- Rowing an inflatable boat with Casey for the better part of the afternoon.
- Emerging from a hiking trial to find a woman in her 60s, Stephanie, doubled over, coughing. I asked if she needed help. She said she was OK, “just trying to breathe.” We stood and talked about her former job as a nurse, Native American music, and God for a while.
- The tiny beads of sap oozing up, gleaming, on a wooden deck.
- Walking with Casey on a rural road at night, Basil’s new collar lamp lighting the way.
- Cooking, crying, napping on a bean bag, and listening to music with Casey.
- Playing with Sima Cunningham at the historic Green Mill (for the Paper Machete variety show), and then later at the Hungry Brain.
- Applying edge banding to our recording desk components.
- Staining the components of our recording desks.
- The last show of this run, at UFO Factory in Detroit.
- A cathartic show in Buffalo, New York. Scheduled with four-days’ notice after Liam’s passport was stolen while on tour with Sam Evian, preventing our planned Toronto show from happening.
- A tour day off in Horseheads, New York.
- Kevin Kelly repeating a good nugget of wisdom: “Anything you say before the word ‘but’ does not count.”
- Walking around the Ashokan Reservoir.
- Another adorable northeastern orange lizard.
- The pools of dandelion fuzz gathered on the Troy, New York venue’s steps.
- The plumes of fog rising from the mountains on the road to Kingston, New York.
- Life is so much better with music in it and music is so much better with life in it.
- You know a venue will be good when its bathrooms have free tampons in them. (This is about Tubby’s in Kingston — it’s a GREAT venue!)
- The hearts designed into the roofing shingles of a church steeple in Montpelier, Vermont.
- The bird whose call sounds like an eight-bit arcade sound, heard on a pre-show hike in Winooski, Vermont.
- Thunderstorms lighting up the pitch-black dark outside our temporary Vermont cabin home.
- The tiny orange lizard on our Massachusetts hike.
- Fried fish from Pedrin’s Dairy Bar.
- Some of the most delicious pho I’ve ever had, at Pho Capital, Montpelier, Vermont.
- Sleeping at a friend’s self-built cabin in the middle of nowhere, Vermont.
- Day three of Solid Sound. Playing cymbal and snare drum in Sam Evian’s “long tone” meditation pop-up performance inside the museum. Playing Liam’s new songs. Watching Sun Ra’s Arkestra led by Marshall Allen end their set marching off stage and continue playing music off stage for a few minutes, which moved me. Jeff Tweedy & Friends! David Byrne singing “California Stars” with us.
- Day two of Solid Sound. Playing with Liam to a super sweet, packed audience, the first show of the day. Lawrence Azerrad and me hosting the first in-person event for Mirror Sound, which came out in 2020: a self-recording demo with Sam Evian and Liam. One of Sammy’s first solo electronic shows ever, a pop-up inside the museum.
- Day one of Solid Sound. Kicking off the festival with an Ohmme pop-up among Amy Hauft’s installation. Wilco performing all of Cruel Country. The release of Cruel Country!
- Walking around Mass MoCA before the Solid Sound festivities begin.
- Eating a delicious lobster roll at a suspicious, bowling-alley-attached restaurant.
- Alan Jacobs: “I don’t expect that anyone will be reading my stuff after I die — I expect that I’ll be wholly forgotten before I die, if I live to a good age — but I almost never think about that. At the end of Middlemarch George Eliot says of Dorothea that ‘the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts,’ and that captures better than I can my convictions on this point. Diffusive is the key word: an influence that subtly spreads, perhaps without anyone noticing. I find that model of influence more encouraging and comforting than any hopes for fame could ever be.”
- Hiking s’more with Sammy and Dad.
- Hiking with Sammy and Dad.
- Flying next to an adorable puppy.
- Installing another Tushy bidet attachment for a relative.
- Gluing up some oak desktops.
- My nasal cavities are so much more accepting of foreign objects now, two years into covid swabbing.
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