Month: July 2016

Our 2003 Honda had yet another airbag recall. In fact the letter we got told us not even to drive the car until we take care of the problem. We headed out to Dick Ide first thing this morning with a thermos full of coffee and the morning papers and we weren’t even out of our driveway when our neighbor told us there was an eagle in the dead tree in the marsh near his house. He suggested we ride down there and take a look but by the time we got there the eagle was gone. I took this photo of the weeds going to seed near the edge of the marsh.

We spent four of the last few days recording tracks, in various configurations, for an upcoming Margaret Explosion record. The days flew by. Arpad did the recording. He’s using a program called Reaper and the tracks sound great. We’ve recorded all the instruments at once, improvising and hoping for a good take of a song constructed on the spot, for so long we decided to try laying down something like improvised basics and then building up the tracks with overdubs.

When we were out at the Honda dealership we heard “Bennie and the Jets.” That’s a live track, right? Thing still sounds amazing.

The arboretum and park in general is beautiful in all seasons but it is especially nice now with the mid-summer, pea soup like water and flowering Lilly pads. And that is why it was so incongruous to see the local SWAT team try to seal the perimeter of Durand Eastman Park.

We had gathered at Parkside Bowl, a party of ten, in 90 degree weather, just as the commotion began. I was using the same black Galaxy 300 ball as the last time. Louise did not have a rock’n roll shirt on and her sister in-law and niece were here. Even without air-conditioning the eight lane joint felt as comfortable as an old shoe. Within minutes the police had blocked off the Sweet Fern entrance to the park. There was something called an “active shooter” alert on the beach near where Kings Highway meets the lake and rumors were flying.

Someone had stolen a yellow Hummer during a burglary in another part of the city. A yellow Hummer! Can you think of a more conspicuous car? And they drove it to the beach where the cops surrounded it. Shots rang out. The six suspects, four men and two women, got away. Helicopters hovered overhead. The suspects managed to steal another car, a red Mercedes with “GOLF-1” license plates that was parked out front of the golf course with the keys in it.

We continued bowling. I fed the juke box and Jeff flattened the pins. At eight we headed down the street to Louise’s backyard. The road was still blocked off and cop cars swirled around the neighborhood. We played ping pong in the garage and listened to old blues records on Matthew’s turntable. I put new RAM in Jeff’s MacBook. We drank beer that Tim, the preacher, brought and we all left when Mary Kaye announced she had to work at six in the morning.

We came home and found an ominous robo-call message on our landline. “Active shooter alert, suspects at large, last seen in your area, stay inside. Don’t go near the windows.” Our house is all windows. It was 90 degrees out. We went down to the pool for a midnight dip. All the neighbors had their lights on. We saw Rick out walking his dog. Life goes on.

We parked our bikes next to the pick-up lane at Wegmans and this car pulled up next to us. The first thing that struck me was that it looks like it still has the primer coat on it, a really cool look. I couldn’t peg it to a particular year or even a make. A two door sedan, it looked a little sportier than any of those boxy, fifties, American cars. Dare I say it even looked a little foreign. So we complimented the owner and then asked what type of car it was. Turns out it is a 1950 Ford, the same year we were born.

Yesterday we watched three Pileated Woodpeckers working on the same Sassafras tree. They are the big birds around here, the ones that look like Woody Woodpecker if anyone remembers him. I used to love the post show drawing demonstrations by Woody’s creator, Walter Lantz. And I spotted this big mushroom from our bedroom window so we had to check it out up close.

One bright spot remains at my mom’s care center. Peggi can still get her to laugh when she rolls her “r’s while extending the word, “burrrrrrr”. The air conditioning is all over the map in the dining room, her room and the halls. And if we sit outside for a bit, the return is usually met with a call for a sweater, even in 90 degree weather. So when my mom says she’s cold Peggi does her thing and my mom laughs whole-heartedly.

Jealousy, guilt, ambition and way over-the-top family dysfunction made it hard to get through season one of “Bloodline,” the Netflix series. And when Danny, the most colorful and only sympathetic character, got knocked off near the end of the season I was ready to give up on it. I felt like we had been dragged through the mud. But our friends, Matthew and Louise, raved about Season 2 so we dove back in. We’re only halfway through and without giving anything away, they found a way to get Danny back in there and the other characters have really taken shape. Its a beautiful, dysfunctional mess.

“Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high.” The cottonwood trees have been dropping their goods for a few weeks now and the cotton is starting to gather in clusters in the woods. I brought his cluster home and I’m trying to figure out what to do with it.

The Flash are tied for second with the Chicago Red Stars and the two teams meet tonight at 7 downtown. Jazz Fest can wait.