Cloudy, foggy, wet Monday morning jazz

Monday, cloudy, foggy, and wet, but not actively wetting. It rained hard late last night, a real stop-and-would-you-listen-to-that-! kind of rain event.  Clearly, it continued to rain into the night, long after I had powered myself down, because all surfaces were still quite wet this morning.  WeatherBug says we have accumulated 0.11" of rain so far today (since midnight, presumably). Mostly cloudy becoming mostly sunny is forecast for today. Highs on the 50's-60's borderline.  Doesn't look like it will clear off to me, but then I don't get paid to predict this stuff.

Traffic was light on the commute and the music was lengthy and intricate.  The iPod was clearly in an all-jazz mood, picking out three classics from three very different jazz styles: big band, masterful piano trio, and vocalist. I checked, when I got to campus, to make sure I was really in full shuffle rather than genre shuffle, and I was.  So the iPod gets full credit for the congruity of this playlist.

Jessica Williams (second track in this morning's playlist) is one awesome pianist.  A Portland native and frequent local headliner in Seattle jazz clubs, with 74 CDs to her credit, 350 compositions, and still going strong. Williams is well respected in the jazz world, with peers like Dave Brubeck calling her, "One of the greatest pianists I have ever heard..."  Though she has played all the major venues, she welcomes private small bookings (her Web site indicates she even prefers those to large professional gigs).  I heard a concert/interview with her (Fresh Air, Terry Gross) many years ago and was amazed that she could literally play any style with immediate ease.  If you get the chance to catch one of her shows, especially smaller local venues, I highly recommend. 

• Bob Mintzer Big Band: Timeless (8:05)
• Jessica Williams: Solitude (6:20)
• Frank Sinatra: Witchcraft (2:53)

PS: the jazz theme continued in-office for five more tracks before the iPod switched to a Travis tune (Under the Moonlight), so it really had some jazz to get out of its system this cloudy, foggy, wet Monday morning.

Catching up versus Pacing The Cage

Friday - at last!  Whew!  Don't get me wrong, I'm not one who hates my work week or who lives only for the weekends. Its just that this has been a crowded week with some important yet competing priorities and I am more than usually ready for a break.  Thankfully, today's calendar is mostly empty, so I can grab a shovel and start GTD'ing my way through my inboxes and project threads.

It was another dark (they all will be now, so this probably goes without saying until early next spring) and cloudy drive in, but not yet raining. Top up.  Rain and wind are forecast for today and most of this weekend.  Typical long term forecast for us: wet weekend and sun comes out for Monday and most of the work week.

As for this morning's playlist: after the always-compelling Annie Lennox, Bruce Cockburn came up with the acoustic version of Pacing the Cage from the 2009 live solo tour album Slice O Life.  This has to be one of his most poetic and beautiful songs (ranks right up there, for me, with All The Diamonds).

The first verse reads:

Sunset is an angel weeping

Holding out a bloody sword

No matter how I squint I cannot

Make out what it's pointing toward

Sometimes you feel like you live too long 

Days drip slowly on the page

You catch yourself

Pacing the cage

This hasn't exactly been one of those pacing the cage weeks for me, but I do know the feeling; don't we all at one time or another?

Sometimes the best map will not guide you 

You can't see what's round the bend

Sometimes the road leads through dark places 

Sometimes the darkness is your friend

Today these eyes scan bleached-out land 

For the coming of the outbound stage

Pacing the cage 

Great poetry with powerfully accessible imagery, and set to a truly beautiful acoustic guitar-lead melody.  If you haven't heard the tune before, may I heartily recommend tracking down a copy and giving it a listen?

All in all, a great playlist today.  Yes, I stopped for coffee again this morning, thus the slightly longer playlist:

• Annie Lennox: No More "I Love You's"
• Bruce Cockburn: Pacing The Cage
• Bobby Previte: Airstrip One
• Kenny Werner: Hey Reggie
• Rocco Deluca And The Burden: How Fast
• Belle & Sebastian: Funny Little Frog

What I learned today about creative wrighting

Thursday, and dark with stars this morning.  Hard to tell much about the weather under those conditions, but visible stars mean clear skies, so that bodes well for those of us eager to stretch the sun days out as long into fall as possible.  The forecast, always a distant second-best means of ascertaining the likely weather for the day in this mild but changeable part of the country, predicts a high of 64º with 0% chance of falling wetness. 

Wednesday came and went in a blur of back to back meetings.  That cliche phrase rarely has a litteral application to my workdays because I have learned to make sure each day has at last some space carved out specifically to get something done.  Good meetings help move things along, bad meetings simply suck up time and energy, but no meeting is "doing" time.  To the contrary, meetings usually result in more things added to the to-do list, making those intentionally calendared I'm-doing-stuff-during-this-time periods even more important.  Best practices to the contrary, somehow my Wednesday calendar got booked with meetings running end to end from 9:00 to 4:00 yesterday, and today is nearly as bad.

Today's soundtrack was varied and compelling.  The Brandan James song offered the chorus lines:

They say we're made to live as one

Let this need to fear each other

Not be passed on to my son

Let your beat go on forever,

Let your fears down rivers run

Let the silence be the music,

When their words are said and done

In these angry, noisy, and divisive times, there is a very relavent hope there.

• Lee Ritenour & Dave Grusin: Lagrima
• Brandan James: Let Your Beat Go On
• Bruce Cockburn: Salt, Sun And Time
• Valley: Boom Theory
• Sigur Rós: Viõrar Vel Til Loftárasa

Typing out that play list presented me with a small challenge this morning.  Can you, perhaps, spot it?  Apart from Sigur Rós song titles, I don't have much call for writing out Icelandic words.  I know where the most-common accent marks are hidden under my banal keyboard caps, but I don't think I've ever had a previous call to type a tilde over an o (and I assume it isn't called a tilde in this circumstance, either).  Had to pull up the "Special Character" pallet, which sounds like something a playwright grabs when they need to find a character type to spice up the work at hand.

So, that last sentence raises another question for me: why is playwright spelled that way, instead of playwrite?  Apparently this is not a word I type out very often, because I hadn't thought about that spelling before.  I would assume that one who writes plays would be a play-write, short for play writer.  But the second half of the actual word stems from the older word wright, meaning one who builds or crafts.  So one who writes plays is a builder of plays, a playwright.  Like shipwright.

I learned something new today and I didn't even have to stray very far from the task at hand. Which, in an over-crowded workday schedule, is a good way to get a little bit smarter.

Not the coldest night of the year

I think I'm finally coming to terms with the changed season, the fact that mornings will now consistently be dark when I get up at 5:45 AM, and that the heat pump will be giving the house a short injection of warmth first thing in the morning.  The last couple days have been dry (and sunny, once late morning dropped by), and could easily have been top-down morning drives, but something in me has said "top up, please" the last few mornings.  So, snugly cocooned in my little cockpit, I made my morning commute more focused on the music than the sights and smells of the early morning.

This morning kicked off with Cockburn's winter view of Yonge St., Toronto.  I really like this tune, and have to confess this morning was a repeat.  It popped up on my way home last night and I joyfully cranked it up and repeated it three times on the way home, and left it queued up to start this morning's drive in.  Yep, it's that good.  Thankfully, it's not the coldest night (or day) of the year here.

A really good mix of tunes this morning, especially appreciated since I had less external stimulus to distract my attention.

• Bruce Cockburn: The Coldest Night of the Year
• Matthew Perryman: Sinking Wishes
• Madeleine Payroux: Our Lady of Pigalle (Bonus French Version)
• The Carpenters: Bless the Beasts and Children
• Jan Garbarek, Marcin Wasilewski: February Sun

Nine worthy minutes of music

Tuesday: dark wet clouds swirling around the near tree tops, but clear skies overhead. Much colder today, with a forecast high of only 48º. A beautifully illuminated and very thin crescent moon, the type that really showcases a three-dimensional moon by the way it clearly slides up and around the edge of its sphere. Those swirling wet looking clouds are wispy, if quite dark, and very localized.  Neither the forecast nor the radar show any measurable precipitation coming today, though humidity is 98% right now.  Top up today for the drive in, probably down for the drive home.

A really good set of tunes on the commute today, though a short list with long-ish songs.  One tune (Hafsól) runs almost nine minutes:

• Dr. Dog: From
• Frou Frou: Psychobabble
• Sigur Rós: Hafsól

The playlist was perfectly timed, and the last few notes of Hafsól were fading away as I pulled into a parking spot and set the parking brake. I have made no secret of the fact I am a big Sigur Rós fan, and Hafsól is one of my favorite of their tunes, from the Hvaf - Heim album (what does one say in lieu of album these days? CD is no more accurate. Recording? Project? Digital musical offering?). There is a decidedly coo coo clock element to the percussion line throughout, an upbeat quality to the melody, and (as usual) a lot of great and richly varied instrumental work. There is also a strain of what I assume is traditional Icelandic folk music in what I hear, poking through even the most driving electric parts of the tune.  Listening carefully throughout is a worthy way to spend nearly nine minutes.

The ignorance death-spiral

Monday: dark, overcast, and colder. The weather won't be playing much of a range today, with a current temperature of 51° and a projected late afternoon high of only 59°. Still, that is mild weather to most of the world, and I am not complaining. It is the first fall weekday I have pulled a sweater on over my shirt. Probably won't want it all day, but I did this morning.

The local football team had a 10:00 AM game this Sunday, so Melissa made the has-become-traditional cheddar, feta, jalapeño, and bacon quiche that serves as brunch for morning games. That means a small slice comes with me for breakfast today, too. Very worthy!

Pizza Hut was advertising during the ball games yesterday, running an ad in which they promised to have simplified the menu, made it easier for people to follow, and eliminated "math problems" by, apparently, rounding all the prices to an even $10 bill.

This is what a major U.S. Corporation now feels it has to promise to consumers during prime placement high cost advertising on national television. They might as well come out and say, "We know the average American consumer can't manage basic addition and subtraction (especially if they have to carry any digits from one column to another), so we have made a menu even an American can understand. All pictures and easy round numbers.

Political attack ads, all dumbed down to the lowest common denominator (sorry - that's one of those nasty math-based metaphors!) and all deceptive and manipulative with the truth, made up a large chunk of game time advertising, displacing at least some of the obligatory truck and beer commercials. Again, trading on the perception that most Americans either can't be trusted with the truth or won't recognize the truth, the political ads were sensational, fear-mongering, garbage. They run because the pollsters know they make a difference, most Americans are influenced by this stuff.

Reminds me of a story I heard on NPR the other day. An author was observing that until she had children of her own she was of the opinion that you should never lie to a child. She gave the example of her child pointing to a picture in a magazine of lynched people and asking what that was. She had, of course, lied and said they were puppets rather than try and tackle the painful truth with a very young child. So, apparently, agree the leaders of our corporatocracy. Children, can you say pup-pets? Very good!

With midterm elections only a few weeks away, and with a string of initiatives on our state ballot aimed at further reducing state revenue and funded by large corporate interests, in the middle of an historic budget deficit, and given the clear inference of the pizza and political ads from yesterday, I am very concerned about what the next several years will bring.

The iPod was also in somber mood is morning, though each tune grew progressively more upbeat until we were rocking to the driven electrified blues of Rocco Deluca as I pulled into a parking place someplace off the main campus of the college I work for. A college that has to be concerned about the midterm elections and their likely impact on state revenue, a college that is trying to offer enough pre-college instruction to bring record numbers of unemployed students up to entry-level math and English so they can pursue new dreams of employment, a college that has already lost nearly 25% of its state funding and has been told to brace for even deeper state budget cuts in the coming biennium.

Does this spiral feel like it is going the wrong direction to anyone else? Dickens said it all those years ago. To paraphrase: fear Ignorance and Want, and fear Ignorance most of all, though the two seem to be inexorably linked wherever the interests of the few are set above those of the rest.

Patrick Cassidy: The Violent Death of the Sons of Uisnech and Deirdre
Jake Shimabukiro: Ave Maria
Fountains of Wayne: Utopia Parkway
Mark Knopfler: Remembrance Day
Rocco Deluca & the Burden: Soul


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Root Beer Plastigoop in the air

It's Friday! That means so much more now that weekends are (for the most part) my own again.  Still celebrating being out of school, and it's been since June already.  Should be another pleasant day, so I left the top down and drove in exposed to the dark pre-dawn.

It must be nostalgia week.  Yesterday the Grundig and today it's the Mattel Thingmaker Creepy Crawler (I promise, this does tie up with this morning's drive in).  Anyone else remember this:

Die cast molds into which you squirted a colored goop called (fittingly enough) Plastigoop.  Drop the mold into the Thingmaker heater and several minutes later you got a rubbery plastic bug or whatever.  Thing is, this being the 60's, they took the concept one step further and introduced "edible" flavored Plastigoop.  Now you could make rubbery plastic bugs and lizards you could eat. They had a taste and texture that is unlike anything else I can think of; no idea how to describe my memory of it.

One flavor, in particular, stands out in my memory: root beer.  Root beer was one of the offered flavors, probably because the artificial version of root beer flavoring was already so close to petrochemical that they only had to keep enough of the original oil-based brown color to have a finished product.  I'm sure it was totally carcinogenic, especially after being heated in a die-cast mold, and those of us who share this singularly American 60's diet history are probably paying a physiological price for it even now.

I also find, with a little searching this morning, that they are now making this thing again (though slightly different and sold by a different company: Jakks Creepy Crawlers Bugmaker. It still promises to convert "slime into bugs" and now twice as many as quickly as before.  No mention of edible goop these days. 

But back to the root beer flavored "edible" Thingmaker Creepy-Crawlies. They have a spot firmly fixed in my memory, with taste, texture, picture, and time/location stamp (summer, backyard patio, Bellingham, laundry flapping on the line, small planes flying overhead to or from the nearby airport).  I know this because that memory got triggered on the drive in this morning, and now I can't get the taste out of my head.

I got behind a short schoolbus whose diesel exhaust was just similar enough to the smell of root beer plastigoop cooking in a Thingmaker cooker that it all came flooding back to me, as unwanted a memory as slowly doopity-doopiting behind a diesel school bus was to my morning commute.

Today's soundtrack was... well, different.  The last song, at least, hails from roughly the same era of artificiality as the Thingmaker:

• Travis: She's So Strange
• Leonard Cohen: Closing Time (Live)
• Karrin Allyson: Plasir D' Amour
• Engelbert Humperdink: After the Lovin'