Late February snow storm

We took off for our Tahoe Donner place on Thursday at about 2:30 pm, just ahead of a snow storm forecast.  It caught up with us just as we started to head up the pass.  That meant some white-knuckle driving at 25 mph, but we made it in and up the driveway and into our garage at about 7:30 – five hours for what usually take a little over three hours.  It snowed very hard all that night and all day Friday, so we did not get out of the house to go skiing.  It would not have made any difference because almost all the ski resorts did not open because of gale-force winds.  We ski at Squaw Valley USA, and the winds over the ridge tops there were clocked at well over 100 mph!!

We got out today, and got some nice skiing in but because it was a Saturday after a big storm, every powder hound within  300 miles was there.  Too crowded for my tastes.  Anyway, when I got back this afternoon I took some pictures to show you how much snow fell on us:

This is a shot from above our place, which shows that the snow is up to our first story.  The pickup belongs to a neighbor and it broke down a couple of weeks ago.  He still hasn’t been able to get it started.  Obviously the plow had to work around it.

This shot shows the front of our place and when you are looking out that lower window you cannot see above the snow!

Another shot of the ill-fated pickup.

Bob Parlocha gets well-deserved kudos

Is seems to me that most people will tell you they are from somewhere.  It’s the place of their roots, the area on earth where they feel grounded and most fulfilled.  Me, I’m a west-coast boy, specifically the San Francisco Bay Area.  Where ever I go, I always get that sweet, comforting  feeling when I return to my home in Alameda on San Francisco Bay. I spent some time in Europe and on the East Coast, and enjoyed it, but my soul was always ready to fold up the tent and return home. 

Part of “home” here in the Bay Area is Bob Parlocha.  We used to have a renowned jazz station here, KJAZ, and Bob was one of the best DJ’s on that station.  I listened to him and the sounds he played for all the years I was “home.”  KJAZ shut down in 1994 because of the money woes of its rich owner who had lovingly run it at a loss for many years.  But KCSM, a public radio station in San Mateo County filled the void and went to an all-jazz format, where it remains today.  Parlocha continued his “Dinner Jazz” program under KCSM’s auspices.

So I was pleasantly surprised today to find this article/interview in today’s SF Chronicle.  It turns out that Parlocha is recording his show in a garage studio in at his home in Alameda,  sending it to WFMT in Chicago via the Internet, where they download it to CDs and then upload the program to satellite. Then the satellite beams it to some 260 stations around the world. A number of stations put it online, including KCSM.

This revelation made me all warm and fuzzy because I live in Alameda too!  In all these years I don’t recall ever seeing a picture of Parlocha, so who knows, I may have walked by him dozens of times in the local Safeway store, or more likely one of the coffee places like Peets at the corner of Park St. and Central Ave. in Alameda.  If that happened I can assure you that he was not speaking during those moments because I would recognize his voice anywhere.  Now that I have recent pictures of him from today’s article/interview I’m going to be on the lookout for him!

If you are interested in hearing him and the music he plays for you tune into this station from 12am – 6am or 6pm – 12am; just click on the “Listen Live” button.   Or you can start here.

I’ll close with Bob’s terrific answer to the last question in the interview:

Q: What one CD would you take with you?

A: "Giant Steps" by John Coltrane. It came at a time (1960) when the door was open and my mind was seeing the universe.

Where are the Smiths? (as in “tune” and “word”)

On occasion I hear “main-stream” FM radio and I have realized that virtually all of the popular artists are singing songs that I call “slab compositions,” a term I have coined myself for lack of a better identifier. What seems to be going on is that composers (even some of the better singer/songwriters) just take a bunch of chord changes and then sing only notes that fall in the chord and what comes out is this “slab” of a song. If you want a sample of what I am talking about, just check out “The Pulse,” channel 26 on Sirius/XM satellite radio. And, the lyrics, when sung in this monotonous, often-single note repetition, come out boring and lifeless. (I actually can write one these type songs pretty easily by just getting out my guitar and working out a nice chord sequence and then simply singing some notes that fall under the hand).

The problem is that we have pretty much lost the tunesmiths and the wordsmiths these days, at least in pop and modern rock. It’s difficult and tricky to write really cool tunes that don’t come out as simple slabs, and it’s just as hard to write lyrics that have some soul and zest yet aren’t corny or cheesy. I could give you a hundred examples “the real deal,” ranging from pretty much anything Paul Simon wrote more than 10 years ago (“American Tune” is sheer genius) to the songs from most of the great traditional musicals (“I Loves You Porgy” indeed). But one example that just popped into my head as I was thinking about this was this:

“And if you should survive to 105
Think of all you’ll derive out of being alive
And here is the best part
You’ll have a head start
If you are among the very young at heart.”

Of course this is from the great song “Young at Heart” written by Carolyn Leigh, lyrics, and Johnny Richards, tune, popularized by Sinatra in the mid-fifties and covered hundreds of times by other artists, including of late none other than Tom Waits!

Perhaps I will weigh in further on this subject in later posts with actual links to the music I am discussing, but that will have to wait for another day.

~ Tom of the young at heart

Foodily.com–A cook’s dream site

Hi all.  I just got back from 4 days up at the Tahoe place.  I meant to post something from up there, but I just never got around to it.

My wife Eileen and I love to cook, as do almost all of our friends.  Many a great meal has been shared at our table and we’re not overly modest about it.  Anyway, we are always interested in sites on the Internet dealing with cooking and food.  Well, I just discovered a truly amazing cooking/recipe site: Foodily.  In a nutshell this is a recipe search site that searches every recipe from every web site.  The search results are beautifully displayed with appetizing photos.  For instance, I searched on “lentil soup” and the program returned 488 recipes, with sources ranging from “Williams-Sonoma” to” Serious Eats” to “Love and Olive Oil.”  And, there is an absolutely cool feature that allows you to winnow down your search to exclude recipes containing a certain ingredient, or display only recipes with that ingredient!    Oh, the moniker of the site is distilled from “Food I Love You” or Foodily for short.   

Eat up.

~ Tom

A Wonderful Day

The weather here today was unseasonably warm (it got up to 80!) and clear as could be. I took a walk out on the San Francisco bay (a block from our house) with my camera. I thought I would share the results with you.

First I encountered a group of American Coots (no not Walter Brennen) who were enjoying the day as much as I.

Then I had to stop and take a look at the City across the bay, with the suspension portion of the Bay Bridge on prominent display.

Further along a large flock of Plovers were taking off and flying in formation, only to fly back and land at the shore and then to take off again to zip around over the water. It’s really awesome to see them all fly as one, and they really do haul ass. This photo was shot at 1/400 of a second and they are still blurring.

Our friend the Snowy Egret was splendid.

And walking back home is almost as rewarding. That draw bridge is the Bay Farm Bridge (we live on Bay Farm Island) and if you blow it up a bit you should be able to see the light standards at the Oakland coliseum where the Raiders play, and where U-2 will play in June (we already have our tickets).

Yep, life can sure be wonderful.

Beck, Palin & Osama are peas in a pod

Now that I think about it ….. uh er.