Amidst it all, Trane could be so sweet…

Yep.

A cure for bad news

For an old lefty like me, the last couple of weeks have been brutal and downright depressing!

• Massachusetts Senate election. Teddy must be outraged looking on from his heavenly abode.
• As a result of the above, healthcare legislation is foundering on the rocks, and probably doomed.
• Supreme Court decision allowing corporations to spend limitless millions from their own coffers in campaign donations.
• Obama and democrats losing support in the polls.

I could go on, but you get the picture. I decided I just needed to get away from all of it for a while, so we went up to our place at Tahoe Donner on Thursday afternoon and skied at Squaw Valley on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Tons of snow and great skiing even though it was sometimes snowing and windy.

On Saturday afternoon, after we got back from Squaw, I took my dog Spenser out for some snowshoeing. The snow was powder and about 4-5 feet deep. Those of you who only know snowshoeing from afar probably think that once you have your snowshoes on, you just float across the snow with little effort. Wrong! You sink until the powder compresses enough to keep you from “post holing”, but then you have to lift your back shoe out for the next step and literally plow on. It’s great exercise. We busted a trail for about a quarter mile or so and then returned in our own track which is easy-going and fast. (BTW, snowshoe people just LOVE to find each other’s tracks and then use them to avoid having to bust their own trail).

Anyway here is a photo of our track taken about midway on our return trek looking toward where we started. Be sure to double-click to blow it up.

Back in “the world” and not liking it any better.

~ Peace out, Tom

Patti Smith - “Just Kids”

In the “Books” section of Sunday SF Chronicle, there is a great review of the new Memoir by Patti Smith, titled “Just Kids.”  Here is a link to the review, and be sure you click on the thumbnails to enlarge the picture of Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe on the Coney Island boardwalk in 1969.

The review is informative and prompted me to order the book.  An excerpt from the review:

Smith made her way from New Jersey to New York at age 20, after giving up a baby for adoption. She and Mapplethorpe fell hard and fast for each other. "He radiated a charm that was sweet and mischievous, shy and protective," she writes. They rented a squalid apartment in Brooklyn, where Smith posted pictures of idols such as Dylan and Rimbaud on the wall. With no TV set or telephone, they passed the time listening to LPs and making drawings, paintings and collages.

"We gathered our colored pencils and sheets of paper and drew like wild, feral children into the night, until, exhausted, we fell into bed," Smith writes.

They were true starving artists, sometimes choosing art supplies over food. "I was not ready for the constant hunger that gnawed at me," she recalls. "I was a skinny thing with a high metabolism and a strong appetite. Romanticism could not quench my need for food. Even Baudelaire had to eat."

They slept on their coats and scavenged the streets for furniture. Dinner was often day-old bread, doughnuts or a soup that Smith made with lettuce and bouillon cubes. She started earning a bit of money working at famous bookstores such as Scribner's, where Edward Gorey and Katharine Hepburn were customers.

Smith and Mapplethorpe were "irrevocably entwined," no matter what. Even as he began having sex with men, he clung to his relationship with her, denying that he was gay. They moved to the infamous Chelsea Hotel, a wondrous scene in the 1970s. Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and William Burroughs passed through the lobby, and became her friends and mentors. She and Mapplethorpe were regulars at a bar-restaurant next door, El Quixote, where they found themselves among luminaries such as Janis Joplin, Grace Slick and Jimi Hendrix.

My former wife and I stayed for one night at the Chelsea in the spring of 1970, just so we could say we had stayed there.  We did not see anyone famous that evening, but I do remember the two rather large cockroaches in the bathtub!  Anyway, this book sounds like a real winner for all of us who lived through those times and are still around to remember those times.  If you need any further prompting, consider the last lines of the review:

There's no need to ghettoize this book by praising it as an impressive memoir by a famous musician. It is simply one of the best memoirs to be published in recent years: inspiring, sad, wise and beautifully written.

~ Tom

There is cool and then there is beyond cool…

Can’t decide whether I love the jacket or the watch the most.

Jesse Winchester and Elvis Costello

A few weeks ago I started seeing rave reviews for the then-upcoming season 2 of “Spectacle – Elvis Costello with …” Season 1 seems to have slipped by me and a whole lot of other people, but lots of fanfare for this year. I set my DVR to record the series, but did not get around to watching the first episode until a few days ago. I’m now a rabid fan. While I always respected Costello’s work, it never really moved me. But, in his role as a talented host with tons of lore to share with his guests, he is compelling.

The first show was with Bono and Edge from U2. I’ve been a U2 fan since I first saw then on the Live Aids world-wide telecast in the mid-eighties. I saw them live in San Francisco about 20 years ago and they blew me away – one of the best live shows I’ve ever seen. (And on June 16th, I, Eileen and my son Jesse will be seeing them in Oakland!) Anyway, they were great with Elvis, all of them sharing stories from there respective beginnings and eventual “path-crossings.”

The second show cemented my new-found zeal: Jesse Winchester, Neko Case, Sheryl Crow, and Ron Sexsmith. As expected, the latter three were all wonderful, but I want to talk about Jesse Winchester, my own son being his namesake.

After getting his draft notice in 1967 he fled to Canada, refusing to take part in the Vietnam war. In 1969 he met Robbie Robertson of “The Band” who helped him record his first album released in 1970. Many consider that first album to be a masterpiece with songs like “Yankee Lady” and “Brand New Tennessee Waltz” among many great compositions. (Bernie Taupin once said that his big regret was that he did not write “Brand New Tennessee Waltz.”) Jesse lost a lot of his recording career because of his sojourn in Canada, but finally returned for concerts and recording sessions under the amnesty program. I consider Jesse Winchester to be one of the greatest songwriters alive today, and that is why is was a true joy to see and hear him on Elvis’ show.

They started the show with Elvis powering into “Payday” one of Jesse’s great upbeat compositions and eventually Jesse did a solo performance of a ballad from his new album that I had not heard yet. It was stunning, in fact so much so that Neko Case, who was sitting right next to him had tears running down her face near the end. Wow!

I could go on and on about Jesse and his songs, but let me just say that if you have not heard his work, by all means check it out. I’m so glad he is still on the planet with all of us, and still writing and singing fantastic songs. Oh, and check out the Spectacle show with Elvis on the Sundance Channel.

~ Tom

Andy & John

The world would be a whole lot better place if these two rascals were still with us…

Back from vacation

We just got back to our home in Alameda a few hours ago after taking a week off to Seattle and back.  It was great to see my daughter and her family in Seattle – grandkids are a trip.  They do not have television (a choice they made to keep the kids from being TV slaves), so I really was not paying much attention to the news during the last week.  And you know what?  The world went on without me, and I had a mellow time not worrying about how it went on.

Having returned and just brought up the news on my computer, I see that Dick Cheney is even more of a raging asshole than when I left him a week ago.  As one of my heroes, Bugs Bunny would say: “What a maroon!” 

I hope you all had a happy holiday, and I wish everyone the new year they are hoping for.

~  Tom