Saturday, June 25, 2016

change is change

I spent a few days on the coast this week with my favorite 13-year-old. She helped me clean out the trailer my Mom found for me a dozen plus years ago. The Majorca has done well but her floors are saggy and the seams are showing. It's probably time to say good-bye. Which I'm having a tough time doing. We spent a few hours packing up the accumulated stuff--found and claimed a plaid shirt that belonged to my Mom, sent some stuff to Goodwill, recycled a bunch, kept a little bit. Now all that's left is to find a new home. I'm not sure I'm ready.
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We also had adventures:
  • met up with some tree guys to get fallen cedars and ailing cherry trees seen to
  • spent hours beachcombing at Crescent Beach, witnessed a massive dead seal, countless tidepools teeming with tiny crabs, pink and green anemone, one jellyfish, and countless mussels, barnacles and limpets. It was the best kind of afternoon..
  • got a scare when we wandered through the shadowy tunnels of Camp Hayden--suddenly alone with a strange person in a rental car, we joined hands and ran flat-out and shrieking to safety
  • ate greasy spoon breakfasts and yummy Mexican food and a bagful of mango cheeks and boxes of strawberries and jolts of caffeine
now I'm home, running around to a grad party and tomorrow, the Pride parade
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Summer is upon me, suddenly. Nothing feels as usual. Change is change and it's happening.

Sunday, June 19, 2016

block party fresh

Y'all know my conflicted emotions about Capitol Hill Block Party.
CHBP has gotten corporate, expensive (ten bucks for a warm plastic cup of Montejo beer gtfooh) and less about music than marketing. Generally and very specifically irritating. Like so much of Seattle, quelle surprise. So, I've been looking around for other music festivals that feature local bands, especially hiphop, and don't cost triple digits.
Everett's Fisherman's Terminal Festival last month was a pleasant surprise.
Yesterday I checked out Block Party at the Station, on Beacon Hill. Deng, if it wasn't all that and more. One stage, a couple of food trucks, happy looking diverse crowd milling around, friendly vendors, art and music happening everywhere you looked, and free, did I mention free?
I ran into a few musician friends and we all happily took in the beats--Rogue Pinay, Silas Blak, a few cats from Alpha P, plus rhymes from Tulsi, with Able Fader on the DJ deck.
Happy Solstice, everyone.

Sunday, June 12, 2016

everybody

On such a horrific news day--what to feel? 50 lives lost. 50 people out having fun at an Orlando dance club, their lives cut short and for what?
I feel so much anger, sadness, despair, weariness, loss.
And defiance. Yes, defiance. We will continue to hope, to love, to dance.

Saturday, June 11, 2016

benny and the count

Today's soundtrack is Count Basie. These sweetly fluid jams are good for the soul.


Other contenders: Benny Goodman, Harry James, Dizzy. Anyone covering Harold Arlen or Cole Porter. Etta. Rosemary. Mel! The list goes on.

Saturday, June 4, 2016

face fall

A year ago yesterday, I stepped off the back of a bus around 1 a.m. after a night out at the Blue Moon, and faceplanted onto cement. I scraped up both knees, both palms, smashed my upper lip and cheek and bruised a cheekbone. Too stubborn to go to the hospital, I cleaned up as best I could and fell into bed, and when I awoke a few hours later and stumbled into the bathroom and beheld my swollen face, immediately fainted. I went home to shower, websurf about concussions, and stew; finally, I limped down to immediate care, where an older doctor with an accent sat beside me and told me very seriously to go to the hospital--not in a bus, or a taxi, but in an actual human friend's car just in case I blacked out en route. Everything checked out--no concussion or breaks, just road rash, bruising and some serious scrapes--I lost a week of work and of course my pride.
Did I learn anything from the experience?
I know now that true friends are there when you wake up the next day, they sit with you in the ER and take you to the store for frozen peas and jumbo size boxes of bandages. They buy you straws so you can drink wine without moving your cut lip. For every stranger who callously stares, there's a kind grocery clerk who takes you aside and asks, "Did someone hurt you?"
Anyway, a year later, there's still a tiny bit of scar tissue on my upper lip, a reminder each day as I swipe on lip gloss that not everything heals 100% and every experience leaves a mark.
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Today's music for writing is local talent Erik Blood (featuring a friend of a friend on vocals):