Category Archives: Uncategorized

Earl Scruggs passed away yesterday.  The Adagio Sostenuto from Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata played on banjo by Bela Fleck is good music to listen to today: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKylUfV7mWU .

I made a cover for my new Kindle out of materials at hand.  Cardboard, packing tape, and lined with felt.

The second in a series of drawings of screens from the past few years of my notebooks.  So, obviously, the title is a more than a little ironic, as actual contact with actual people is more in the line of what sustains us.  And church is an important part of that for me.  But I would be disingenuous if I didn’t say that amid the dreck there is actually a lot of great art that happens on TV, and that I have been renewed by actors, artists, musicians, and other professionals (even clergy–Jesse Jackson, Brethren Christmas Eve service, to name a couple) who share on the tube, or whose work eventually winds up there.  So thanks to all of you.

Check out “The Art of Practice,” a new blog by Lesley Howard on managing creativity and life. Together. At the same time. I’m dying to learn.

Live in the Boston area?  Wish there were more jazz in your life?  If so, you should help support the ESP vocal trio as they cut their first studio album as a group.   ESP features the dynamic and warm voices of Emily Browder, Sandi Hammond, and Patrice Williamson.  They give you a feeling of sophistication like attending your first grownup party and a feeling of fun like reconnecting with dear old friends.  They are almost at their fundraising goal.  Make your contribution on Kickstarter.  With 45 backers and only $990 to go in five days, you could be the contributor that puts them over the top.  Contributions both large and small are welcome; if you pledge $600, they will record your request on the album–of course it has to be a song that they like, too.  Preview their music in the promotional video at the Kickstarter link above.  You won’t be sorry.

Update:  Thanks!  They met their goal, but I’m sure they would be happy to accept further contributions.

Many thanks to Jon Goldmann , aka @thesessionspot, of the roots music publisher and aggregator No Depression, for putting me (as @DobroSwamp) in his list of the Roots Music Twitterati 140.  That made my day. Check it out. Lots of cool folks to follow there. And really great that Jon and colleagues are looking at the big picture of who’s tweeting about roots music.

This short video clip (“Football’s Stupid“) illustrates why Friday Night Lights is one of the best dramas on TV.  The show is ostensibly about football in smallish Texas town.  It is, but it defies stereotypes.  The show works because the writing is good, the characters are complex, and the acting is subtle. 

In this clip, Coach Taylor (Kyle Chandler) and booster Buddy (Brad Leland) are at a local park sizing up a kid playing pickup basketball, a potential recruit for their high school team.  The kid tells them that football embodies all that is wrong about America, and plus he doesn’t like the uniforms.  Even though we can’t see Coach Taylor’s eyes (he’s wearing mirrored sunglasses), he comes across as smart, sensitive enough to know that there is some truth in what the kid is saying, and passionate enough to try to convince the kid otherwise.

Like Sports Night, the 1998-2000 Aaron Sorkin series about the cast of a SportsCenter-type news program, FNL is a great drama that deserves more than to be written off as a just show about sports.  Or a show about teenagers.  Or a show about a part of the country that you don’t know much about.  Or whatever other label you might want to put on it.  Don’t take my word for it.  Check out Virginia Heffernan’s New York Times 2006 review of the pilot which opened thus:  “Lord, is ‘Friday Night Lights’ good. In fact, if the season is anything like the pilot, this new drama about high school football could be great — and not just television great, but great in the way of a poem or painting, great in the way of art….” The fifth and final season, which has already aired on DirecTV, has its premier on network TV (NBC) on April 15th.

Back in the day, you could go into a certain bagel, soup, and sandwich restaurant chain and order a bagel and cream cheese for two bucks, and they would put all the vegetables from their sandwich board on it for free.  They even had sprouts back then, before the sprout boogie man started lurking around the place.  Then, one dark day several years ago, I ordered the same thing and poof–it’s not a bagel and cream cheese anymore.  If you order more than two or three vegetables, it’s a bagel sandwich, and it costs five bucks.  Well, these days, the same “bagel sandwich” will run you close to seven bucks.  So much for that vegetarian bargain.  Or so it would seem.  Enter:  the veggie bagel life hack. 

Instead of ordering all the vegetables and cream cheese on one bagel,  split up the toppings.  A bagel with a couple veggies on it still costs about a buck, and a bagel and cream cheese costs about two.  So:  order one bagel with cream cheese, carrots, tomatoes, and onions–the messier mix, and order a second bagel with cucumbers and lettuce–easy to move onto the first bagel.  Buy the ingredients as two bagels and it’s $3.40 including tax.  About half price over the “bagel sandwich.” Plus you get an extra bagel for later.  After you pay, shift the cucumbers and lettuce onto the first bagel, wrap them both up, and you’re ready to go.  Mmm.  Veggie bagel.   Still no sprouts, though.