Harland Sanders, the famous “Colonel Sanders” of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame, lived his last fifteen years or so not in Kentucky or anywhere you might expect. He lived in Mississauga, Ontario, which at that time was a suburb of Toronto. (Now Mississauga is so large that it’s a city in its own right.)
Did you need this information? Probably not. Are you happy I shared it with you? I hope so!
Yesterday, The Wife and I made our annual pilgrimage to the Starling Renaissance Festival in Sterling, NY. We left Friday night, actually, and stayed in a hotel in Rochester, driving the rest of the way to the Festival yesterday morning; we drove all the way home after the Festival day was ended, with a stop at a fried chicken place we like a lot in Webster, NY (a suburb of Rochester, northeast of the city).
We’ve been going to the Sterling Festival for years. I want to say our first year of attendance was 2001, but I may be off by a year or two. We’ve missed a few years since, but we’ve mostly made it. So it’s interesting to compare mental notes, and also to note that there are still ways for the Festival to surprise me. Here are some notes on our experience this year:
:: It used to be that buying tickets online was the quick way to get into the Festival, while everyone else queued up at the ticket booths. You can tell from the photo up top that this is no longer the case! That’s the line for entry, and the ticket booths are off to the side, on the right, out of frame, and nobody’s there. The line moved pretty quickly, though; once we got in line, we were checking in and inside the grounds in about ten minutes. This gave me time to make sure I had my base camera settings good to go and to look around at our fellow fair-goers.
:: They say you’re allowed to bring in an empty water bottle, but there are no actual filling stations; for filling you’re supposed to use the faucets in the privies. The Festival might want to consider actual filling stations. (Plus, nobody checked our bags as we entered. I had on a small over-the-shoulder back bag, and The Wife had her small purse. Nobody looked. We could have absolutely filled our water bottles with ice. I’m noting that for next year.)
:: Food at the Festival has always been cash only, until this year; now it’s card only. This is not a problem, and we knew about it going in. The Festival seems to have spent quite a bit of money improving its online infrastructure, so transactions were generally much easier. Cell service is very spotty at the Sterling Festival, so vendors who used to rely on things like a Squarespace thing for transactions often had to awkwardly wave their phones or tablets around to get the best signal. One year a vendor accidentally tapped my amount in with an extra zero, so I had to go back and get that reversed. This year, there were no such problems and most transactions were painless.
:: But, I did notice some apparently staffing issues along the way. There were some food booths that were no open at all, which had been open in the past. The turkey leg booth, which is very popular, only had one customer-facing worker, so there was a long line there. Also, we noticed a distinct lack of roaming food vendors. The pretzel guy, the pickle lady, the popcorn girl–we saw none of these. The only one I saw all day was the jerky dude. Again, I wonder if there were simply not enough applicants this year.
:: My fit yesterday? As you might expect:
:: “But Kelly!” you might ask. “Isn’t that outfit a bit warm for a July day at a Renaissance Festival that’s built on the side of a hill and therefore involves almost literal hiking to get around?”
Why yes, yes, it is. Now, I’ve found that my relationship with hot weather has changed over the years: I can function in heat now that used to reduce me to a sweat-puddle. And I find that overalls, believe it or not, actual feel cooler to wear than shorts or something similar, because of the lack of a waistband that allows air flow. There’s a reason why civilizations in very hot climes often wear long, flowing clothing that protects from the sun and allows air to flow to deal with the heat.
And in recent years, we’ve been lucky in that while yes, July in Upstate New York is generally warm and humid, our visits to the Sterling Festival haven’t been too bad in that regard. Yesterday, however, saw that lucky streak end. The last weather forecast I saw predicted low-80s and partly-to-cloudy skies. Instead we had upper 80s and full sun most of the day. It was straight-up hot and humid, and in a lot of ways the day was a physical struggle with the heat. Add to this that the Festival owners apparently had a lot of dead trees removed from the grounds, and there were places that were once shaded which now are not, and…yeah. This is just the way the ball bounces, unfortunately. All we can do is hope for a better weather day next year.
I saw someone on social media last week or before opine that no Renaissance Festival should happen outside of fall, and I’d be inclined to agree, except that we already have late summer and early fall pretty well packed with stuff we like to do. It just works out for our calendar that our Renaissance Festival happens in July (and it does go into August, so there’s that).
:: I always love seeing people in their costumes. Some were as amazing as always, and I’ll be sharing some photos of great costume work once I get the day’s photos edited, so look for another post. I note that while the Festival purports to be an Elizabethan-era village called Warwickshire, no one expects costumed revelers to be completely period-authentic. (And the Festival does have a theme weekend where they encourage anachronism and other costume approaches, like steampunk.) But, come on, folks: at least try to stay at least kind of on theme. One guy was wearing a hot-dog costume. Like, the thing someone wears to provide human advertising for the hot dog sale at church or the local minimart. That bugged me, I must admit!
:: When we first started going to the Festival, I noticed that a common thing–and an annoying one, at that–is visitors walking around offering up a constant run of quotes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Then, a few years alter, quoting The Lord of the Rings was all the rage. Sure, maybe it’s funny the first time, but hearing “You shall not pass!” is a lot less funny the twelfth time. Luckily, I heard no such thing this year. Huzzah!
:: Every year the grounds are populated by a “cast” of regulars who are portraying the actual people of Warwickshire, and they engage in all manner of improvisatory frivolity. It gives the day a particular fun twist, to know that you might happen on an impromptu performance someplace. Maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention, but I didn’t see as much of that this time, either. I wonder if there were staffing issues there, too.
:: The Joust used to be emceed by a guy I always referred to as The Impressive Scotsman, and he hasn’t been there the last few years. He’s an older gent so I chalked it up to retirement; the replacement was fine, but he wasn’t the Impressive Scotsman, though. Imagine by joyous surprise when the Joust began and out rode the Impressive Scotsman! Now featuring an Impressive Beard.
:: During the Joust I noticed a few moments when The Queen was speaking and when the Impressive Scotsman talked over her. I wonder if they were having a bit of struggle in the script department. No problem, though.
:: We watched one performer who noted improvements made to the stage he usually uses: “A couple of years ago I fell through a hole in the stage, and they didn’t fix it. Then two weeks later an audience member came up to greet me after the show and they fell through the hole, and then they fixed it!” As I walked through the Festival grounds I noticed quite a few places where the age of the rustic wooden infrastructure was starting to show the results of accumulated years and elements. Now that the Festival has invested a lot in its electronic infrastructure, I think it may be time to invest in its physical infrastructure. The places really needs carpenters and painters.
:: Finally, it may or may not be known that every year at the Festival we buy new mugs from a certain pottery vendor. Do we need more mugs? Of course not! Do we buy new ones anyway? Of course we do! Here is my mug from this year. I don’t have a photo yet of The Wife’s new mug, but I’ll get on that.
We’ll see you in 2026, Sterling Renaissance Festival! Until then, God save the Queen!
(Normally I try to wait longer than just under four months before I do a re-post of something I’ve already written here, but Chuck Mangione has died, and I like what I wrote about him and this song back in March, so here it is again. I’m listening to it anew as I write this. Thanks for the music, Mr. Mangione!)
So for Tuesday Tones the other day, I went to feature a piece of music that I know I’ve featured here before but I couldn’t remember how long it’s been, so I looked it up. I featured it less than six months ago. So I chose something else.
Today I want to feature a piece of music I know I’ve featured here before, but I can’t remember how long it’s been. So I looked it up. Almost fifteen years.
Time is weird, y’all.
Anyway, here’s something I discovered after music camp one year. I was playing in the jazz band and we did a number by Chuck Mangione, called “Land of Make Believe”, and it was a really catchy tune, upbeat and happy with a relentless figure underneath it that will make only the deepest comatose people fail to react with toe-tapping glee. At that point I had heard the thing a number of times, always in the instrumental, but at the camp we included vocals. The lyrics at the time struck me as kind of syrupy and childish, but then our band director started pointing things out–the saxes quote “Old McDonald” here, the trombones quote “Farmer in the Dell” there–and gradually it started to make sense why this thing was so peppy and childlike.
Those actually aren’t bad things at all, unless you’re putting up a jaded front.
After the camp ended for that year, I embarked on a usual project of mine after a musical experience in which a new work captivated me: I sought out recordings of the pieces we had played, at least, the ones that I had particularly enjoyed. One was, indeed, “Land of Make Believe”, which I found on a Mangione compilation tape. (Yes, this was in the era of cassettes. Sue me!) But where the version we’d played at camp had been six minutes long or so, this one was over twelve minutes. It had a lot more vocals, it started with a long slow intro (the version we played started with the up tempo part), and it had more solo sections than the version we’d played (which only featured one solo, for trumpet/flugelhorn).
And there was more of those lyrics.
Here’s how it begins:
When you’re feelin’ down and out, wond’rin’ what this world’s about
I know a place that has the answer, it’s a place where no one dies
It’s a land where no one cries and good vibrations always greet you
How I love when my thoughts run to the Land Of Make Believe
Where ev’rything is fun forever
Children always gather ’round Mother Goose and all her rhyme
They fill the air with sounds of laughter
And another sample, farther in:
I once asked the Wizard of Oz for the secret of his land
Now just between us he said “Just take a look around here”
Seven Dwarfs and Little Boy Blue, Uncle Remus and Snow White too
Now just between us, that’s what’s known as integration
Silly? Sentimental? Simplistic?
Yeah, maybe. But if you want to illustrate for someone what the sentimental side of the 1970s was like, I think you can do a lot worse than play Chuck Mangione’s “Land of Make Believe” for them.
A note about this particular performance: it was recorded live, with Mangione and his band being backed by the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra (Hamilton, Ontario). Not only did you have Mangione and his own talented band on stage, but in the Hamilton Philharmonic at the time were five brass players who would go on to be the founding members of the Canadian Brass, one of the most famous chamber music groups in the world.
This is just over twelve minutes long, so give yourself some time…and give yourself permission to go where this music wants to take you. Here is Chuck Mangione (born in Rochester, NY!) and friends with “Land of Make Believe”.
It’s been fascinating, looking back a hundred years at the classical music that was brand new in 1925, one hundred years. I’m not quite done with this little project yet, but I’ve had an almost avant-garde piece, a piano concerto steeped in jazz and Tin Pan Alley, a sensuous Spanish ballet, and now, a work that seems like an updated version of Antonin Dvorak.
Leoš Janáček was almost exactly that: like Dvorak, he was a Czech composer who was deeply inspired by the folk dances and rustic melodies of the rural lands of that region. The two men were contemporaries for most of their lives: Dvorak lived 1841 to 1904, while Janáček lived 1854 to 1928. Janáček was influenced heavily by Dvorak, but later in his life he turned to the folk songs of his country, deriving much more literal inspiration from them than even Dvorak did. The result is music with a much more rustic tone than Dvorak’s, and Janáček’s Lachian Dances, which we hear today, seem a direct answer to, and extension of, Dvorak’s famous Slavonic Dances.
The Lachian Dances were actually an early work of Janáček’s, but he reworked the piece and re-issued it in 1925, hence its presence here. Listening to it now, it is clearly firmly rooted in the 19th century…but with key differences that make it feel much more earthy and clear. This is music that reflects the 20th century’s post-Romantic insistence on real life, and it is a delight to hear.
Here are the Lachian Dances by Leoš Janáček. I found this work an absolute joy.
Yesterday was the anniversary of the first lunar landing, when Eagle, the Apollo 13 mission’s Lunar Excursion Module, landed on the moon at the Sea of Tranquility. This is a repost of what I’ve posted in the past on that date. (We were out and about yesterday, hence the lack of posting.)
Sam Seaborn: There are a lot of hungry people in the world, Mal, and none of them are hungry ‘cause we went to the moon. None of them are colder and certainly none of them are dumber ‘cause we went to the moon.
Mallory O’Brian: And we went to the moon. Do we really have to go to Mars?
Sam Seaborn: Yes.
Mallory O’Brian: Why?
Sam Seaborn: ‘Cause it’s next. ‘Cause we came out of the cave, and we looked over the hill and we saw fire; and we crossed the ocean and we pioneered the west, and we took to the sky. The history of man is hung on a timeline of exploration and this is what’s next.
–from “Galileo Five”, season two of The West Wing, written by Aaron Sorkin
Anniversaries are a good thing, even if they’re leavened with the weight of years of thwarted expectations and deferred dreams, as the First Lunar Landing’s is: Why have we never gone back? Why are we stuck in low-Earth orbit? Was it all just politics and none of it the call of the stars?
But such anniversaries are a bit of a balm in times such as these, when humanity seems bound and determined to roll back on itself like some kind of distended, drunken serpent consuming its own tail in a weird and awful version of an ouroboros. We can look back on the Apollo missions as a reminder of the kinds of things humanity can do when the primary motive isn’t necessarily profit.
I was born in September 1971, which means that I have never lived in a world where the Moon was not a place where humans have gone. I hope that I live to see a day when the Moon is no longer the only place other than Earth that we’ve gone.
From Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan:
It’s a sultry night in July. You’ve fallen asleep in the armchair. Abruptly, you startle awake, disoriented. The television set is on, but not the sound. You strain to understand what you’re seeing. Two ghostly white figures in coveralls and helmets are softly dancing under a pitch-black sky. They make strange little skipping motions, which propel them upward amid barely perceptible clouds of dust. But something is wrong. They take too long to come down. Encumbered as they are, they seem to be flying — a little. You rub your eyes, but the dreamlike tableau persists.
Of all the events surrounding Apollo 11‘s landing on the Moon on July 20, 1969, my most vivid recollection is its unreal quality. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin shuffled along the gray, dusty lunar surface, the Earth looming large in their sky, while Michael Collins, now the Moon’s own moon, orbited above them in lonely vigil. Yes, it was an astonishing technical achievement and a triumph for the United States. Yes, as Armstrong said as he first alighted, this was a historic step for the human species. But if you turned off the byplay between Mission Control and the Sea of Tranquility, with its deliberately mundane and routine chatter, you could glimpse that we humans had entered the realm of myth and legend.
We knew the Moon from our earliest days. It was there when our ancestors descended from the trees into the savannahs, when we learned to walk upright, when we first devised stone tools, when we domesticated fire, when we invented agriculture and built cities and set out to subdue the Earth. Folklore and popular songs celebrate a mysterious connection between the Moon and love. The word “month” and the second day of the week are both named after the Moon. Its waxing and waning — from crescent to full to crescent to new — was widely understood as a celestial metaphor of death and rebirth. It was connected with the ovulation cycle of women, which has nearly the same period — as the word “menstruation” (Latin mensis = month, from the word “to measure”) reminds us. Those who sleep in moonlight go mad; the connection is preserved in the English word “lunatic”. In the old Persian story, a vizier renowned for his wisdom is asked which is more useful, the Sun or the Moon. “The Moon,” he answers, “because the Sun shines in daytime, when it’s light out anyway.” Especially when we lived out-of-doors, it was a major — if oddly tangible — presence in our lives.
The Moon was a metaphor for the unattainable: “You might as well ask for the Moon,” they used to say. Or “You can no more do that than fly to the Moon.” For most of our history, we had no idea what it was. A spirit? A god? A thing? It didn’t look like something big far away, but more like something small nearby — something the size of a plate, maybe, hanging in the sky a little above our heads. Ancient Greek philosophers debated the propositon “that the Moon is exactly as large as it looks” (betraying a hopeless confusion between linear and angular size). Walking on the Moon would somehow have seemed a screwball idea; it made more sense to imagine somehow climbing up into the sky on a ladder or on the back of a giant bird, grabbing the Moon, and bringing it down to Earth. Nobody ever succeeded, although there were myths aplenty about heroes who had tried.
Not until a few centuries ago did the idea of the Moon as a place, a quarter-million miles away, gain wide currency. And in that brief flicker of time, we’ve gone from the earliest steps in understanding the Moon’s nature to walking and joy-riding on its surface. We calculated how objects move in space; liquefied oxygen from the air; invented big rockets, telemetry, reliable electronics, inertial guidance, and much else. Then we sailed out into the sky.
…
The Moon is no longer unattainable. A dozen humans, all Americans, have made those odd bouncing motions they called “moonwalks” on the crunchy, cratered, ancient gray lava — beginning on that July day in 1969. But since 1972, no one from any nation has ventured back. Indeed, none of us has gone anywhere since the glory days of Apollo except into low Earth orbit — like a toddler who takes a few tentative steps outward and then, breathless, retreats to the safety of his mother’s skirts.
Once upon a time, we soared into the Solar System. For a few years. Then we hurried back. Why? What happened? What was Apollo really about?
…
For me, the most ironic token of that moment in history is the plaque signed by President Richard M. Nixon that Apollo 11 took to the Moon. It reads: “We came in peace for all mankind.” As the United States was dropping 7.5 megatons of conventional explosives on small nations in Southeast Asia, we congratulated ourselves on our humanity: We would harm no one on a lifeless rock. That plaque is there still, attached to the base of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module, on the airless desolation of the Sea of Tranquility. If no one disturbs it, it will still be readable millions of years from now.
Six more missions followed Apollo 11, all but one of which successfully landed on the lunar surface. Apollo 17 was the first to carry a scientist. As soon as he got there, the program was canceled. The first scientist and the last human to land on the Moon were the same person. The program had already served its purpose that July night in 1969. The half-dozen subsequent missions were just momentum.
Apollo was not mainly about science. It was not even mainly about space. Apollo was about ideological confrontation and nuclear war — often described by such euphemisms as world “leadership” and national “prestige”. Nevertheless, good space science was done. We now know much more about the composition, age, and history of the Moon and the origin of the lunar landforms. We have made progress in understanding where the Moon came from. Some of us have used lunar cratering statistics to better understand the Earth at the time of the origin of life. But more important than any of this, Apollo provided an aegis, an umbrella under which brilliantly engineered robot spacecraft were dispatched throughout the Solar System, making that preliminary reconnaissance of dozens of worlds. The offspring of Apollo have now reached the planetary frontiers.
If not for Apollo — and, therefore, if not for the political purpose it served — I doubt whether the historic American expeditions of exploration and discovery throughout the Solar System would have occurred. The Mariners, Vikings, Pioneers, Voyagers, and Galileo are among the gifts of Apollo. Magellan and Cassini are more distant descendants. Something similar is true for the pioneering Soviet efforts in Solar System exploration, including the first soft landings of robot spacecraft — Luna 9, Mars 3, Venera 8 — on other worlds.
Apollo conveyed a confidence, energy, and breadth of vision that did capture the imagination of the world. That too was part of its purpose. It inspired an optimism about technology, an enthusiasm for the future. If we could fly to the Moon, as so many have asked, what else were we capable of? Even those who opposed the policies and actions of the United States — even those who thought the worst of us — acknowledged the genius and heroism of the Apollo program. With Apollo, the United States touched greatness.
When you pack your bags for a big trip, you never know what’s in store for you. The Apollo astronauts on their way to and from the Moon photographed their home planet. It was a natural thing to do, but it had consequences that few foresaw. For the first time, the inhabitants of Earth could see their world from above — the whole Earth, the Earth in color, the Earth as exquisite spinning white and blue ball set against the vast darkness of space. Those images helped awaken our slumbering planetary consciousness. They provide incontestable evidence that we all share the same vulnerable planet. They remind us of what is important and what is not. They were the harbingers of Voyager‘s pale blue dot.
We may have found that perspective just in time, just as our technology threatens the habitability of our world. Whatever the reason we first mustered the Apollo program, however mired it was in Cold War nationalism and the instruments of death, the inescapable recognition of the unity and fragility of the Earth is its clear and luminous dividend, the unexpected final gift of Apollo. What began in deadly competition has helped us to see that global cooperation is the essential precondition for our survival.
Travel is broadening.
It’s time to hit the road again.
Someday we’ll look up with wonder again. Someday we’ll go. I firmly believe that.
Footage of Walter Cronkite’s live broadcast of the lunar landing. Note his happy amazement at what he gets to report, at the 1:58 mark. He takes off his glasses, shakes his head, and smiles at the person next to him. I can’t help contrasting that with another moment when, while reporting on air, he had to remove his glasses and shake his head with disbelief, less than six years prior to this moment.
And I know it’s not the right mission, but for the movie Apollo 13, James Horner managed to really catch some of the unbridled optimism of the entire Apollo era.
Seriously, humans: when are we going back, and when are we going farther?
This lovely film music cue has been on my mind the last few days because for some reason, the YouTube algorithm served up a clip from The Karate Kid Part II, and because I like that movie (it’s not as good as the first one, but it’s still quite watchable and it’s gorgeously filmed), the YouTube algorithm proceeded to give me more of it to watch. So here’s a wonderful cue that’s from a scene toward the end, just before the movie’s climactic action starts to unfold. Daniel is set to leave Okinawa and return home, but before he does, he visits the Okinawan girl he’s been hanging around with in an old warehouse, where she performs a tea ceremony for him. It’s a frankly wonderful scene, wordless as the music plays. I featured this cue here before, but it’s been a bunch of years, so here it is again: “Daniel Leaves” by Bill Conti.
(The cue ends suddenly because at that moment the wind whips up, blowing out the candle hanging above them and alerting them to the coming cyclone.)
In honor of my home, The 716, a few shots from around the place.
Continuing our brief survey this month of classical works that debuted one hundred years ago this year, in 1925, we have one of George Gershwin’s major works, and one that gives some clear idea of the direction Gershwin was moving as a composer. The Concerto in F, as it is officially titled, teems with jazzy, urban energy. It feels like what it is: a more structured and more compositionally-assured successor to works like Rhapsody in Blue, where the musical structure is simple to the point of being almost absurd. The Concerto is still a work of youth, with compositional imperfections, but when heard in context you can clearly see Gershwin’s development from a genius of melodies toward being a genius composer. More on this here.
The Concerto follows the traditional form, being in three movements of the fast-slow-fast variety. Opening with four sharp timpani strikes, the temptation might be to compare this piece to Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, which also starts with four taps on the timpani. Gershwin is doing something much more overtly energetic here, which suits his background; his ongoing use of wonderful melodies loads the work with propulsive energy. The work never seems to lose its dancing nature, even if the nature of that dance is at times playful and at times sultry and seductive.
This performance, featuring soloist Wang Yuja, is conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, the recently retired conductor of the San Francisco Symphony who was once, in his own musical youth, music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic.
I saw, a while back, a content creator I follow on social media wearing this shirt in one of her videos:
I saw that shirt and immediately thought, “I want one of those shirts!” Of course, I quickly surmised that I wouldn’t be able to get that shirt, exactly. For one thing, it’s a woman’s shirt. Is that necessarily a deal-breaker for me? You know, maybe not. I’ve always wondered why it is that women-wearing-stuff-made-for-men was a thing while the other direction is generally not. But the other problem with that isn’t so much the potential weirdness, perceived or real, about me wearing a women’s shirt; the problem is that the shirt is honestly unlikely to be cut in such a way to really work on my body. Oh well. (And for another thing? I found the shirt online and it’s $150, roughly. Yeah, nope. Not at this point in my life, anyway.)
(Oh, I’m not naming that creator because I don’t want to make things weird.)
But I still really liked the way that shirt looks! The color and pattern are terrific. Men’s shirts are, for the most part, really boring to look at. I really don’t know why this is, but to the extent that interesting patterns exist in men’s tops, you usually see them on golf shirts, which I really dislike wearing. Most men’s shirts are just boring patterns–simple stripes, if there’s any pattern at all, really–and visual flair in men’s clothes tends to come from accessories and things like ties. Since I refuse to wear ties, that’s out. When I was a kid, paisley shirts were a big thing, but I also can’t wear paisley. At least not in The Wife’s presence. A while back I saw some dude wearing a really neat paisley shirt and I pointed it out to her and her cocked eyebrow and disdainful “Really?” made me shelve that idea pretty quick. (And no, it doesn’t bother me to not wear something she hates…or let’s say I haven’t found anything to wear in which I am sufficiently invested to tempt fate in that way.) Point is, I have a ton of solid-colored shirts in my wardrobe, so a pattern here and there–something other than plaid!–would be nice to have as an option on occasion, is all I’m sayin’.
So I set up an eBay search under “Yellow Linen Shirt” (I’m also really loving linen, but we’ll discuss that another time), and checked the results every few days. Now, I have some things–specific brands or patterns of vintage overalls, mostly–that I’ve searched out for years. So it was to my high surprise and great pleasure that this turned up in my search results after just a few weeks:
Note to self: Look up how to hold up a shirt to display it.
Obviously I knew that I was unlikely to get super-close to the exact pattern of the women’s shirt modeled above, but I was hoping to get at least in the neighborhood–and this one is honestly a lot closer than I even expected to get! Into my shopping cart it went, and lo, it was mine.
After a wash and dry, it was time to wear it. I actually want to wear it with darker blue overalls, but once I had this shirt in hand it was getting quite hot in The 716, so I thus far have only paired it with a lighter pair that’s cooler to wear. I really loved the feel of the fabric (again, linen is a thing that is increasingly making me happy on a regular basis) and the worn, rumpled, and patterned look.
Yeah, I’m pretty happy with this one. Now, if we could get the temps to drop just a little, this shirt will get some serious use! We’re in a hot-and-humid stretch of the kind we haven’t had in what feels like several years, unfortunately. My relationship with heat and humidity has softened as I’ve aged, but I’m not on board with upper-80s and heat indices in the 90s, though. Even with a miracle fabric like linen!
