 2016
• Good Times!, 2016

U2 at Uncle Sam's

It was 40 years ago today that Becky and I attended a U2 show at Uncle Sam's rock club. The opening act was Pauline & The Perils which was one of our favorite local bands of that time. I also remember there was a lot of snow that day and we had to drive out to the burbs for the show. I was still getting used to winters in Buffalo. It was a wonderful performance. The band members were just kids.

This was the second time we saw U2 at that club. We had been there to see them the previous May. Oddly the opening act was Jack Casady and his band SVT.  He was the bass player for Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna. I was surprised to see him at that time. The entire show was great.

We would see U2 one more time a couple of years later in 1983 at Shea's Buffalo. This was the infamous show where the dancing crowd got the balcony shaking and chunks of plaster were falling on the people below. It was a scary moment and I remember scanning the building for the emergency exits. Bono saw the balcony shaking and stopped the show for a moment. Then he finished with a couple of quiet slow songs. The opening band was The Dream Syndicate.

The Kaminsky Method

Last night Becky and I finished watching the last show of the television streaming series The Kaminsky Method on Netflix. We loved it. It was also nice that it was only half hour shows so it was never a big time commitment although occasionally we did watch a couple in a row... like last night even though we didn't realize it was the very last show of the series until the end.

The show had a great cast that starred Michael Douglas, Alan Arkin, Michael Reiser and Kathleen Turner. Others who showed up included Ann-Margret, Jane Seymour, Elliot Gould, Jay Leno, Danny DeVito, Patti Labelle, Barry Levison, Eddie Money, Morgan Freeman and I was surprised to recognize the now adult and former child star Joel Haley Osment who was the kid who saw dead people in the film Sixth Sense back in the late 90's. Many of the stars listed above played themselves as guests on the show. Michael Douglas and Alan Arkin were magnificent together. Every scene.

The show was incredibly well written with funny, witty and dramatic dialog. It was also very on target about getting old. It was also a very interesting story about an acting school and the young people attending the classes were all great.

We watched all three seasons during this past autumn and up until yesterday. It first got on our radar last summer when some folks including our friends Joe and Loraine were talking about it at a Wine on Wednesday evening last summer. They highly recommended it. I'm glad we followed up on their suggestion because everything about it was great.

A Love Supreme

A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane's Signature Album by Ashley Kahn, 2002

I read this book about the making of one of my favorite albums over the summer of 2003. 

I was listening to this album recently and having an online discussion about it with a friend. That conversation reminded me of how much I enjoyed reading this book some eighteen years ago.

Ashely Kahn is an American music historian, journalist and producer and in 2001 I had read his previous book about Miles Davis and his making of Kind of Blue. They were both fantastic books. 

His book about the Coltrane album features interviews with over a hundred musicians, producers, friends and family members. You really got a sense of the process involved in the creation of this masterpiece. It was a great portrait of a genius and part biography and part musical analysis of a musician, a quartet and an era. It was the spiritual journey of a very talented person.

This album has always been one of my favorite records in my collection. I bought it around 1974 at Third Street Jazz in downtown Philadelphia. That record store was a special place for me and my exploration of jazz along with the Temple U radio station WRTI. I would also later get this album in CD and then an expanded CD version that included an extra disc of a live performance of the original music. I love everything about this album and could listen to it all day. I have. Definitely a desert island album.

My first album of his was Impressions and I would go on to have about 50 of his albums in my collection.

Terrace Restaurant

Becky and I had a wonderful dinner tonight at The Terrace in Delaware Park. We've been wanting to check out this relatively new restaurant for the past few years. The pandemic really stopped us over the past two years but it was always on our radar because of the patio.

Well, we finally made reservations this week and went there tonight. It snowed all day but stopped about 4:30 pm and our reservation was for 6:30. That made it perfect to dine on an enclosed heated patio overlooking a lake in Delaware Park full of freshly fallen snow.  We had to walk through a lot of snow in the park to get to the restaurant but it was certainly worth it. The restaurant is located in the old park casino and we've been there many times over the years for various events but this was the first time since the new restaurant owners took over the space in 2019. Everything in the building was new and improved but had the look of an old space. The bar area was particularly impressive and I look forward to spending some time there in the future. 

The lower level had a wine tasting going on tonight but on other nights there is a stage where jazz band have started performing. Looking forward to spending some time there too.

Becky had a Rose and I had a glass of Toscana... a Super Tuscan. So then we started off with a Beets & Chechve and it was spectacular. Becky had the Shrimp and Grits. Very tasty. I had the Coq Au Vin. It was a workout taking apart the chicken but oh so worth it. I loved it. Great bread, potatoes, onions, mushrooms and of course the chicken.

Great dinner and we can't wait to go there again.

Fox Tree Fire - War on Christmas

I saw today that the Christmas tree outside Fox News Headquarters in New York City was set on fire apparently by a mentally ill homeless man. It certainly won't be long now before the crazies at fox will be squawking all day about the so called war on Christmas with the backdrop of their burning tree. Tucker Carlson has actually started calling the incident a war on Christianity. Maybe he really doesn't know that the Christmas tree is really an ancient pagan ritual but he probably doesn't care and just wants to stir up the ignorant base. Maybe if Fox News raked that ground around the tree it wouldn't have caught fire.

The grifter conservative trumpie politicians will also be dancing around the burning "holiday" tree as they fundraise from their dupes and marks. The other weird republican politician trend is recent grifters posting pictures of themselves and their families sitting around their Christmas trees while brandishing machine guns and other military assault weapons including their children. This has been happening just days after another school shooting. Talk about a war on Christmas. Disgusting.

It is also worth noting that there has been a long history in America of right wing claims of a war on Christmas. In the 1950's it was the John Birch Society claiming that the UN was conducting a war on Christmas in the US. Why? Maybe they just saw non-Christians as a threat to American values.

That's what Henry Ford probably thought when he railed about a war on Christmas in the 1920's but of course his enemy was "the Jews" and their cabal that was trying to control the world.

Actually a war on Christmas is very American and began even before the founding of the nation but it was the Puritans who were against Christmas and their were laws in the colonies that required fines against people celebrating Christmas.