A Ruby day and no playlist.

Thursday morning, cold and icy. Current local temperature is 28° F (-4° C) and wherever the roads still had snow or water on them from yesterday's wet-fall are ice.  I needed to drive Ruby (our Focus hatchback) in this morning, since she has studded snow tires on, just to get up our hill.  After that it was pretty much dry clear roads the rest of the way.  We live on a steep shady hill that tends to stay very icy longer than the rest of the area, and on those days M and I have worked it out that I take Ruby with her little clicking nails and she has one of her much-loved "no-drive days."

Ruby is the opposite of the Miata in so many little ways that I have to think more about what I'm doing (that is, how the car operates) when I drive her.  The most obvious difference (besides the two-door-two-seat versus 5-door-five seat and luggage capacity!) is that Ruby is front wheel drive and the Miata is rear wheel drive, which has a big impact on handling characteristics.  Then it comes down to small things: Ruby's wipers are activated in steps up, the Miata in steps downward, one has window switches on the center console, the other on the door panel, gas doors are on opposite sides as well.  Light switches are in different places, tach and speedometers reversed, one has stereo controls on the steering wheel and one doesn't, and so on.  Nothing of earth-shaking significance in any of this, just subtle differences that make moving between the two cars noticeable.

You'd think, after nearly eight years of owning and driving Ruby (really, a few more years if you count the Focus we had before Ruby, with its identical interior) and nearly five of the Miata (hardly seems possible I've had it that long already!) that this dissonance would have faded.  There is, however, a number to factor into this equation, that helps explain why time alone isn't the full story.  Ruby has barely over 40k miles on her (at this rate, by the time she reaches her upcoming 8th birthday with us she will have seen an average of 5600 miles a year) and the Miata has about 35k after nearly five years (so a little over 7000 miles a year on average).  We don't spend a lot of time in our cars, even counting my short daily commute.

No music this morning, since the Focus doesn't have an iPod input.  I opted for NPR instead, so no playlist to share and discuss today.

The old routine, again

Wednesday, and the weather is flakey. Flakey in both the flakes of snow and flakey-as-in-crazy meanings of the word, but mostly the latter. My short drive West to the college this early morning saw driving hail, falling soft pellets (snail?), driving flakes, and rain. The wind was a switch-hitter this morning, swinging from one side of the plate one minute then from the other the next. With short powerful swings, it drove the snow and rain vertically across the beam of my headlights. Pretty stuff, really.

This is my first commuting early morning in a couple of weeks, or nearly. I thought it would be hard to get back into the swing (pun noted but not intended) of things, but the old routine slipped back into place comfortably. I beat the alarm clock by 20 minutes. I think the dogs were more disconcerted than I to be woken at this early hour. They stretched, yawned, and vocally grumbled about having to take their morning break in the dripping cold. They also didn't bother to see me off (mostly, they do), but instead ran straight back upstairs to curl up in their still-warm beds.

Light traffic, which is to be expected on this many-folks-take-it-off week between holidays. Of the few vehicles on the road I still managed to find a truck to ride my arse. May he be as persistently ridden all day today.

The iPod was heartily glad to be shuffling something other than Christmas music, or so I anthropomorphically assume. It was certainly in a blues/rock mood.

I hadn't really paid attention to the Weezer lyrics on El Scorcho before, and am glad I hadn't. I'm not a big Weezer fan (I really like some of their stuff, and really don't like other bits of their catalog), but this song...

" 'cause I can't even look in your eyes without shakin', and I ain't fakin', I'll bring home the turkey and you bring home the bacon."

Oy. That it was followed by Nada Surf, with their typically-sharp lyrics, made it stand out all the more.

Hayden and Jones brought the pace right down with a slow moving piano/cello duet as I was parking the car in the then-whirling snow. As I wrap up this post Jan Garbarek is, fittingly, piping out Iceburn from his etherial and haunting In Praise of Dreams album. Good stuff, and very appropriate to the morning.

The full playlist:

- Counting Crows: Have You Seen Me Lately
- Bobby "Blue" Band: If I Don't Get Involved
- Weezer: El Scorcho
- Nada Surf: Do It Again
- Charlie Hayden & Hank Jones: L'Amour de Moy

- Posted via iPad.

Christmas morning

Saturday, Christmas morning, and so far the skies are retaining their ample wetness; saving the rain for later today? "Merry Christmas," they might be planning to say, "Here is our gift to you, a generous portion of the waters of life poured out for you to enjoy!" Reminds me of a poem I wrote many many years ago, which I titled, The Deliverance of Derby:

An inverted wind-blown hat
Lies like a catch-basin under a rain gutter,
Cocked by a passing sidewalk breeze,
Straining to free itself from underneath
Its liquid load.

Feet passing by in frenzied
Haste, some irresponsibly clad in last season's
Less-warm fashion, splash on through winter's
Rains. One, less agile than its counterparts,
Set free the hat.

In a shower of stale rain
A cascading derby danced over the lazy
Foot, drenching it in gratitude,
Then quickly catching upon another
Breeze, off it flew.

Now that our children are grown and flown, Christmas morning is a quiet and nearly lazy affair. We get up when we want to, and breakfast is our own time together. I made wholegrain buttermilk pancakes this morning (that and a loaf of bread being my only culinary contribution to this day of cooking and feasting).

Part of me misses the Christmas morning energy of children, the pent up excitement, and the bouncing-off-the-walls enthusiasm that children wrap this special day up in. The joy of being able to so-easily create magic for your children. The other part of me really enjoys the selfishly quiet low-key start to the day of our post-children phase of life. Another proof for the waterbed theory of life, which states (more or less) that, just like you can press down on any one spot of a waterbed and have some other spot of the bed rise correspondingly, if one aspect of life is easier/better/happier/etc. then the will be a corresponding part of life which isn't. Pros and cons through the passage of time.

Take, as a further example, the aforementioned magic. When our kids were young I used to have "daddy magic" with which I could do all sorts of seemingly impossible (in their eyes) things. As they grew, this magic waned and they saw more and more of the small man behind the curtain. This was eventually replaced by outright hands-on-hips exasperation or sad head shaking. In time, though, if I am lucky, all of this will slowly be replaced by the "wisdom of age." Dated, but still applicable and valuable, experience-based knowledge, ready for the asking. Someday, perhaps.

Fred and George live the kind of simplistic life that was all the fad among the must-have set a few years ago. They see only the usual weekend routine so far today (and they see only the moment they experience right now), since holidays don't register for dogs like they do for small children. People register to dogs: the sudden expansion of the pack by several additional members, some they know well and others they have not sniffed/met before. When small kids arrive with the new pack members then they really have things to keep track of, and dogs love a task to own and perform. Fred and George love people, so this will be their holiday reward.

After our brief lazy morning we will turn our attention to getting ready for a large Christmas dinner. We are blessed to be able to host family for the day. Melissa draws energy from the food preparations and I, whom she often accuses of having no repose, from the rest of the preparations. We will enjoy a full house today!

Later, perhaps much later, after the guests have departed and at least most of the clean up is completed, we will have a quiet Christmas evening in which to count our simple blessings of health and family.

To the few who read these finite musings: Merry Christmas from Melissa and I, and may you enjoy the happiest of holidays. May the new year bring you the dance and deliverance you seek or drench you with gratitude.

- Posted via iPad.

For auld lang syne and the gift of musical friendship

It had already been a good morning. A day off, a little bit of a sleep in, then up to fry a couple of eggs with a slice of home made bread. A couple of remaining errands to attend to brought an unexpected opportunity for a top-down drive around town. Finally, free time to put together a couple of loaves of whole grain, cinnamon, honey, and cherry/cranberry bread for the holidays. As I say, not a bad morning.

Then came a special, unexpected, early Christmas gift.

As I write this, the bread is in its second rising and I am bathed in recorded sounds of music, laughter, and friendship from many years ago.

In the late eighties to early nineties (someplace in that range of years, anyway) three friends regularly got together to play music. One played guitar, another keyboard (and sometimes really bad guitar), and the third played drums. They played cover renditions of old folk ballads and, mostly, original compositions. Since every band needs a name, they simply drew on their respective three last names, and styled themselves the BMW Band.

Now let's be honest, this wasn't a particularly good band. Off-key was the new on-key then, mistakes were as common as the laughter captured in these old recordings, and it was rare magic when all three musicians were really on the same page. Some of it is even embarrassing to listen to, if I try to take it at all seriously. But it was never designed to be a serious musical effort, this was about friends getting together to play music, exchange musical ideas, share a common faith expressed in some of the songs, solve the political problems of the day, and laugh.

As the recordings evidence, there was a lot of laughter, for all the earnestness that sometimes crept into the music. And there were some magic moments when the music really is damned good. A few of those original tunes would hold their own against almost anything professionally written and recorded, too.

Many evenings our assembled children would drift off to sleep listening to those music sessions, and they still reference those memories with fondness (and laughter, too). Quite often they can be heard playing in the background of some of the tracks (a special blessing captured on these old recordings).

Someplace along the way we decided to start recording some of our sessions, using very cheap mics and recording equipment. The sound quality is muddy and atmospheric, some mics picked up better than other, and it is often hard to hear all the voices or instruments. Yet the recordings gave us the ability to hear ourselves with reasonable honesty, which only added to the sense that these were not (and never would be) serious music sessions. And each of us had one or two of the cassette tapes these recordings were captured to, gathering dust in a drawer. Much like memories do.

I remember an interview with Chuck Mangione from about at many years ago in which he attempted to describe a certain raw, real, unpolished quality in an album he had just created. He said, and I may not get the quote exactly right here, that if you listened close enough you could still smell the garlic on his breath. This is very much like that.

Today, though, I received in the mail a remastered CD of all of those old recordings, assembled by one of those three musicians and one of his daughters. I am still listening through all of those tracks. If the companion memories have been sitting dusty in some memory-drawer, they sure come back quickly and clearly to this soundtrack. I can tell you which living room each recording was laid down in, I can see where each of us sat, and I can almost predict when someone is about to crack a joke.

This is a very special gift, the sort you simply cannot buy for all the money on the planet. Like friendship. To the Wittmer family who made this gift possible, a very sincere thank you!

Karl, Robert: good friends are the hardest friends to find.

- photo from a later BMW Band reunion.

O frabjous day, this storm before the calm

It's Friday again. "O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! He chortled in his joy." More than that, it's the Friday before a week off (more or less, we shall see, etc.) and the holidays, so it has an extra shot of callooh and callay.  This is the extra-popular dude version of Friday. "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays" will be the catch-phrases of the day as folks reinforce this communal sense of jeu de vie.

Of course, this also means that this Friday has to see all the remaining loose ends tied up or carefully mothballed for the coming week off, and that will make it a busy Friday.  The storm before the calm.

Traffic wasn't heavy, I don't think my trip in this morning took longer than usual, though I did stop for coffee and that line was a tad backed up.  All this to say I don't really know why this morning's playlist has so many more tracks than usual.  They must all be shortish in length.  A great selection today, too.

Here Comes Your Man (Pixies) is a very compelling bit of tune-smithing. I can't say I really understand the lyrics, but the words themselves seem to fit the tune.  A good bouncy start to the morning.  Peter Doherty's acoustic version of Lady Don't Fall Backwards is a jagged listen, with coffee-house-open-mike-raw guitar work and similarly raw (often off-key) vocals. It feels very personal, like swapping songs with a buddy in your living room.  David Gray is always fine, also in a raw but energetic fashion.  Capping it off with the very beautiful guitar work of a contemplative Pat Metheny put the cherry on top of this Friday sunday. Good stuff.

The full playlist:

• Pixies: Here Comes Your Man
• Logh: Saturday Nightmares
• Robert Walter: Don't Hate, Congratulate
• Peter Doherty: Lady Don't Fall Backwards (Acoustic)
• The Weepies: Red Red Rose
• David Gray: Debauchery
• Path Metheny/Brad Meldau: Find Me In your Dreams

Now: quiet days, coming up: Nixon singing

Thursday morning, dark, lightly misting rain, and calm.  Top up, for the record. The commute seemed quieter than usual this morning, which may be a result of the approaching holidays.

This is also the period of the quiet campus.  While my meeting and project calendar has yet to reflect that (it will soon!), the campus is as close to sleeping as it ever gets, with most of the students and faculty gone, parking lots more empty than full, and even the rest of us starting to thin in ranks.  It is odd to make the half mile walk from North Campus to Main Campus and meet almost no one on the way.  I enjoy the relative quiet, but also miss the vibrancy and energy of the busy-in-full-swing campus.  Not that there aren't many folks on campus working to get things ready for the next quarter.  This is also that small window of opportunity for any construction, upgrade, deep cleaning, or reorganizing that needs done, a slice of time when work can happen without interrupting our central business of teaching and learning.

Next week the campus will be officially closed.  All activities except the bare minimum required are to be shuttered and buildings will not be heat or services provided.  This will be our third (I think) year of harvesting whatever utility savings we can squeeze out of a week of closure.  In this shuttered economy, every penny counts dearly. I will not be commuting next week, so after tomorrow's post, it may be a more sporadic week and won't be focused (to the extent these finite musings ever are) on the daily commute's shuffled playlist.

Today I get to look forward to a lunch break with my beloved of 29 years.  Despite the fact that we work less than six miles apart, it is rare that we get the opportunity to do this, so I color it a special treat.  

This morning's playlist was another odd one, not  seamlessly coordinated, but interesting.  The Roosevelt (High School) Jazz Band kicked off the commute with an Ellington selection, All Heart. I've noted before in this space that a colleague and friend's son played in the band the last four years (now off to college), and we still get together for the annual Ellington Nutcracker holiday concert the band puts on.  Consistently good stuff.

Life's Short Call Now (second to last tune from this morning's playlist), from the album of the same name, reminds me that Bruce Cockburn has a new album coming out in March (approaching 30 albums since 1970!), and it looks like it should be amazing.  What am I going on, when there are no pre-release tracks to go by?  The published playlist (song titles are usually a good indicator of content in a Cockburn album) and the list of musicians who will be working with Bruce on the album. Cockburn is often referred to as a musician's musician, and it becomes evident when you look at the musicians who have worked with him over the years.  On this coming album will be local (Bainbridge Island) guitar legend Bill Frisell, Norah Jones, Madeleine Peyroux, Jenny Scheinman, Annabelle Chvostek, and others.  The new album is titled Small Source of Comfort (title link will take you to a view of the album cover and playlist).

Cockburn is quoted, talking about the song (on the new album) titled, Call Me Rose, ""I woke up one morning with this song in my head almost complete. Richard Nixon is singing in person, having been reincarnated as a single black woman. The song was in my head and I had to write it down," he said.

In Cockburn's poetic hands, and with his history of passion for social justice of all sorts, this should be a treat.  I'm intrigued.

• The Roosevelt Jazz Band: All Heart
• John Michael Talbot: Rebuild My Temple
• Landon Pigg: Speak to the Keys
• Bruce Cockburn: Life Short Call Now
• Stan Getz/Joao Gliberto: O Grande Amor

The little dripping cloud icon

Wednesday already, dark but dry today.  Forecast calls for cool (low 40's F, 2-6º C) temperatures with rain off and on.  The forecast also offers little hope of getting a top-down drive anytime in the foreseeable future, with the little dripping cloud icon displayed for as many days forward as the predictors are predicting.

This is, after all, that time of year when we get used to seeing that particular little weather icon on pretty much any digital or TV forecast display.  This is when the elements which make the Pacific Northwest so beautiful start to challenge the psyche of many.  Tall mountains to the east and west create definite boundaries to the horizon and a low-hanging, solid, grey ceiling creates a dull yet palpable claustrophobia.  Those of us who grew up with it don't seem to see it as much as those who transplanted here at some point after reaching whatever state passes for adulthood these confused days.  Those who know there is a different kind of winter weather, who know that there are achingly deep horizons just beyond those things which block their view here, are the ones who most resent the topographical and atmospheric walls of the PNW winter.  Me, even though I start to moan when the little dripping cloud icon becomes incessant, I generally find this weather a bit of a comfortable wrap.  I'd probably find a bright cold midwest winter somewhat agoraphobic.

An interesting blend of music and styles assembled itself for the drive in this morning.  This isn't a mix that necessarily flows seamlessly from track to track.  It was a mix that required some mental tracking to keep transitions from one tune to the next from being jarring. I mean, John Mayer may be good, but following a Vivaldi cello sonata?  John, if by some odd chance you ever read this blog post, take it from me: don't book a classical concerto as your warm up band. And Ralf Illenberger's rich electric guitar improvisation make, shall we say, an interesting counterpoint to a traditional cuban love song from the Buena Vista Social Club album.  Terence Blanchard, on the other hand, brought it all back down to earth with a track that could slide easily up against almost anything, up tempo to slow.

• Buena Vista Social Club: Dos Gardenias
• Ralf Illenberger: Blue Darkness
• John Butler Trio: What you want
• Pieter Wispelwey: Sonata nr. 8 a minor (Vivaldi)
• John Mayer:  Vultures
• Terence Blanchard: Fred Brown