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Cats are totally into my books…as sleep aids.

This is Thistle:

This is Boggs:

Thanks to their owners for sending these photos.

As you know I publicly track my authorial errors with an Oops! tag.  Therefore I enjoyed this entry on Terry Teachout’s blog, especially since a few sharp-eyed readers have noticed that the image on the hardcover of Truck: A Love Story is similarly reversed.  The Pops biography is terrific, by the way.  It was one of those books I parsed out so as not to devour it all at once.  Teachout is especially thought-provoking when addressing Armstrong’s lifelong navigation between artistic endeavor and the primary duty of entertaining the folks in the seats.  Armstrong took the second half of that equation very seriously, and I think Teachout has done him a fine posthumous service in suggesting that the two need not be mutually exclusive, and – perhaps even more to the point – those who would make it so are engaging in a bit of the ol’ hoity-toit.

I recently rediscovered a note I wrote to someone about the fact that in both the book Truck and on the next Long Beds album, I mention “Seven A.M.”, a painting by Dennis Hopper.

Um.

That’d be Edward.

Wonder how many times I’ve done that.

Not that Dennis (currently very ill) can’t paint…

Music project continues.  We gathered in my little office this week to record a few additional bits for the Long Beds album due out next March.  Today I will try to get some (over)due writing done and stow the last of the pig fencing.  I have been using the International around the farm a lot lately.  Right now it’s loaded down with lumber and steel fence posts.  It seems happy to have its springs flexed.  Speaking of loaded Internationals:

As far as I know, that is not my truck, although I like to think it might have been her in a prior life.

The other night at the Heyde Center I explained that over the years I have developed two groups of friends: The pickup-truck-and-gun-rack crowd, and the artist/dancer/poet crowd (or, the pale-and-tortured contingent).  They need not be mutually exclusive, but often are.  This is a shame, as both continue to enrich my life in ways I never dreamed.

Anyways.  (As we say in pickup-truck circles.)

Way back when I first started going to poetry readings, I wrote a poem in which I tried to explain to my new poet friends why I so loved the pickup-truck-and-gun-rack life.  I performed it the other night at the Heyde Center and a few people have asked if it’s in print anywhere.  It’s not.  As poems go it’s not much of one, but it’s a blast to perform out loud.

So I’ve posted it after the break. Continue reading this entry ⇒