This page renders best in Firefox (or Safari, or Chrome)
Birthdays
and anniversaries: my own and others'.
READIN
READIN started out as a place for me
to keep track of what I am reading, and to learn (slowly, slowly)
how to design a web site.
There has been some mission drift
here and there, but in general that's still what it is. Some of
the main things I write about here are
reading books,
listening to (and playing) music, and
watching the movies. Also I write about the
work I do with my hands and with my head; and of course about bringing up Sylvia.
The site is a bit of a work in progress. New features will come on-line now and then; and you will occasionally get error messages in place of the blog, for the forseeable future. Cut me some slack, I'm just doing it for fun! And if you see an error message you think I should know about, please drop me a line. READIN source code is PHP and CSS, and available on request, in case you want to see how it works.
See my reading list for what I'm interested in this year.
READIN has been visited approximately 236,737 times since October, 2007.
When my parents were dating, back these 40-some years ago, back at Berkeley, their song was "When I'm Sixty-Four." Well this week, my dad is 26 -- likely the last sixth power he will see, and the last power of two -- and mom is still needing him, still feeding him. Happy birthday, Dad!
The party is today in Modesto and I'm sorry I'm not there. Hope to see you guys soon!
Bob Dylan has been in the world for 7 decades today. That's a good long time, and for about the last 5 of them he has been contributing some beautiful, significant art to the world. I'm not sure what to say about this but, happy birthday, Bob! Many happy returns of the day! The Guardian has a slide show of images from his career.
Below the fold, some of my own memories that involve Dylan and his music.
I became a fan of Dylan's music in 1983, when I was 13 years old. I had always known about him and recognized some of his songs; but in the summer of my 13th year I spent a couple of weeks staying with my parents' friend Jim Higgs (r.i.p.), who had a lot of Dylan's records and the book of his lyrics. This was the summer Empire Burlesque came out, and Jim was talking it up a whole lot; but I started reading the book and became entranced by "Subterranean Homesick Blues". I listened over and over to Bringing It All Back Home; and when my family came back to town and I went home, I raided my parents' collection of Dylan records. That year and the years that followed, I listened very heavily to Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited; and less heavily to Blonde on Blonde, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, and The Times They are a-Changin'. In autumn of 1983 Jim took me to see Dylan and Tom Petty play Sacramento fairgrounds; it was the first rock concert I ever went to.
At some point in high school I came into possession of a copy of Dylan's first album, self-titled, I think from Replay Records on McHenry -- that was where I got most of the music I bought in high school. I don't remember listening to this record a whole lot in high school, but later it would become one of my very favorite records.
I remember seeing Steve Ewert and Tim Lechuga playing at Mondo Java -- it was one of the first concerts I went to at Mondo Java, in 1989 or so -- and getting them to let me sing "Subterranean Homesick Blues" with them. That was great even though I didn't remember all the lyrics. Not as great was the second time I saw them, when I got them to let me sing "Desolation Row" with them -- I had rehearsed and knew all the words, but the spontaneity that had made the first time so much fun was gone and it came off pretty flat. Also IIRC I brought and played bongo drums without understanding going in, how lame that was.
In 1993 I bought Dylan's two new records, Good as I Been to You and World Gone Wrong. This was well before I really got into old-time music -- I loved these two records at the time but I don't think I really understood at the time, how great they are. These two certainly were part of the process that got me interested in old-time.
And since then? Well... Dylan is just part of my psychic landscape, one of the places I go when I think of music. I'm glad he's here and glad I've got his music around me.
From National Geographic, an otherworldly photo of camel thorn trees in the Namib-Naukluft National Park in Namibia:
Difficult, as Jason Kottke points out, to believe that this is a photograph rather than a Dr. Seuss illustration. Thanks for the link, Matthew!
Update: Andrew Howley interviews photographer Frans Lanting about this image and about the Deadvlei salt pan. Click the photo for more images of Deadvlei and other Namibian wilderness areas.
So tomorrow is May Day, International Workers' Day; it is also the anniversary day of St. Walpurga's canonization, making this evening Walpurgisnight. Hope the occasion finds you dancing naked and setting fires.
(I did not know this: St. Walpurga lived in the Ⅷ C. ad and was an English missionary for the Roman church in central Europe, evangelizing to the pagans of the Frankish empire. She is credited as being the first female author in England and in Germany.)
Happy Birthday to Rex Broome! Broome is the singer and guitarist for Skates & Rays. On his 39th birthday last year he covered Velvet Underground's "I'm Waiting for the Man"; today he covers his own tune "Pushing Forty". In between he has recorded one cover version for every day of his fortieth year of life, and/or leaned on friends to contribute their own cover versions. I'm impressed, and gratified to have played my own small part.
When my parents were dating, back these 40-some years ago, back at Berkeley, their song was "When I'm Sixty-Four." Well this week, my dad is 26 -- likely the last sixth power he will see, and the last power of two -- and mom is still needing him, still feeding him. Happy birthday, Dad!
He is 66 years and one week older than me.
