Spitball Army

I remember bringing the first B-52’s album home the summer after my first college year and playing it really loud, and driving my poor Mom crazy with it. Was that our generation’s “scream-o?”

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The two buttons above were created to help promote a couple of stage productions put on by Harvard theatrical groups while I was an undergrad, between 1978 and 1982.

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On a sunny Friday in January 1985, I sketched this while sitting on the steps of the State House in Boston. There must have been something of a chill in the air, judging by the woman’s coat. The bas-relief sculpture on the right, completed in 1897, was created by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, an Irish-born American sculptor.

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There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

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According to the NCT piece, the city of Oceanside recently applied for a grant – not an increase in tax monies, mind you – of $435,000 for the expansion and improvement of bike trails. That’s about $435 appropriated for each regular bicycle commuter.

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This morning, my radio alarm clock announced the arrival of a new day with the strains of a string quartet. I lay in bed trying to identify whose quartet it was. It sounded like Beethoven, perhaps even Brahms.

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There was so much vinyl – multiple copies of many titles, and what seemed like endless rows of classical music – that I was overwhelmed. The two guys working the store seemed overwhelmed, too, wedged in behind a small sales counter that was piled high with boxes of new vinyl arrivals.

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I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.

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There are hardly any of those great used music or book stores left. I especially miss the one on Church Street, which is now a bunch of offices. Thank God there seems to still be no McDonald’s in the Square, but there are plenty of Starbucks storefronts, which is just plain odd in an area with sooooo many great small indie coffeehouses.

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Of course, there is always something that can go wrong, and my driver’s license expired on 9.1, so I was flagged as “SSSS” or “special screening.” It basically meant nothing more than being sent through a separate line and being paid extra special attention. That was OK by me.

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