"Googled You in Quotes / Got No Results"

Favorite Mix Tapes from my Stash

I made a playlist! *pats self on back* It's such a simple pleasure, the playlist, and I've just been reminded that it's so much more fun to make a playlist for someone else than it is to do it for one's self. Now that I'm old and not courting and everything is digital, it's a rare pleasure to sit down and choose music for someone you love.

This one is for the lovely Shari Slade, purveyor of gooey angst, pusher of naughty gifs, and ducky word-smith. (I have no idea what ducky word-smith means; it just sounds right.) It's named after one of the most haunting lines on Pete Yorn's album Back & Forth.

Googled You in Quotes / Got No Results

1. 2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten, Lucinda Williams
2. My First Lover, Gillian Welch
3. Broken Things, Lucy Kaplansky (Cover of Julie Miller)
4. Blossom, Ryan Adams & The Cardinals
5. Kiss Catastrophe, The Nadas (cover The Damnwells)
6. Social Development Dance, Pete Yorn
7. Jealous Girl, Ben Kweller
8. Down On The River By The Sugar Plant, Mike Doughty
9. Magick, Ryan Adams
10. Lonely Boy, The Black Keys (The video is awesome!)
11. Real Live Bleeding Fingers And Broken Guitar Strings, Lucinda Williams
12. Down Home Girl, Old Crow Medicine Show
13. Wolf Like Me, Lera Lynn
14. Don't Mind Me, Lucy Kaplansky
15. Are You Happy Now? Richard Shindell
16. Hard Out Here, Garrett Hedlund

FRIDAY AFTER CLASS / 13 MARCH 8

This round's on me!

How to take a bath. I could not resist this post on Brain Pickings reviewing a vintage pamphlet. They had pamphlets for everything back before the internet.

Containers. I'm obsessed by how sucky containers are. These are kind of cute though.

Cool Tools. Anyone who has every had to re-key the house or office will appreciate this lock system.

This is real. I can't decide if this is awesome or crazy.

Love this. How you look with a gun.

Listen to this feel good song by Haim.

Passport Ownership by state. (Iowa does not disappoint.)

Save a spot for me!

FRIDAY AFTER CLASS / 25 JANUARY 13

FAC is back, folks. I do love teaching the Friday night classes, but being done teaching on Thursdays is more awesomer! I feel like I'm on vacation being done on Thursdays.

So, with no further adoddle, this round’s on me.

Rock Collector. Did you know my first college major was Geology? I'll have me a whole collection of these please. This one has a Honeycomb Fossil pattern.

The Future. A few words on how our view of the past influences our future.

Blue is always my favorite color. A piece about the history of blue.

Listen. "Are you dying? Hello?" Well really, with members of The Jayhawks, Wilco and Soul Asylum, it'd be hard to screw this up. "Making Waves" is one of my favorites (but I couldn't find it online to share.) "Until You Came Along" is another good one, but Golden Smog has a strong body of work.

A good poem. Go ahead. Wake up your saints and settle down for the night.

I'm in love. Dear Sugar is the only self-help/personal psychology/advice columnist you need in your life. I've seen Tiny Beautiful Things praised all over the interwebs, but it was reading this excerpt that sold me on Strayed's remarkable mastery of gut-level, tell-it-real, be-the-best-you brand of spirituality. Here is her advice to a teen--one of many she worked with--who lived with abuse daily.

I told her it was not okay, that it was unacceptable, that it was illegal and that I would call and report this latest, horrible thing. But I did not tell her it would stop. I did not promise that anyone would intervene. I told her it would likely go on and she’d have to survive it. That she’d have to find a way within herself to not only escape the shit, but to transcend it, and if she wasn’t able to do that, then her whole life would be shit, forever and ever and ever. I told her that escaping the shit would be hard, but that if she wanted to not make her mother’s life her destiny, she had to be the one to make it happen. She had to do more than hold on. She had to reach. She had to want it more than she’d ever wanted anything. She had to grab like a drowning girl for every good thing that came her way and she had to swim like fuck away from every bad thing. She had to count the years and let them roll by, to grow up and then run as far as she could in the direction of her best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by her own desire to heal.

A super fun birthday cake. For some drunk friend with a sense of humor.

Save me a spot at the bar! (Preferably not on the floor.)

FAC *Friday After Class* 12 October 19

Or, Sunday the 21st Before Class, as the case may be.

More Music I've been listening to lots of music lately. I'm not sure what the shift has been, as I tend to listen to podcasts more than songs, but so it is. This is the collective called Cry Cry Cry, made up of 3 great singer-song writers. The entire album is excellent. Here's a good one for a cloudy Sunday.

Love/Hate I really hate those family member decals on cars, but I love this silly take on it. Baby Zombie!

More Zombies.  Other fun zombie items: Matryoshka Nesting Dolls and Zombies for your snow village. 

Doctors must be using this chart! Type Face for docs.

Via Hither and Tither

Save me a spot at the bar!

Things That Make You Feel Old

When I see kids grow up--like one year they are a tot and a few later they are a tween--I don't feel old so much as a feel like time is going by quickly.

What makes me feel old is knowing how long something has been with me, like a book, an idea, a song. I'm currently making a mix cd for a sweet young women who has taken a couple of my classes. She's really into singing and she's very "innocent" in a good way. I wanted to expose her to some good songs, but nothing too dark or melancholy, because her experience with music is pretty limited to Christian rock and there is tons of other good-good stuff out there.

I started flipping through the ipod and realized I've had Shawn Colvin with me for over 20 years. The last year in high school and the first in college were major music explosions for me and now all of those people I met then have been with me 20 years. That makes me feel old.



The video is lame, but the song is a good one.

FAC *Friday After Class* 12 October 12

This round’s on me.

Country Poetry I've been thinking a lot about poetry this week. This Johnny Cash song is probably my favorite, and country music was my initiation into poetry.

Ceramics If you don't need this pottery, I certainly do.

Love is not fear.  You can say many things about Bill and Hillary, but this one is likely very true.

Anglocreeps! I really enjoyed this piece about Anglocreep. Why not, is what I say. Languages borrow from each other--that's one of the ways they grow. Who cares if it's annoying?

Speaking of Poetry, I've been collecting definitions of what it is. Any thoughts?

Save me a spot at the bar!

Variations on a Theme

"Whatever you think the world is withholding from you, 

you are withholding from the world." ― Eckhart Tolle

"Whatever you think people are withholding from you―
praise, appreciation, assistance, loving care, and so on―
give it to them." ― Eckhart Tolle

“Nature does not give to those who will not spend.” ― R.J.Baughan,

“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” ― Dalai Lama XIV, The Art of Happiness

“As we work to create light for others, we naturally light our own way.” 

― Mary Anne Radmacher

. . . more 31 days posts . . .

FAC *Friday After Class* 12 August 17

This (very visual) round’s on me.

Clutter I just recently did away with a lot of the clutter on the fridge, but the clutter bugs in my house are moving back in. Apparently, what our fridge looks like says a lot about the state of our life.

Listen Not sure why I find song covers so compelling, but this mash-up of Gotye's "Somebody That I Used to Know" covers certainly doesn't disappoint. (P.S. This one is my favorite.)



Where can I buy me some Girl on Fire art? This piece is dazzling.

Sharks! These shark pencil bags from the Etsy store Minne Bites are possibly the cutest way to store pencils ever.

Need. I'm pretty sure we could all use one of these.

Save me a spot at the bar!

Music for The Old Man

"Fifteen years ago we owned that road
now it's rolling over us instead...

It only gives us somewhere else to bleed"

Levelland, Robert Earl Keen

Let It Ride, Ryan Adams & The Cardinals

I've Always Been Crazy, Highwaymen featuring Waylon Jennings

Fearless Heart, Steve Earle

A Summer Wind, A Cotton Dress, Richard Shindell

In State, Kathleen Edwards

I Had Something, Lucy Kaplansky

Danko/Manuel, Drive-By Truckers

True Romantic, Indigo Girls

Hate It Here, Wilco

Not Even B-Sides

Source

It's uprising sometimes how long I will go without listening to our music. Sure I hear random crap on the radio and piped into stores, but it's not often I choose to listen to our culled collection. With Benjamin in the car or at home it's nearly impossible to listen to anything as he fills all space and time with noise and need, but even when I'm alone I rarely put on music anymore. In the car I tend to listen to talk--podcasts and interviews and books and productions. 

I commute and my brain is a messy place and having a focus makes the hours in the car each week bearable. Much of what I listen to is humorous, and the comedy is an antidote of sorts, to the stupidity I imbibe daily. And then I can't take the talk anymore and I flip it to shuffle and I relearn and re-remember. 


Some of the songs on this 'random' playlist--the hits of the shuffle tonight, in that order--are not my favorites by these artists, nor would they even have made the B-sides. Some of these artists don't see big replay numbers anymore in my stats. And yet they are all good songs from various styles and eras. Don't believe me?

1. Get Older / Matthew Sweet (audio)
2. Bigmouth Strikes Again / The Smiths (audio)
3. Electric Blue / The Cranberries (audio)
4. Tell Me What Else I Can Do Wrong Tonight / Whiskeytown (I could not find a version of this online, so instead I went with recent Ryan and the Cardinals performing Magick! (audio)
5. Traces Of The Western Slopes / Rickie Lee Jones (There is a commercial b4 this one, but it's worth the wait.)
6. Sylvia Plath / Ryan Adams
7. Doing The Twist / Bone People, poetry by Debra Marquart
8. China / Tori Amos
9. Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before / The Smiths (video: 80s hair, glasses, jean jackets and British lads on bikes alert!)
10. Gravel / Ani DiFranco (audio)

Ani DiFranco is so worth seeing live!