Author: admin

First Lady of Song

First Lady of Song

“That night in Berlin, we were in front of twelve thousand people and at the end of a midnight concert. We had played Brussels earlier, flown to Berlin and been up for twenty-two hours. We were all so tired we couldn’t hold our heads up, when Ella turns around and says, ‘Let’s do “Mack the Knife.”

“My heart sank. I was too tired. We were in front of too many people to try something crazy, and I knew Ella didn’t know the tune. I said, ‘Well, golly Ella…’ but before I could say anymore she had turned around and was announcing it.”

Wilfred Middlebrooks, Ella Fitzgerald’s bassist that night, describing the night Ella, my favorite singer and the best Jazz singer that ever lived, sang Mack the Knife live in front of 12,000 Germans, forgot the words, and got her 5th and 6th Grammy Awards.

April 25th would’ve been Ella’s 100th birthday. This summer proved to be the best summer I’ve had thus far in my life, and in my mind’s eye, it started that night. That night, I was sitting in a San Antonio hotel room eating chocolate Rice Krispie treats, writing the earliest draft of what eventually became this essay, and listening to Midnight Sun, probably my favorite Ella song from one of my favorite Ella albums, her recording of The Johnny Mercer Songbook. Continue reading “First Lady of Song” →

Blanket

Blanket

On July 4th 2015, I went to Indianapolis Motor Speedway to see The Rolling Stones.

It was a wonderful concert, and a memorable day for many reasons. That day was the beginning of my current personal favorite tradition: roadtrips, especially for concerts or vacations, and at the time it was my longest drive to and from a single destination. Traffic close to the Speedway was ridiculous; I saw numerous people bail out of cars (that were admittedly not moving), run into buildings to either use the restroom or emerge with drinks and/or sandwiches, and run halfway down the block to catch their car. I’ll never forget getting lost when leaving the concert, getting lost in the Speedway, belatedly realizing I’d been driving progressively farther and farther from the lights for several minutes, that I was driving around in the infield, that I was likely on some security radar somewhere, and that I’d better turn around right now or they’d send someone to collect me.

I think of that concert more than any other concert than I’ve ever been to, but not for the reasons I ever expected to. Continue reading “Blanket” →

Review: Tumi Annapolis Zip Flap Bag

Review: Tumi Annapolis Zip Flap Bag

On May 6th, I walked into a Tumi location to check out a bag I’d been heavily eyeing online: the Annapolis Crossbody Zip Flap bag.

I knew immediately that I adored it. I knew just as certainly that I didn’t need it. At that point, I’d been using Fossil’s Field City Bag for 3 months, and I was pretty satisfied with it. After checking out the bag, I turned around and walked out, determined to wait.

I drove back a few hours later and walked out with it. (Some wait, huh?) I’m really glad I did, and after 2.5 months of testing, I’ve been satisfied with what I’ve found. Tumi’s Annapolis Zip Flap bag is easily one of the 3-5 best bags I’ve ever had, if not the best.

Continue reading “Review: Tumi Annapolis Zip Flap Bag” →

Full Moon

Full Moon

Humans equate the sun with rebirth
Write soaring paeans to the dawn
They have much to learn
Dawn is the end of the process
I am the beginning

There are many kinds of light
The sun’s rays are powerful
You have to squint and turn away
Fish around for your shades
Hope not to drop them off the edge of the boat
Again
Not much clarity in afterburn

My light is softer, and I glow
The way forward becomes clear
Your surroundings are suddenly sharper
I light your internal pathways
You can look as far and as long as you want
Without squinting

Time is cyclical
Every cycle, you fall farther from me
Obscured by clouds
Supposedly the universe is indifferent
I’m right here
I always have been

Eventually, it is time, and I shimmer into view
Behold
I illuminate all that is, and all of what could be
Possibilities
All facets of self
Barely banked potential, concealed by nothing

Shadow

“I have a friend- a singer, a good folk singer, song collector. He comes and listens to my shows and says ‘you always sing about the past, you can’t live in the past,’ and I say to him ‘I could go outside and pick up a rock older than the oldest song you know and come back here and drop it on your foot. The past didn’t go anywhere, did it? It’s right here, right now.'”
-Utah Phillips

Longtime readers will remember my fondness for that quote. It is one of my dominant themes, both of my writing and of my life. Continue reading “Shadow” →

Double Exposure

All my life, especially when I was little, I remember such a kerfuffle being made about Turning Thirty ™. Lots of jokes, but also lots of angst and lamenting.

I remember my mother being so upset when she turned 30. I was a month or so into kindergarten. My continuity of memory picks up at about the point my mother was 29 years old. Over the past year or so, my memories of my mother’s 29th year have been overlaid on my real-time experiencing of my own, creating a double exposure that has been somewhat disorienting even before the haze of unreality that has shadowed the last year or so. We live in strange times.

Today is my 30th birthday. I am no longer standing on the verge. I’ve jumped. My canopy is full, and the scenery defies description.


Continue reading “Double Exposure” →

Motion of the Ocean

Motion of the Ocean

In 2004, I was 16, a Junior in high school and in the middle of a year that was a rocket to the moon. Many important things happened that year. I pride myself on usually being pretty good at realizing the importance of things as they’re happening, but something I didn’t realize was so important until later was reading Old Times on the Mississippi, a portion of a larger Mark Twain memoir named Life on the Mississippi, for my AP English class. (Ms. Grant, we loved you and you are sorely missed.) Continue reading “Motion of the Ocean” →

Review: Fossil Field City Bag

Originally written February 16th, 2017.
2 Sundays ago I was poking around at the Bluegrass Outlet Shops in Simpsonville, and found an absolutely ridiculous deal at the Fossil outlet that I snatched up at something only slightly slower than the speed of light.
TL,DR review: If this bag was a person, I’d marry it, and ya’ll would be invited. Smash that buy button, if you see it for sale online or elsewhere. Full review follows.
The easiest and quickest way I gauge how excited I am about a product is how eager I am to review it. I love testing, evaluating, and reviewing items/products/restaurants/you name it, and if it’s something I love, I find it difficult to force myself to wait long enough to give it enough time for a fair review. I began drafting this review mentally later that day.
Meet Fossil’s Field City Bag! #fanfare