I sure wish I’d been keeping a journal “back in the day.” It would help me nail down some of the tees in the memory quilt with more specificity. I have started a journal several times. It only “took” once. That was in the journal that I started on October 26, 2012, which starts this…
Seven month’s ago I threw a party. A rarity for me. I’ve never been much on throwing parties. Called my party “The 25,590 Day Shindig,” celebrating 70 successful trips around the sun. Held it at a place which will receive a tablespoon or two of my ashes after these bones burn. [There is a list…
It was another weekend with LOTS of favorite things. This time it was me asking Shelly the question: “What was your favorite thing this weekend?” Before she could answer I gave her my answer: “My favorite thing was glancing over at Tom and Gloria at Piney River as Bob&Jeff sang ‘Like Dogs.’” It coulda been…
It is right up there on my list of favorite “questions from Shelly.” There have been some doozies. The one at the top of the list has been there since our first date. (What’s said in the Corolla on 10/13/12, with The Rainmakers album “25 on” playing, stays in the Corolla….) When she asked the…
It’s the end of something. This is the last day of 2016. I’m looking back for a bit, while focusing on the future. I’m thinking about some firsts. 1. The first time I stepped foot in Oregon. We had driven a 2 car VW caravan from Washington, MO. Heading for Corvallis. Hoping she would be…
Last night at The Rock House, a friend greeted me with some kind words and that smile of hers. Then this special person, who didn’t know I had been been in the Army until she saw my Facebook status on Veteran’s Day, asked me this: “what did you do in the army?” As I’m wont…
I’ve told several people recently about “a chain of events…things that happened” so I might as well write it down…. The story I’ve been telling is very linear. 1. In late August of 2011, a woman I was exchanging messages with on a dating site told me about house concerts being held at a place…
First-time-tunes…continued. I left off in 1976. It looks like there were 25 years when I don’t seem to have experienced any “first time tunes.” Really?? I certainly never stopped listening to music, but I did mostly stay in my musical comfort zone and listened mostly to “old favorites” during those years. Those were “work hard,…
Apparently Hemingway neither said the above phrase that has been attributed to him, nor did he live it…in spite of his heavy drinking. While I probably had an adult beverage or three before I fired off the following as an e-mail at 11:55 pm on 6/7/15, I wasn’t drunk when I wrote it. And in…
Over the past 50 years I have seen lots of live music, in lots of different venues. Smokey bars; baseball parks; 1,500 seat auditoriums with great acoustics; Chuck Berry’s farm; House of Blues in Chicago; The Fabulous Fox and The Schnitzer….and lots of others. Many venues remain on my bucket list…places I want to see…