News ⇐ Newer Posts | Older Posts ⇒  

Two nights ago the moon was so full I was able to tuck the chickens into bed without wearing a headlamp.  One of my favorite treats, moving about in the otherworld light of an invisible sun.

This morning, feeling mortal, so listening to Sigur Ros.  Specifically, this.

A lot of solo road time lately.  Got a special deal on satellite radio so have that for a while.  I punch around a lot.  Satellite radio is almost as bewildering as the Worldwide Web, what with the rabbit holes available.  I like Bloomberg Business News just because I find it interesting to view current events through the filter of finance, never mind that I don’t understand half of what they’re talking about.  I listen to it as a form of word jazz.  I listen to some foam-at-the-mouth sports talk if they’re discussing NFL football, but after 15 minutes I’m all full.  Then maybe some NPR.  But music mostly.  I cycle through channels 7 (’70s), 8 (80′s), 21 (Alt Nation), 22 (1st Wave), 23 (Hair Nation), 29 (The Loft), 30 (The Coffeehouse), 62 (The Roadhouse), 63 (Outlaw Country), 64 (Willie’s Place) and 147 (Road Dog Trucking).

Today I heard Echo and the Bunnymen, Gary Numan, Mel Tillis, and Cinderella all on the same trip.

But the tune that really got me was “Little Lion Man” by Mumford and Sons.  Apparently I am the last person on the globe who hadn’t heard it, as it’s pretty much an international monster hit.  It is catchy and all, but I am taken above all by the grim edge of the song, which captures mercilessly the sick in your guts when you must face the fact that you have gravely failed another.  The language in one particular line is not for children or the churchly, but I can tell you I own moments in my past for which that profane phrase was the only adequate take.

You can watch and listen here, but again, out of respect to those of you who’d rather not hear coarse language, be advised it’s there.

I check in by telephone from a hotel room last night and my wife tells me she was cleaning an upstairs room with our ten-year-old daughter while the three-year-old played off to the side and maintained her own running dialogue between make-believe characters.  When one of the characters announced she was about to do something (not sure what), the three-year-old said, “Well, have at’er!”

I picked the phrase up from my Dad.  Have now – apparently – passed it on.

Canned corn yesterday.  Neighbor Jeremy and I shucked, my wife and our friend Karen boiled, cut, and canned, and our eldest daughter helped wherever needed.  Jeremy’s oldest son pitched in, too.  The two younger tots helped by keeping themselves occupied in the yard, in the wading pool, and by keeping their battles to a minimum.  It was a good day, everyone busy around the place, the sun out, the grass green.  A rooster crow now and then.  Good to have friends and neighbors as we do.

Let the chickens out this morning to a pile of trimmed cobs, they went nuts.  Kernel flecks flying every which way.

Thanks to John Connell, who has put up a Flickr album of the recent Cadence/Meridene/Long Beds show down to Phoenix Park.  It was warm, and I was wearing my New Auburn Area Fire Department sleeveless T.  We had fun, because as the photo below (taken while Meridene was playing) demonstrates, this thing is like a giant family picnic.