Month: May 2017

Today’s Theme Music

The Wayback Machine started streaming music from nineteen sixty-seven this morning. I don’t know what triggered that setting. Maybe it was that I read a VOX article ranking the best Rolling Stones songs yesterday, and several of the top ten seemed to be from the mid to late sixties.

At any rate, from the Stones came a Van Morrison connection. I enjoy his voice and style and found myself singing several of his songs, including ‘Brown Eyed Girl’. I’ve always enjoyed the simple melody and nostalgic, evocative lyrics. Much later in life, I discovered that the song’s lyrics were too suggestive for the radio. I learned it at the same time that I became educated on ‘Wake Up Little Susie’s’ shocking lyrics. I’ve also read, but haven’t been able to vet this, that Van Morrison didn’t think much of his hit.

His thoughts on his song doesn’t change my impressions of it. I hope you enjoy it, and that the lyrics don’t offend you too much.

 

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The Bookstores

We’d read about another book store to check out in Eugene. “Better than Smith Family Bookstore,” they claimed.

Photo: Smith Family Bookstore, Eugene, Oregon

What? Better than Smith?

We love Smith. A re-purposed fire station, it reeks with books. Attempts to organize the books are ongoing. Well, they are organized, but they spill out everywhere.

We checked out J. Michaels Books, on Broadway. It’s a good book store, and well worth an hour of browsing, but it would not supplant Smith for us.

We drove on to Barnes and Nobles on our book quest – the last resort in our efforts to find several books. I know I’m a writer. I’m supposed to make money from selling books. But my wife likes finding used books, reading them, and then selling them to another book store for credit.

I’m ambivalent about that. She and I enjoy reading. We’re spreading the wealth by keeping used books in circulation. And, we’re sparing the environment (some) by keeping the need to publish more books down. But, we know we could do more to reduce books’ impacts on the environment by going digital, but…sigh…we’re in love with the feel, smell and practice of reading physical books. It goes beyond logic.

All that book store visiting prompted thinking about which book store is my favorite. First, what makes a good book store? Books, of course – selection, prices, condition. But there’s often more. A spirit of reading and writing is embedded in the best book stores.

Powell’s Books in Portland remain marginally in first place on my list. One, talking with the folks working there, you can tell that they enjoy books. Two, it’s so damn big and impressively organized. Used and new books co-exist for sale. Both are reasonably priced.

Second place is more difficult. I like, on equal levels, Bloomsbury Books and Bookwagon New and Used Books in Ashland, but I also like Smith Family Bookstore in Eugene. I guess I mark the three establishments as tied for second. All have knowledgeable, book-friendly personnel working there. Bookwagon is the smallest, but we enjoy the owner, Karl.

In third place, then, is another Ashland book store, the Book Exchange. Dark and crowded with tall shelves of books, the Book Exchange feels like an old book store, and offers excellent prices and selections.

In ranking my book stores, I dismissed things like coffee shops, pastries, parking and locations. They’re just nice accouterments to a proper book store, but it’s really about the books.

What about you, readers and writers? Are there any book stores that draw your love and loyalty?

 

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Whetting Desire

There was no warning of what was about to happen.

The other and I jumped into the car. Directing it onto the Interstate, we sped to another town for two days and a night of dining elsewhere, shopping, reading and relaxing. Our mini-vacation choice puzzled friends, but that’s life. Being out there, though, staying in a hotel, reading and eating at restaurants without any damn cares whet my desire for more of that life.

My wife felt it, too. “Wouldn’t it be great to just keep driving and go to another town, stay another night?”

Yep, it sure would.

Meanwhile —

I was writing yesterday, working on the novel in progress. It was a fabulous writing day. I jumped right into that writing and editing phase after some deep thinking and writing in my head that took place while driving and shopping the day before. Terribly rewarding, it whet my appetite to spend my hours doing nothing but writing and drinking coffee.

Suddenly — 

I read about Bertha, the TBM. Some quick pedantic explanation: a TBM is a tunnel boring machine. Bertha was the one used in Seattle in the tunnel construction to replace the Alaska Way Viaduct. The A.W.V. had been damaged in the six point eight magnitude earthquake in two thousand one. Bertha had just completed its part, breaking out of the earth and into its disassembly area.

The article whet my appetite for big endeavors like digging a tunnel. I wished I’d pursued an engineering degree. Then I might have been part of amazing projects like this.

I must admit, too, the child residing just under my skin said, “Bertha. Bertha Butt. One of the Butt Sisters.” Recognize it? It’s just how my infantile mind makes connections.

But then, without warning — 

I watched the first episode of American Gods again. Suddenly, I wanted to watch the next one, right now. Then I watched the Handmaid’s Tale. It whet my appetite for more, as did Red Rock when I watched its episodes.

It just seems to be one of those periods. I’m restless, excited and energetic. Life and its demands feels like a straitjacket. Time plods along, and impatience snaps a whip. Everything whets my appetite for more, now.

But, alas —

I know this period will shift. Maybe I just slept more, so I feel more rested and have more energy. My Fitbit claims I slept seven and a half hours, an hour more than my usual. Perhaps this energy and mood is the product of my dreams when I slept. They all seemed empowering…from what I remember….

Regardless —

Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

I know exactly where to begin today.

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Unmatched

I have a middle-class American white boy penchant for matching my clothes. I’ve always done this. Mom encouraged it, conforming encouraged it and my wife encouraged it.

I was dismayed how easily I matched today in shades of gray and white – walking shorts, sweatshirt, shirt, shoes. Jaysus. Initiating a minor rebellion, I wore mis-matched socks: one is white, and the other is dark gray. Individually, each matches the ensemble, but not each other.

My choice pleased me but I admit to feeling a little askew. Then I wondered, who is going to notice this?

It’s been an hour. I walked half a mile, entered the coffee shop, visited with some friends, ordered my coffee, and bantered with the barista. Nobody has noticed my socks – or if they did, they didn’t comment on them.

I’m such a rebel.

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Inspirational Quote # 628

Writing is a force that gives me purpose and direction. Otherwise, life is a depressing repetition of events and words.

Today, You Will Write's avatarToday, You Will Write

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Today’s Theme Music

Another anniversary was passed. This one was less remembered and noted than many anniversaries.

Today’s song is ‘Ohio’, by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (CSN&Y). The Kent State shootings inspired the song when Ohio National Guardsman shot at protesters, killing four, in nineteen seventy. Nine others were wounded. Some of those shot were watching the protest or walking the area, and not taking part in the protests.

I vividly remember hearing the song for the first time. It was a warm morning, but humid after thunderstorms the previous night, and our patch of suburbia was richly green. I was in my friend’s back yard in Penn Hills, PA. Curt lived up the street from me. He, John, Ricky and Bruce, all neighbors and classmates (except Bruce), were the core of my friendships. Curt’s back yard was slick with mud from the heavy rains. Mosquitoes were swarming, along with horse flies.

The Kent State protests were mostly about President Nixon’s Cambodia Campaign, just announced. It seems appropriate for our era, as we’re protesting an American Executive branch’s words, actions, behavior and stated intentions, to listen to this song and think about the words. Appallingly, I saw an FB post encouraging ‘vets’ to run over protesters. It sickened my heart to read such sentiments. Is that why vets went to war, to return and run over others exercising their rights and freedoms?

Some seem to have twisted ideas about how it all works.

Speaking as a vet and knowing many vets, I don’t believe most of them think protesters should be run over. Maybe I’m in a bubble, and I’m wrong. We used to say, I don’t agree with what you say, but I’ll fight to the death for your right to say it. So, on the one hand, yes, the person can encourage vets to run over protesters, as it’s their right, but I find their sentiment sublimely hateful, ignorant, and depressing.

This song captured how appalled some of us were then. I remember being surprised that my friends were unaware of the Kent State shootings or what it was all about. Their parents were aware but guarded. Looking back, I grasp how conservative that housing plan where I lived was at the time.

Listen to the song, though, and the chorus, “Four dead in Ohio,” stays with you.

 

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Today’s Theme Music

Still streaming nineteen seventies stuff, I turn to Kiss.

I was never a large Kiss fan, and I don’t have a logical reason for that. They just were not me. But, one song, was acceptable to me. That’s ‘Rock and Roll All Nite’. I guess that ‘nite’ annoys me and is emblematic of what annoys me about Kiss.

This song, though, contained the essence of what I wanted back in nineteen seventy-five, when this was a hit. I wanted to rock and roll all night, and party every day. Now I prefer to read and sleep all night, and write every day.

I guess we do change.

Here’s the live version. I do like its energy.

 

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Experience

He was seventy-five, and she, the younger, was just seventy-three. They met on a cruise to Alaska, an adventure to eat food and see things like glaciers. They knew they didn’t agree on politics but there was e l e c t r i c i t y between them, not sparks or embers, but record one hundred mile long billion volt lightning strokes. So they said, what the hell, let’s try this and see.

Adventurous people they were, they went ‘camping’ together, renting a small cabin to share (there were separate beds), fishing and hiking in the day, campfires and singing at night.

Ten days in, they knew it would not work. He was an ardent Trump supporter and she was advocating RESIST. She gave him three choices: “Take me to an airport and I’ll fly home. Drive me home. Drive me to somewhere where I can rent a car and I’ll drive myself home.”

He replied, “Number three sounds good.”

So that’s what they did, swearing never to see one another again, and unfriending one another on Facebook.

It was a thirty-day life experience.

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