Yesterday saw a big storm push through…well, lots of places. I have to be honest, I didn’t really pay a whole lot of attention to this one, beyond what its forecast effects in Western New York were going to be. In this case, the storm did something very strange: it hit WNY with very strong winds from the southeast. When we get high winds around here, it’s almost always west or northwest winds that pound us…or even southwest winds that come up the lake. This was different. I’m used to how things sound at work when there are high winds outside, but yesterday the place sounded very different. There were moans and creaks from parts of the building that I didn’t know could make those sounds.
And there were, of course, power outages galore, including one that affected Casa Jaquandor for about eight hours. I got home to a dark house and proceeded to light up more candles and settle in for a dark evening. This meant…holing up on the couch and reading. I actually got through two shorter books and started a third, and it was actually a peaceful night in a time that hasn’t had a lot of peaceful nights lately. Even the back-up sump pump kept up with what was feeding it.
The power went out at home around 1:30pm yesterday, and finally came back on about 9:30pm. Hardly disastrous, and honestly, not much of an inconvenience. We got lucky, though; some folks are still waiting for power to come back. A friend of mine just got power restored a few hours ago, after being without power for more than 22 hours. At one point, one of our local power companies announced a distribution of free packs of water and dry ice for keeping food cold.
And I noted, yet again, that despite what the movies show you, candles put out a lot less light than you expect.
We started 2024 in the usual fashion: with the Vienna Philharmonic. Here is the delightful and traditional end to that concert: On the Beautiful Blue Danube followed by the Radetzy March. Note our conductor, Christian Thielemann, directing the audience’s rhythmic clapping. That is an important job!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVlx3UhOxOQ
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on Tone Poem Tuesday
For several reasons involving things I want to do in the future on this site, I have gone back to using WordPress’s Block Editor, which I always found highly confusing the first time around. This time I’m going to stick with it, but if anything looks wonky moving forward, there’s a good chance that’s why.
For a long time I’ve wanted to go down to Canalside, a sort-of public commons area on the Inner Waterfront in downtown Buffalo, to take photos of the people ice-skating on the rink there. I finally did just that last week, and while downtown I took the Metro Rail up to the Theater District and then walked back down Main Street to Canalside, where I took a few more pictures of skaters, as a couple of hours had passed by then.
Here are some of the resulting photos.
More, including expandable versions of these photos, available in this Flickr album.
As you can see, the light that day was gray, diffuse, and overcast–which is some great light to shoot in. (So far in my photography journey, I am not being choosey about the light I choose to shoot in or not to shoot in; I need to figure out how all the light works, so I don’t let the light be a factor in whether I go out or not. Now, as the day went on, the gray misty air eventually shifted into actual drizzle, which I probably should not have been out in, given the one substantial fault of the camera I bought: its lack of weather sealing. The camera was wetter than I would have liked by the time I finally got back to the car. Note to self: take the camera bag with you on days like this!
I also couldn’t help noticing, as I always do when I’m on Main St. in downtown Buffalo, that the city is on Year Thirty of feeling like it’s going to wake up and be a proper city oh, any day now. Of course, it hasn’t happened yet; there are still too few people and too few businesses down there to make for really interesting street photography. But hey, I’m not losing hope.
NOTE: I’ve had this post in drafts since last Tuesday, when 2024 was still going OK. Then, things started going awry very quickly, hence the lack of posting much since then. I’m not going to write just yet about what’s going on now, but my immediate family and I are just fine. This country, however, is a mess, and yet another way is how hard we make elder care.
Anyway, here’s the rest of the post, which I’m finishing on Saturday morning.
—
But first, a joke that I heard years ago at Summer Music Camp, when a counselor needed to cheer up a girl who had had a very bad day:
Two little boys, Timmy and Joey, twins about five years old, are going to bed, when Timmy comes up with a plan: “Hey Joey, tomorrow we’re gonna talk to Mom like we’re grown-ups. That means we’re gonna use some of those words Daddy uses. When she asks us what we want for breakfast, I’m gonna say, ‘I want some damn Cheerios!’ and when she asks if you want Cheerios too, you say, ‘You bet your ass I do!'”
And Joey agrees to this plan, and they go to bed.
Next morning, Mom gets them up and brings them to the table. Mom asks Timmy, “What do you want for breakfast?”
And Timmy replies, “I want some damn Cheerios!”
Mom gasps, and then she shouts, “We do NOT use language like that in this house!” And she slaps Timmy and sends him crying back to his room. Then she turns to Joey and asks him, “Joey, what do you want for breakfast?”
And Joey thinks for a moment and replies, “You bet your ass it’s not Cheerios!”
Why am I remembering that joke so randomly? Because lately I’ve been eating Cheerios for breakfast. I was never a big fan of them before, but we have a big box on hand after I needed some for a recipe and there are a ton of them left over (turns out I greatly overestimated what size of a box I needed to get three cups out of it). Is this part of some larger attempt to eat more healthy-like? Who knows…I have no problem with it, if that’s the case. (I do, though, need to sprinkle them with a bit of sugar, which isn’t ideal, but so be it!)
So, anyway, let’s talk ideas about 2024.
Writing: I’ve been plugging away, slowly and steadily, at the first round of edits on Forgotten Stars V: Wow, Is This Still A Thing?, and now I’m starting on applying the edits to the manuscript to generate the second draft, which will go out to betas and friends who are also bright editors. I’d like to be able to get the book out this fall. Other hopes: editing two other books that I’ve had in draft for several years, with an eye to getting them out soon-ish, and resuming drafting on The Adventures of Lighthouse Boy and then starting Forgotten Stars VI: Another Undiscovered Country.
Photography: More of that to come, much, much more! My decision to really start learning photography last year is turning into quite a passion, and I’m looking forward to featuring more and more of my work here and elsewhere. One particular goal is to shift to shooting in RAW format and editing in Lightroom, which is what the pros do, after all. Another is setting up a photo gallery, hopefully on this site, but I first need to investigate whatever might be the best way of doing that.
All of this photography is likely to lead into….
Vlogging/video content creation: Yup, I think it’s time for that as well. I’m not sure what frequency of video work I plan to follow at this point. I’ve already shot one video but I haven’t edited any of it together yet. My video content will probably be as all-over-the-map as my content here, obviously; that’s hard-wired into me and I can’t see doing any different just because it’s video. I’m going to progress slowly on that front at first, because I know that video content can be very time-consuming to produce, and I’m not terribly experienced on that front.
What other goals do I have in 2024? Well, mostly it’s about finding the way through the current set of problems and then, hopefully, figuring out whatever the new “normal” is going to be. As of right now, it does not appear that the upheaval of 2023 is stopping…but eventually it will. It always does. (Again, sorry to be a bit cryptic, but I’m not entirely comfortable writing about some of this yet. I reiterate that I, The Wife, and The Daughter are fine.) But on a less…aspirational? Vague?…note, I want to keep learning how to cook things. One of my Christmas gifts was a wonderful My Neighbor Totoro-themed ramen bowl, and I think it’s time to learn how to cook ramen that’s a step up from the $2-a-pack ramen kits that have enough sodium in them to stop a clock. (I should also figure out gluten-free ramen soon!) That’s just one cooking adventure I have in mind.
I had hoped to start getting some more travel on the docket, but I’m not sure right now if that’s a viable short-term goal. Maybe, maybe not.
Finally, I’m trying to use a planner again. Or rather, I’m once again on one of my attempts to use a planner consistently. This has been a struggle of mine for, well, all of life! But the last bunch of years have a usual cadence: I buy a planner, I start using it on January 1, I eventually fade away from the planner and neglect it, I remember the planner, I again miss a few days that turn into weeks, lather rinse repeat. But, I do get better at planner use each year, so maybe this is the year I turn the corner? It does seem to me that organized planning of my time, at least way better organized planning of my time than I’ve ever had before, is key to my achieving all of the various goals I keep setting for myself. So…here we go, planning away.
Again, I’m sure I’ll write about the current difficulties that we are experiencing at some point. For now, I’m going to try to not do that. We’ll see how that goes.
Let’s get right into 2024 with something familiar, and yet…not!
Rodion Shchedrin is a Soviet/Russian composer, born in 1932. He is still alive as of this writing, and he has apparently been a very productive and prolific composer over his lifetime. The work on tap today is a ballet he composed for his ballerina wife, Maya Plisetskaya, who died in 2015. The ballet is actually a re-imagining of Carmen, using melodies from the Bizet opera–but Shchedrin had put his own enormously creative stamp on these melodies that nearly everybody has heard, as he composes for string orchestra and percussion. It’s a fascinating listen, bringing something new and fresh to material that sometimes fails to be either of those things, so familiar has it all become.
In terms of content creation, I have motored right along on this site, after migrating from BlogSpot almost a year-and-a-half ago. What follows is a selection of posts from this year I particularly like (hey, writers! It’s OK to like your own writing!):
Two sentences each on some movies we watched (I think I may adopt this format for writing about movies in general next year, as not every movie we watch really warrants an entire post. Also, reading that post, I described one movie as “a rom-com you won’t remember the next day, and damn that was accurate, because I just looked it up and I have zero recollection of watching that one!) Why write bad reviews? A metamorphosis begins… …and ends! (These last two go together, and what a joy that was!)
I wrote a lot about my explorations of photography this year; those posts can be found all tagged together, here.
Events of 2023 made it hard to keep my newsletter, Dispatches from the Forgotten Stars, updated as much as I would have liked, but I wrote some good stuff there, too, exploring specific pieces by Rachmaninoff (and I still have to write about one more work of his), a farewell to an old friend, and more. Please check it out and subscribe! (Yes, it’s on Substack, and yes, I’m aware of the current issues and controversies surrounding that platform. No, I have not made any decision yet as to whether or not I’ll migrate to a different platform.)
And now, a more general exploration of What 2023 Meant To Me:
I don’t recall off the top of my head if I’ve ever dropped an F-bomb on this site. I swore like a sailor on Twitter, and I’ve continued to do so on Threads, but for some reason, I try to stick to PG-13 here.
So it means something when I say that if ever a year was going to make me drop the Big F on this site, left and right and up and down, it was going to be 2023. This year was fecking awful. (See what I did there?)
So, here is my final summation of a year that I’m more than happy to see in the rear view mirror…but you know what? As I look back, it was astonishingly not all bad. In fact, there was some real good in 2023. If I can sustain the good from 2023 and eliminate the crap, then maybe it’ll be a good year.
Let’s see how it ended up, with this: my annual Year’s End Quiz. I’ve been answering these questions about the ending year every year for…well, a whole bunch of years now.
Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
My resolutions never change much: “Read a lot, write a lot, eat healthier, walk more, listen to more music.”
Whew. Yes, I read a lot. Did I write a lot? I guess. I’m not thrilled with my output, but I didn’t dry up completely. Walk more? Eventually. Losing Cane in 2022 made it hard to go back to some parks, but go back, I did. And I’ve been walking a lot more since the one big development in my life this year, but we’ll get to that.
That leaves “Eat healthier”, and…no. It’s not been a great year for healthy eating, for many reasons. I was amazed that at my last doctor appointment, I had actually lost two pounds. That was a couple months ago, and I don’t think I’ve gained much back at all, but all the salty crap I’ve been eating has led to a frequent feeling of bloat, which is not pleasant. And even though I haven’t gained very much weight at all, a few times this year I found it necessary to loosen the shoulder straps on various pairs of overalls, and that’s never something I’m happy about.
Did anyone close to you give birth?
No, but there are several co-workers who had babies, so, yay!
Mom finally died on November 11, after a year full of struggle and strife. I’ve been undecided as to how much to write about it, and if I do it will be a while, but right now all I’ll say is that dealing with the health problems that eventually turned into Mom’s final downward spiral consumed much of 2023’s mental and emotional energy.
What countries did you visit?
We actually left the country! After an unacceptably large number of years away, The Wife and I finally made it back to Toronto. I love that city deeply and I hate that I’ve been there only four times in the last fifteen years. I wrote about our visit here and here.
What would you like to have in 2024 that you lacked in 2023?
Inner peace? A return to routine? Better literary focus? All of those, I suppose.
And not once did I receive a pie in the face in 2023. Zero pies. What gives!
What was your biggest achievement of the year?
I started learning seriously about photography! This was a rather surprising development to me. It started with a vague sense that I should upgrade my old point-and-shoot camera with a newer point-and-shoot camera, and it turned into me getting a very sophisticated “bridge” camera and starting to really learn about how to compose photos, how the “exposure triangle” works, and more. It was a fun hobby that suddenly morphed into a significant passion in my life, and given everything else that’s been going on, that new-found passion has been a needed place for focus.
What was your biggest failure?
I can’t really count it as a “failure”, but the way my mother’s passing ended up transpiring, there’s simply no way to look back once in a while and wonder if there’s something I might have been able to say or do to maybe stave off what eventually happened. I don’t think there is, and I am not beating myself up about it, but it was something of a failure.
A bigger failure that I didn’t catch, unfortunately, was the toll it was taking on my mental life, until one of my bosses at work felt it necessary to sit me down for a “Come to Jesus” talk. And he was right. Happily, more recently he was able to sit me down just a couple of weeks ago to praise the degree to which I’ve been able to turn all that around, but I am still annoyed with myself that I let it get to that point in the first place.
What was the best thing you bought?
It’s not really a contest:
That’s my Lumix FZ1000ii, which I first wrote about here and here. Learning to use it, and hopefully starting to use it well, has given me a place to center my brain…the old “idle hands” thing, and I’m always a believer in learning new things. See those dials and buttons? I still haven’t used half of them! I’m particularly interested in this camera’s video capabilities…but hopefully more on that in 2024.
The camera isn’t all I bought, though! Of course I picked up some new overalls, my favorites of which are a vintage pair of hickory-striped Key overalls with really neat elastic shoulder straps.
I’ll never forget getting three compliments for that outfit in one day. That made me very happy.
Whose behavior merited celebration?
Oof. Not a great year for asking that question, huh. American voters do seem to be less-than-sold on the creeping fascist behavior of the Republican Party, though.
Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
They neither appall, depress, or surprise me anymore, but if you can look at the Republican Party in 2023 and not realize there’s just no bottom for them, I don’t know what to tell you.
Where did most of your money go?
Books, booze, food, overalls, and that camera.
What did you get really excited about?
Getting that camera and using it!
Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?
You know, I think I’m just going to punt this question for this year. Not that it’s a slam-dunk that I’m sadder, as you might think, but because it’s so complex that I literally do not know how I’m feeling these days.
Thinner or fatter?
See above! Not really either, but it doesn’t feel thinner.
Richer or poorer?
Richer, though not by much. I’m hoping to start doing things that might lead to good things later down the road!
What do you wish you’d done more of?
Everything.
What do you wish you’d done less of?
Eating badly, second-guessing myself, and lots of things. More relevantly, though, I wish I hadn’t had to do as many of the things I had to do in 2023. There’s no getting around some of that, though; the cards landed the way they landed.
How did you spend Christmas?
With my father. It was a low-key and bittersweet Christmas.
Did you fall in love in 2023?
I tried to.
How many one-night stands?
Even if I had any, I wouldn’t tell you.
What was your favorite TV program?
The Repair Shop continues to be a balm in hard times. We also found Bridgerton delightfully trashy.
Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
I don’t like to do hate, but Republicans make it so hard.
What was the best book you read?
Here are a few I rated highly this year:
The 1619 Project, various The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Brian Selznick All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me, Patrick Bringley No Name in the Street, James Baldwin The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
What was your greatest musical discovery?
My God, this was not a good year for musical discovery. I listened to a lot of old favorites, and mostly just that.
What did you want and get?
That camera!
What did you want and not get?
My mother’s health to improve.
What were your favorite films of this year?
We didn’t see much at all that was new this year, and what we did see, we saw via streaming; we only went to the theater three times in 2023 that I remember, and those were for re-releases: Casablanca, Grease, and Return of the Jedi. I recently had a long discussion with a friend on social media about this, but for me personally, the movie theater experience in and of itself is not of sufficient value to prioritize movies at the theater over movies at home.
Also, I have always been bad at seeing (or reading) the New Thing in the time of its being the New Thing.
That said, movies that stand out that we did watch this year are: Love at First Sight, Always Be My Maybe, and Bullet Train. Oh, and Gucci. That was a very interesting movie.
What did you do on your birthday?
We made our annual trip to Ithaca, and a great time was had by all.
How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2023?
More poofy tops with the overalls? I almost wonder if I should retire this question. I have, though, found myself increasingly able to stomach hot weather, which means I’ve been able to wear overalls through the summer. Time was when I would basically retire them completely from roughly June 15 to September 20, but the last two years, I’ve been able to wear overalls to the Sterling Renaissance Faire and to the Erie County Fair!
What kept you sane?
Writing and photography. Seriously, you can NOT underrate how helpful it is to have something new to learn when everything else is going all cattywumpus. (There’s a word I don’t normally use! And apparently I’ve misspelled it. I’m not looking it up.)
Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I’m honestly not sure. This was not a fantastic year for celebrities and public figures, in all honesty.
What political issue stirred you the most?
Abortion, climate change, and America’s ongoing flirtation with shitcanning democracy.
Who did you miss?
My mother. I really, really, really wish her last months hadn’t been what they were.
Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2023:
I always recycle this, plus some things I added last year:
Read a lot, write a lot. Listen to music. Go for walks and look at sunsets. Take all the pictures you want. Learn new things and try new stuff. If you have a dog, take him for walks. Buy books for your daughter, even when she complains that she likes to pick her own books (let her do that, too). Nothing fits your hand so well as your lover’s hand. Eating out is fine, but learn to cook things, too. Have a place to go where they know you and what you order. Don’t be afraid to revisit your childhood passions now and again; you weren’t always wrong back then. Overalls are awesome, it’s OK to wear double denim, and a pie in the face is a wonderful thing!
To this I’d add: The United States of America desperately needs to re-embrace rational and collective thinking, and ditch its mythologies about rugged individualism and the eternal wisdom of “the Founders”.
And, via Letterkenny: “More hands makes less work!”, and “Pitter-patter, let’s get at ‘er!”
For 2023, I would add: Take pictures. Lots of pictures. And if all you have is the camera on your phone, who cares? Take the pictures!
If you take selfies, post your six favorite ones:
Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
If you’ve held on through all of this post to this point, you’re probably looking at this last question and thinking, “How on Earth is he going to boil down his 2023, which seems to have been one 365-day exercise in yin-and-yang, to one song?”
Obviously…I’m not. This year gets two songs. The first is the sad one.
Feel it,
You feel it all around you,
and I see it;
I can’t be the one
to tell you how it ends
or how it’s gonna be
but it’s gonna get
better….
I’ll hold you
when there’s too much
to face and you feel empty
and everything unravels
and you let it out
and fall apart again
but it’s gonna get
better
That’s from “Better”, a single released in 2023 by Canadian singer-songwriter Shannon Dooks. I’ve been following her and her music for several years now. She writes the kind of searingly personal songs, grounded in relatable emotions, that I find deeply appealing at this point in my life. “Better” speaks to the hope and faith that things will, in fact, not be forever as bad as they are, even in the face of one’s own powerlessness to force it in that direction. It’s a gorgeous song. She put two versions into the world, a studio version and an acoustic version, and I love both equally, so I present them both. The studio version also includes a short film surrounding the song.
It’s probably obvious what it was about 2023 that made “Better” an anthem for much of the year for me, and it’s probably also obvious what about 2023 makes this next song appeal. Learning about photography wasn’t just about getting a new camera and learning about ISO settings and aperture values and shutter speeds; it was about finding new people, a new community, to start connecting with. It was about, in part, at least in a new way…finding my people.
You gotta find your people The ones that make you feel alright The kind you want to stay up with all night You got to find your people The ones that make you feel whole That won’t leave your side when you lose control The ones that don’t let you lose your soul
Here’s “Find Your People”, by Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors:
“Better” and “Find Your People”. Wow, was 2023 a trip or what.
Happy New Year, everyone. Let’s face 2024 together, shall we?
Here’s some stuff that’s been lingering in open tabs that I’d like to clear out!
:: I love this video. It’s a history of burgers. I love a good burger, and looking at all of these…in honesty, I would eat and enjoy every single one, regardless of the opinions shared by the tasters here. Especially that Oklahoma one that’s nothing but onions and a beef patty, or even that first one, which is a beef patty on toast. (I’ve come to a more minimalist position on my burgers; I don’t need a giant pile of stuff on one to be delicious.)
Every year, the roughly 200 Renaissance fairs and festivals held across the United States and abroad attract several million visitors. United by their raucous entertainment, elaborate costumes and setting in the distant past, these outdoor events boast a surprising backstory.
The country’s first Renaissance Pleasure Faire, staged in Los Angeles in May 1963, was inextricably linked to the Red Scare, a Cold War-era mass hysteria prompted by the specter of communism. It was thebrainchild of Phyllis Patterson, a history, English, speech and drama teacher who’d balked at having to sign a political loyalty oath to work in California public schools. Though Phyllis later told the press she’d left teaching in 1960 to become a stay-at-home mom, her son Kevin Patterson says this was only “part of the story.” In truth, he adds, “she felt strongly about the harms and unconstitutionality of the HUAC”—the House Un-American Activities Committee—and McCarthyism overall, “and was therefore uncomfortable taking a loyalty oath.”
We’ve been attending Renaissance Faires for years, and I never knew that this is how they got their start.
:: I’m thinking about writing a series of newsletters about baseball movies, once we get closer to either pitchers and catchers reporting or Opening Day, depending on how and when I can get the lead out and rewatch some stuff. But I definitely want to write about Moneyball, a movie about which I have thoughts. This article about the movie’s depiction of then-Oakland A’s Manager Art Howe will definitely be cited then, but I want to get it on record now because it’s interesting. The article’s take is that Moneyball makes Howe look like a complete jerk, but for reasons I’ll get into later on, I’m not totally sure that it does. There is a complete jerk in the movie, but it’s not who we might think it is.
It’s the cardboard villain demeanor in Howe’s portrayal that really is unnecessary and simply untrue according to five different California journalists I’ve spoken with, all of whom had regular contact with him as A’s manager. On Sunday, I called Mark Purdy, now retired as The San Jose Mercury News columnist. He was around the A’s clubhouse and Howe’s office constantly during their 100-win seasons in 2001-02. Purdy said he understood how a movie needs an antagonist or bad guy for plot purposes:
“But I don’t know why they made that character Art. Because Art was 180 degrees from that. He’s a really good guy. Always a gentleman.
“It’s true that he didn’t agree with everything Billy Beane wanted to do. But he was always professional about it.
:: The Ithaca Voice has run a couple of photo galleries from local photographers, featuring their best work from 2023. Check them both out, here and here. Is it possible to be homesick for a place you’ve never lived?
(All three images from the first gallery linked above.)
All for now! Stay tuned for all-new fresh tabs next year!
Starting the year off with an observation
I’ve had a busier January 1 than usual, so I will post just this:
I have zero interest in doing anything with the Steamboat Willie version of Mickey Mouse. Or any version, really.
Moving on….