Six months go by so quickly

Wow. Almost halfway through this year with no reportage. That's because there's so much to do in Socorro. Seriously. I've never been so busy in my life.

But I feel a bout of self-improvement coming on, which I do better when I chronicle my efforts. The problem with self-improvement is that you rarely want to improve just one thing about yourself. No, you want a sweeping overhaul. If I started making a list, I'd be sobbing over my keyboard somewhere around item twenty-nine. It's the kind of thing you almost don't want to share with anyone.

So I'm going to pick one thing at random from my list and tackle that. I want to play the harmonica. Harmonica Central seems like a good place to start. Free lesson number one - Red River Valley. Nothing is explained. Hmmm. I'll get back to you on this. But in the meantime, this youtube video of Jon Gindick playing Safe Sex with 10 Holes in 12th position (with 3rd position foreplay) is totally worth watching.

Carrot? Or Clarinet?

I saw this on BoingBoing. It's amazing.

First, possibly last, time for everything

What do you do with a worthless book? No, back up, first I have to determine whether there is such a thing as a worthless book. Having been raised to respect the printed word above all, above God even, I have a hard time overcoming the belief that no matter how wretched the prose or rancid the content, there isn't a book that isn't redeemed just by the fact that it is a book.

In all my life I've never thrown away a book. (Thrown away magazines, newspapers, yes, so why should a book be sacred? I've packed them, hauled them, sold them, donated them, given them away, left them behind.)

Yes, I dog-ear my pages, but I don't write in them, in pen or pencil or with a highlighter, or tear pages out, or even parts of pages. I can barely stand to write my name in a book - when I do the handwriting shows how close this is to me to real profanity. (Why is dog-earing okay? Don't ask me. I don't know. This is just how my mind works.)

I've burned a few books - bad ones - romance novels*. Not to prevent other people from reading them. Just to stay warm. But I don't throw them away. Until just now.

Yes, I know all about recycling. Socorro recycles. Tries to make it easy. I threw them away, even though I could have stored them a little longer until the next free recycling drop-off day.

There was something symbolic about it, because they were books belonging to my ex, who is not a reader. They were all crap, Tim LeHaye crap and things like it. They were in my house, and now they're gone. Yay!

The next batch I'll recycle. Okay? Okay.
____________________________________________
* My sister once survived a long journey cross country in a van by reading romance novels. She was desperate. Some one, not a reader, had given her a stack. When she finished each one, she threw it out the window. This was not a stellar time in her life.

Sad news

The memorial service for Ann is today at 2, at the Macey Center. The local bi-weekly paper had a nice article about her, here.

Next time will be better

We got a call at the office this morning. "We thought you should know that Ann is in the hospital and is not expected to live through the day."

I haven't known Ann long, and I don't know her well, but I like her a lot. She's steady and kind, and generous. She has a knack for quiet encouragement, the right word at the right moment. She's always ready to help out and always there to back you up.

Her son Sam is my daughter's age. He still needs her. A lot of people still need her.

I hope she's still here tomorrow.

In Forrest Carter's The Education of Little Tree, when Eastern Cherokees died, they would say, at the end, "next time will be better." I'm not really sure what it means, but it's comforting, somehow.

Next time will be better.

Good Stuff

Okay - this is a great Eric Bibb song - he sings it with Maria Muldaur on Sisters and Brothers which has nothing but good songs on it:

And this is a song by Norah Jones, that I'm working on with The Decanters:


Enjoy.

Ignominiously Scrubbed

It's true - I've been ignominiously scrubbed from Blabberon's list of people who blog about walking their city streets, and I completely deserve it. I don't do that much walking, these days.

On the other hand, I'm getting to know Socorro in all kinds of different ways. In the year since we unpacked our belongings and said "Okay, this is home now" the introvert in me has taken a back seat to the frenetically social extrovert.

Socorro is like that. It's a small town where everyone is literally and figuratively your neighbor. You can keep to yourself to some extent, but eventually you have to go to one grocery store, where you are likely to be greeted by the manager who is also a city councilor, or the other, where you are likely to to be greeted by the manager who is highly involved in the community theater. Everyone is important, and everything is interconnected. There aren't six degrees of separation - more like two.

I should probably change the name of the blog - most of my strolling is highly figurative now - but I'll keep it the way it is. I may eventually walk all the Socorro streets and want to tell somebody about it.

Here's what I've been doing instead. Yesterday I winterized my swamp cooler. That was Big Deal. I don't mind getting up on the roof, but getting back down scares me. And I fired up the furnace for the first time this year, and put that shrink wrap plastic up over a couple of drafty windows. Made a big pot of home-made chicken noodle stew. Started learning some new songs for one of my bands. Read the Funny Times, and took a little nap. It was lovely.

Last weekend I was barely home - played with my new band, Fargo, at an Obama Rally up in Los Lunas (Worried Man Blues, Hard Times Come Again No More, that kind of thing); visited my mom in Albuqueruqe; played kids' music at the coffeehouse with my Bug Soup band (If Pigs Had Wings, There Was an Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly, that kind of thing); and did a two hour set at the Stage Door Grill Sunday night with my band, The Decanters.

If you're in Socorro, check out The Decanters at the Socorro Springs on November 22nd, and at the Stage Door Grill on December 7th.
And don't forget to check out the annual Festival of the Cranes. It's awesome.