Willow, weep for me
it was said that coyote came upon the willow and asked why it always stood in the creek shaking so. it just makes me feel good, replied willow. coyote jumped into the water to give it a try, the water rose up and washed him away and he was dead. blue jay reanimated him, but that’s neither here nor there.
"Digging for roots in the warm springtime gave a feeling of being part of the beautiful natural world. It was healthful and invigorating, while the delightful hours passed until it was time to pause and have a good bellyfilling picnic lunch of acorn meal mush, roots, tubers, and maybe a cooked rabbit or [musk]rat. All about, the birds were singing, and many interesting animals and insects could be watched, especially by children, who helped their mothers until they got tired." -- Elsie Allen, 1972
Big Ears 2022
After three years of waiting, I am finally able to attend Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, TN. Got a cozy AirBnB, will try to share here. Music, food and whiskey…
Lunchtime Reflections on the Master
Summer’s end, Ukiah 1979. The van is full of squirrely Indian kids heading off to the softball field, or the movies, or wherever. It’s hot and we’re blooming. Someone’s got a radio with better reception than that of the van. It allows us to listen to ‘Lucky 13 – KDIA’ during the daylight hours. I hear this thing that changes my life in an instant. “I ain’t got no…money…” What band is this? How can the guitarist and the bassist be so damned tight? This singer also rules. Wait, is he singing about getting off on the radio? Prince, eh? I love it!
Fall, 1982. Through repeated, practically nonstop plays, I have become one with the “1999” cassette. My best friend, Hugga, and I listen to it while talking about it on the phone. Everybody who is anybody realizes that the first two albums by The Time are equally as good. There is only one way that this is possible…they are all created by the One. When he does appear in public, he is carried around by his bodyguard, Big Chick. Has anybody ever been as talented or interesting? We barely had time to stop laughing at those amazing jams by Vanity 6 before all of this dropped.
Summer, 1984. The year that the rest of the white people finally really got it.
March 31, 1987 – It has become traditional that the women down at Hayes Music expect me on the morning of the release of a new Prince or Prince-related album. Mom has known for several years that I am cutting class on these days to meet the UPS truck and grab my copy right out of the box. Sign O The Times is beautiful, if cold and dark. I have read every magazine article, cheesy pocket book or review that is available on the topic of Prince. No joke, I utilized the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature to accomplish this, so suck it, Internet.
Anybody that really knows me knows that I am at a loss right now. Is there really only Willie Nelson left? In any event, Prince brought so much beauty, wonder and joy to this life of mine. Many of you are what I like to think of as friends-in-Prince, first and foremost. We are those freaks. He freed us and showed us the way. Courage in the face of bigotry. Funk in the face of Reagan. Love is the law and God has a Dirty Mind.
Dirty Dan’s Cali Common
If you’re searching for this, you may be in possession of a bottle of Dirty Dan’s Cali Commons Clone. It’s essentially a variant on the recipe linked below.
out, damned waitress…
I ate at the Pancake Circus in Sacramento last week. When my waitress brought me water, I had a total Christopher Walken/Dead Zone moment. It was like I got such a blast of something from this waitress that I have been sort of preoccupied since then. I am hoping that if I just spit it out, I can just go on. To wit:
I love my wife. She’s caring and fun. The small things that usually bother other people just glide right by her.
She has been working at the Pancake Circus on Broadway for about 7 years. She works the graveyard shift, but doesn’t mind it. We’re both night owls and always have been. She has plenty of regular customers. Some nights she says that it hardly feels like work. Hardly, that is, until her ‘dogs start bark- ing.’
Last year she took a long vacation (we took a bus to see her daughter in Bozeman.) Her customers were apparently up in arms. She spoils them, I think. Once she notices which sort of preserve is to someone’s liking, she spreads it for them without fail. When she hands a man his water and coffee, it’s right beside his favorite newspaper sections. I don’t personally like that sort of treatment very much. I enjoy mixing things up occasionally. I may feel like butter one day, marmalade the next. I’ve always found it best to serve myself.
I send her off to work most nights with a breakfast of her own. I make her oatmeal just how she likes it. I try to rotate the juice so that she never knows which it’s going to be. I put her favorite music on the cassette radio we keep over the ironing board. She’s partial to Sinatra, which I can’t stand. I have always been a Chet Atkins man. It’s her meal though, and I like to make it comfortable.
She heads off for the bus and I get ready for turning in. Lately I only need about five hours of sleep at night. I close things down once she’s gone and wake with the schoolyard sprinklers across the street. I lie there and listen to them for a bit while I try to reflect upon the night’s dream.
I have had the same dream at least 3 nights a week for the last month or so. In the dream, I am young again. I am in the house of my first marriage (Gladys and I were both widowed when we met.) My first wife is there with me and we are silent. The silence is strange to me since we generally were singing. My first wife and I had a musical act that we would perform on the weekends in the local roadhouses. We were called ‘Kitch & Sink' and we’d play pert’ near any song that any fool called out from the charts of the day. In the dream though, we are silent.
I rise slowly from the bed and start in with the morning ritual. Just about the time that the teachers and students begin arriving at the school, I head for the kitchen to prepare dinner for my Gladys. She’s a hard worker and I like to show her that I notice. On a good morning, I’ll grab a flower or two from the yard. Other days, I just go with an extra hug and peck on the forehead. She never really has much to say about work as it hardly ever surprises. She always has a kind thing to say about the meal, although it’s usually nothing special.
I love my wife.