Tuesday, December 6, 2016

Streaming! Don't Talk To Me About Streaming

One of the unintended consequences of our recent house refurbishing is that I broke my CD player.  I had to get the electronic stuff off the floor until the new hickory was installed.  No problem, but when I brought it all back upstairs and started putting it together, I discovered that somehow the CD player had been stepped on or otherwise rendered useless.  This would not be a problem for most people, but it is for me.  When I told Chris about my defunct stereo, he laughed it off and told me that what I had been using was obsolete and I could get something small and inexpensive that would produce at least as much sound as my old stuff.  Katherine started talking about getting Bose speakers that could stream songs off our phones.

They just don't understand.  I have a long history with record players.  That's what I called them back in the day.  And all of those machines, except for the first, had amplifiers and pre-amplifiers and tuners and turntables and book shelf speakers.  I just don't think I'm emotionally ready for anything different.

When I was a kid in Estes Park, we had a Zenith console that sat in our living room playing a continuous stream of Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, Frank Sinatra, The Chordettes, The HiLos, with an occasional Nat King Cole thrown in for balance.  The first record I ever bought was a recording of Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney singing duets.  I particularly liked their cover of "I'm Gonna Get You On A Slow Boat To China."  Later, I bought Frank Sinatra's COME DANCE WITH ME and spent hours down in our basement (I had taken it upon myself to move the Zenith downstairs closer to my room.) wearing a cheap fedora cocked stylishly to one side, sitting on a stool, and singing along, pretending I was killing in some nightclub.

My sister, Jeri, married her second (maybe it was her third) husband shortly thereafter and he had an old RCA stereo system with speakers that you could spread apart to get the full effect.  I left my Sinatra period and became a fan of folk music:  Peter, Paul, and Mary, The Kingston Trio, but mostly The Limeliters ("Have Some Madeira M'Dear).  My friend Bob even picked up the banjo and I tried to learn Travis picking on guitar.

I went to college and quickly outgrew the RCA portable system when I discovered that it just wasn't up to the demands of The Beatles, The Stones, and later, The Band.  My roommate and I were without a system, but a guy on the top floor of Carroll Hall played "Good Morning" from the SGT. PEPPER album at full blast every morning at 6.  It sounded great.  There was no way that old RCA would ever sound like that.  It was also one of the reasons I was a regular attendee at breakfast.  In fact, breakfasts at the Regis cafeteria were fuller, I bet, than breakfasts at DU or CU.  Of course, I can't attest to that.

It wasn't until I graduated and started working at Craig Hospital to fulfill my conscientious objection to the draft that I finally discovered what a great stereo could do.  We--the orderlies-- were all COs there.  We were all college grads.  Pete and I were English majors.  Tom was an architect.  There was even a guy on the graveyard shift who had his Ph.D. in philosophy.  We were all politically active and we all hung out after work, getting high on Lebanese Black hash and listening to music, mostly Creedence and Cat Stevens, at full blast.

My high school chum, Mike, lived in Denver at the time and had a great old house with three roommates on University and Kentucky, give or take a few blocks.  I loved stopping by after work or on days off just to hang out.  I could hear Cat Stevens pounding on Mike's speakers as soon as I got a block from his house.  I remember his components:  Sansui tuner and amplifier, Fisher turntable, and most important, Bose speakers.  Bose was a brand new name at that time and the volume those little speakers could churn out was flabbergasting.  Mike's living room was laid out exactly like any self-respecting hippy freak's living room.  There was a huge, wooden cable reel table sitting in front of an old, floppy, and comfy couch that Mike got out of his father's basement.  There was an antique wicker wheel chair across from the table within easy reach of an overflowing ashtray.  And, the piece de resistance, an old, still functioning dentist chair situated in exactly the right spot to get the full effect of Cat Stevens hard edged voice.  We never talked much.  The stereo was too loud.  But we somehow knew we were having a great time.

Well, Mike's system settled it.  I had to get my own.  Like all good young college grad dopers at that time, we all had our own copy of THE WHOLE EARTH CATALOGUE, so it was part of my ethos to do a little consumer research before starting out on this major purchase.  My research paid off and I quickly purchased a 120 watt Fisher tuner and amplifier, an Acoustic Research turntable, and two AR5 speakers.  I played the Fisher demo record over and over, marveling at my new toy.  I went out and bought the requisite Cat Stevens and Creedence stuff, but I also bought a lot of classical things, particularly piano and guitar, on Angel recordings and listened to the clarity of Radu Lupo's keyboard skills.  I lived in a mobile home then and my stereo made the tin walls shake.  It probably made the tin walls in all of my neighbor's trailers shake as well.

That stereo was always the first thing to be placed in any new home or apartment I moved into.  Next came paintings and posters.  Furniture was always an afterthought.

When Kathie and I moved into our home almost forty years ago, I bought a new system.  It was a Sony component thing I bought at Sears.  It even came with its own cabinet.  It was never the sonic equivalent of those AR5s with the Fisher amp.  Besides, I was getting old enough and the tinnitus was just starting up, that I really couldn't tell about fine sonic distinctions anymore.  But, until recently, it did the trick.

I write all of this because Kathie and I saw the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's Fiftieth Anniversary show on PBS a couple of days ago.  I cried all the way through it.  You see, getting a great system means getting great music and Kathie and I courted each other to the Dirt Band's great album, UNCLE CHARLY AND HIS DOG TEDDY (I think that was the name.).  We also played The Band at full volume, the BOOKENDS album, TAPESTRY, and James Taylor.  Lots of James Taylor.  I loved those days.  Don't get me wrong.  I love my current days as well, but the music just isn't as good.

A short digression:  There was a lovely older lady who used to teach in the Lang Arts Department at Green Mountain.  This was right when we were beginning to get computerized.  Each teacher had just gotten his/her own computer  and we had just gotten a memo explaining to us how we were to take computerized attendance and how we were to enter computerized grades and how we could track students through their day by using the computer.  All this new technology was too much for the lady teacher, who had just recently mastered which buttons to push on her phone to get the main office, and she threw her papers in the air, stood up with tears streaming down her face, and stormed out of the room muttering something about how she couldn't take it any more.

I feel just like that lovely old lady.  I don't want to get current.  I don't want to learn how to stream unless it involves a kayak.  I'm still not completely sure about CDs.  I just want a couple of giant speakers with 12 inch woofers, an amplifier that gives off a blue glow when the lights are off, and The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band spinning on the turntable.


Sunday, December 4, 2016

Books to Read, or Not

This is Katherine.  Don't be confused.  I haven't written in ages.  I have been a busy girl though.  I have been knitting and drawing and reading and watching grand kids and traveling and waiting for our custom-made table to actually finally get to the "made" stage.  I have not been working.  I stopped doing that last June.  I will write about that sometime.  Not now though.

I just finished a book and I won't get through the next one before the holidays are gone, so I thought I'd write a brief post on the books I've read recently.  It helps me keep track of them in my old age.

Here we go:

1.  Galapagos Regained.  James Morrow.  Chloe Bathurst, 19th century actress, becomes Darwin's zookeeper in London after his famous Beagle voyage.  This part is okay, but the book falls apart with a farcical trip to Galapagos where Chloe attempts to prove Darwin's theories with a plan that seems more akin to Around the World in 80 Days.  * (Skip this sucker)

2.  The Painter.  Peter Heller.  Jim Stegner is an artist raging over his daughter's murder.  He erupts violently when the innocent are attacked.  A senseless beating of a roan horse moves the plot at the beginning of the book.  He kills two men in a rage over the horse and the violence and poetry in his heart battles his fears and desires about himself as his paintings emerge from dreamlike trances.  As his reputation as a person is tarnished with rumors about the killings, his paintings increase in their value and this also drives him crazy.  This book is thoughtful and suspenseful.  It says creating art is the only way you can truly be in the moment.  ***(A really good book)

3.  The Circle.  Dave Eggers.  Mae goes to work for the Circle--an exaggerated Google Corporation with it's own special GooglePlex.  Most folks know about this book already.  It targets the invasion of privacy in business and our compulsions to give up our privacy.  Very compelling.  I didn't look at my phone as often for a couple of days.  ***(A really good book)

4.  The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying.  Marie Kondo.  Not much style here, but a great system for discarding and storage.  I love how my drawers look when I open them now.  I spend more time throwing stuff out and it is easier to do.  I see folding clothes in a whole new light.  **(Worth a look)

5.  Dr. Brinkley's Tower.  Robert Hough.  Wonderful book.  It is the story of a small Mexican town near the Texas border that is revived and destroyed when an American salesman (he peddles unique cures for male sexual problems) builds a radio tower there.  There is a touch of magical realism provided by a "curandera" who guards the town and deals with its salvation at the end of the novel.  The author seems to love women (refreshing) and there are several perfect stories sprinkled in between the town's cast of characters.  I loved this book.  ****(Put it on your list)

6.  The Secret Chord.  Geraldine Brooks.  This is the story of King David in the Old Testament from the prophet Nathan's point of view.  It is a study of the pain and beauty duality in King David.  David does wondrous and awful things that we all know from reading our Bibles.  Nathan sees all of it coming.  Some nice sentences.  **(Worth a look)

7.  Off the Grid.  C. J. Box.  You have to like the Joe Pickett stories to like this one.  This is the most recent in a ton of books about Joe (Wyoming Game Warden and clumsy detective type).  I like them because the books cover parts of Wyoming we drive through all the time.  I can match certain stretches of road with scenes in the novels.  Mostly I like a character named Nate Romanowski--he's the retired assassin with a pony tail who lives outside the grid.  If you have any interest, I'd start with an earlier book just because there is a whole lot of story that leads up to this one.  Not Rated--Guilty Pleasure.

8.  Breakfast With the Buddha.  I don't remember the author, but he wrote Lunch with the Buddha and Dinner with the Buddha too.  It is about a middle aged man who must return to his parents' farm after their tragic death and his wacky sister makes his take a Buddhist monk with him.  He learns he has a lot to learn.  * (Skip this sucker)

9.  America's National Parks.  Ken Burns.  This is a big coffee table book.  Jim read it last year and it was my turn.  It is an amazing story that is told with new names and places in each chapter.  In each chapter some wonderful person figures out we should save some specific land and greedy people fight against it in their states and in Congress until the good guy wins and we have a new national park.  It never ever seemed to change.  Greed is the constant evil in the book.  Most of our National Parks come down to the efforts of a very few good men.  ***(A really good book)

10.  The Throwback Special.  Chris Bacheder.   A group of middle-aged guys meet every year at a run down Ramada Inn in the midwest somewhere and spend the weekend getting ready to re-enact the play where Joe Theisman broke his leg on a Monday Night Football game.  All the guys are neurotic and worried about the weird little stuff middle aged guys worry about (I guess).  Along the way, there are lovely insights.  Marriage is about watching each other (Jim wrote a post about this).  Sidewalks tell you where to go and paths describe where you wanted to go.  A fun read.  ***(A Really good
book)

11.  The Ship of Theseus.  J. J. Abrams.  Lots of ideas here.  Man has an innate need to box in or control evil.  (We jail, we kill, we go to war, etc).  It will not work because evil is porous and will always escape.  The ONLY thing that stops evil is ART and BEAUTY.  Reading the book is a surreal experience.  There is a primary tale that reminds me what it might be like to live in a Katie Hoffman painting.  In the margins two literary scholars try to track down the "real" tale of the pretend author of The Ship of Theseus.  The scholars pass notes and photos and maps and other tidbits to each other and you find those tucked between pages.  A very real mystery the scholars are working on is juxtaposed to the magical mystery of the ship.  Everything overlaps everywhere.  This was a tough read, but I loved it.  ****(Put this on your list)

12.  The Man Who Saved Henry Morgan.  Robert Hough.  I bought this because I loved #5 on the list so much.  This one is also very good.  Benny Wand, a great chess player and conman, becomes an advisor to Henry Morgan as he reclaims the Spanish Main in the Caribbean.  The Captain recognizes the conman's strategic abilities and regains the English losses with Benny's tactical guidance.  There is lots of torture and lots of blood and guts, but the story compels you to keep going.  ***(A really good book)

13.  Trans Atlantic.  Colum McCann.  The structure of this book is interesting.  Chapters play Leap Frog.  In an early chapter, Lottie briefly meets famous aviators Alcove and Brown before they try the first flight across the English Channel.  The next chapter starts a new story, but is followed with Lottie's story as she follows her independent journalist mother from Nova Scotia to Ireland.  Frederick Douglas of historic fame shows up early and the settling of the Catholic and Protestant battles appears near the end of the book.  Historical figures show the entrenchment of the past and the huge effort any change (for freedom, for peace) takes on any individuals working for the changes.  All the characters are alone, but not lonely.  They are clearly connected for the reader and the characters seem to know or feel connected to the threads of each other's stories.  The one drawback of the book--I hated the constant use of "artistic fragments."   ***(A really good book)

That's it.   I've just started Ahab's Wife.  Good so far.


Thursday, December 1, 2016

Feeling Empty

I'm sitting in my office typing this thing.  I am surrounded by photographs, the kind that people of my age tend to put up in their offices.  There's a picture of Katherine when I first knew her, coiffed in her Barbra Streisand curls, sitting on her desk, regaling her students all gathered around her.  There is a picture of me when I was a young teacher at Marycrest that looks a lot like Kathie's photo.  I'm sitting on my desk; my hair is almost curlier than Kathie's; a crowd of adoring students stand by.  There's a picture of Chris in Stax of Wax at Elitch's, his first gig.  There's another picture of Chris dancing at The Cherry Creek Art Festival years ago.  It's just Chris and two girls plus some drummers.  It chronicles the beginning of his businesses.  I look at it a lot.  There is a picture of Nate and Kathie hugging after he married Ashley.  There are a bunch of pictures of Franny and her daughters hanging next to an ancient photo of me getting my one year old nose licked by my mother's cocker spaniel.  There are, of course, lots of pictures of Jenny Lake Lodge and the trails leading up into the mountains from there.  And there are numbers of photos of Michelle Obama when she was Franny's boss:  FLOTUS and Franny sitting on Air Force One cracking up over a joke; a picture of Franny, Kathie, and me with FLOTUS at South High School; another photo of all of us, plus F's grandmother, with FLOTUS in the Rockies' locker room at Coors Field.

Franny is taking Willa to Washington in a few days to reune with the Obamas and all the staffers over the past eight years.  It will be their last Christmas party at the White House.  I'm so happy and proud that my daughter played a big role in getting Barack Obama into the White House.  I've spent a lot of time in the last eight years living vicariously through  her engagement with politics and governing.

That brings me to the title of this post.  I've been lost since the election.  My day used to be defined by the hours of reading I spent trying to learn the truth.  I tried to read stuff on both sides of each issue.  I actually waded through the drab headlines and blurbs of The Drudge Report.  I looked at stuff from FoxNews.  Of course, I spent most of my time looking at The Daily Beast and The New York Times, but I still attempted to be fair and balanced.  I looked daily at the election projections  on FiveThirtyEight.  I even look at Morning Joe from time to time.  I argued politics with friends and people who were not my friends.  And when I argued, I was able to bring an impressive arsenal of facts and figures and logic to the table.

But since we are now living in a post-truth world, I don't do that anymore.  Nowadays I can get all my newspaper and website reading done in no time.  Since every column inch is devoted to the latest thing Trump has tweeted and every legitimate news event is only interesting because of what some prominent politico has to say about it, I find there is nothing to read outside of the sports pages.  And since the Broncos seem destined to miss the playoffs, I've even lost interest in that.

So what do I do?  I don't know yet.  We started back to the Y this week.  That uses up a couple of hours.  We come back home and I make myself a bloody mary or two.  That uses up some more time.  I keep rereading the stuff I've been writing and making minor little changes and that takes up another hour or two.  Then we decide if we are going to make a dinner, or eat out.  Lately, we've been eating out.  Then it's back home where the only thing on television I can stand watching is old movies.  Then it is off to bed where I spend another fitful night arguing with people in my head.

This is the first thing I have written since I got back from Belize.  That's the biggest emptiness I'm feeling.  For years, I've been regularly producing a thousand good words (well, good to me at any rate) every day.  This little blurb is a start on my road to recovery.

I've got to wrap this up now.  It's time to go to the Y.  I'll let you know how it goes.