Spitball Army

April 21, ’43
Wed. 10 p.m.

Darling, I love you and feel very close to you to-night, though we are many, many miles apart.  How wonderful it is to have you to think about, and to know you are mine and a part of me, and to wait anxiously for you.  Of course, the waiting really isn’t much fun, but when I have someone so worthwhile living for and waiting to live with, then I realize how fortunate I am to have my whole future ahead to be spent always with you – you’re tops, Sweetheart!  I’m just loaning you for awhile to the gov’t and then I can have you forever – for keeps!

Dad and I were over to June and Paul’s to-night for dinner.  Her meal was delicious, as usual.  They both said to be sure and greet you, and I extended your greetings.  June said you were such a friendly person and would always get along anywhere.  How right she is.  I hiked over there in the afternoon and Dad joined us later.  Paul is digging up the ground in the empty lot for his garden.  Wish we were already moved and could get started at gardening.

Time again to say goodnight to the best man in the whole world.  Am still reading the article you recommended.

With bushels of flutes,

Love,
Bev

Bing Crosby and Ethel Merman: “You’re the Top” (1936)

April 20, ’43
Tues. 2000

Dearest Sweetheart:  I love you.

Hope you are still feeling fine and as happy as ever.  You’re a honey because you always make the best over any situation and take life as it comes.  You’re just the partner I need in life, because you can teach me a lot.

Have the particular National Geog. magazine mentioned and am enjoying the first article immensely, and of course, am extremely interested.  Now that our examination is over, can get back to some more reading.  It wasn’t a very stiff test and am sure I passed all right.  Took some more dictation at the Blood Bank today, along with doing other things.

This is really a beautiful day and would like very much to be hiking with you through the woods.

Dr. McBroom had another heart attack and was in Mayo Clinic for awhile.  Understand his daughter is teaching a boys’ class in engineering somewhere.

Bought a box of Easter eggs and sent them to Patricia, the “little sister” and her brothers and sisters.  They are so poor and have so little.  Certainly they know where to take any discarded clothing now.  Have already brought them some coats and other apparel.  I do like to do some good in my own little way.

‘Bye Lover and I’ll be writing again tomorrow.  Golly, I miss you, Darling.

Love,
Bev

4-19-43  Mon.
April 19, ’43  7:30 p.m.

Hello, my Sweetheart:  I love you.

You made me feel very happy today, Darling, as rec’d two more of your grand letters, dated March 26 and 31.  All-right, Hon, I’ll use V-Mail from now on – though I hardly get started on a letter, and it’s time to quit.

I’m glad you know why you love me.  I’ve always known why I love you. – Because you’re wonderful in so many ways.  You’ve always been so kind and thoughtful – affectionate and loving, too.  Thank you for always being such a gentleman and always saying nice things to me when I really deserved a licking!

Be careful of those swamps!  Did you get the pheasant?  A rabbit dashed out of our garage as I put the car away today.  It sort of startled me.  I saw a pileated woodpecker also today by the creek.  I’m going to miss all this wild life when we move up north.

A friend, who is also a Red Cross enthusiast, asked me to study with her to-night; so must be getting along.

Yes, Honey, it was wonderful to be together for those eleven months.  Wonder what it’s like to live more than a year together!  I know I’ll love it and can hardly wait!  You are so grand to be with.  Hurry back.  I’ve got bushels of flute dances all saved up.

With my love,
Bev

Record Store Day – a marketing concept disguised as a national celebration of independent music retail – is taking place for the first time tomorrow, April 19th.  There’s nothing wrong with the idea, of course.  Indie record stores have always been a great place to be exposed to new music, and have been a place where many of us have whiled away hours, days, and years.  However, the appearance of this commemoration at a time when indie stores have been whittled away to a precious few, seems – on the surface – like an act of desperation, as the remaining businesses attempt to flag the attention of today’s music consumers away from their computer screens.  And, no, I have not been guzzling at the fountain of bitterness.  Good luck, you remaining music retail guys…now you just need to come up with 364 more promotions as energized as this one.

Musicians from all corners of the industry have come out of the woodwork to offer their testmonials about the importance of music retail.  Singer and songwriter James McMurtry recorded a piece for National Public Radio to bring attention to this event.  Here it is:
[audio:James_McMurtry___Record_Store_Day.mp3]

That’s so great.

McMurtry is right on target with his assessment: he has indeed had some difficulty with in-store performances.  I know this from experience.  While he was touring the country in support of his 2002 album, St. Mary of the Woods (an incredible album, by the way), we booked James and his band for an in-store at Laser’s Edge, the afternoon before his evening concert.  The band arrived about an hour early, which was pretty unusual.  Most artists would normally show up with barely 15 minutes breathing time, often barely five.  As they began loading in their equipment, McMurtry was quiet while he sized up the space.  He walked the length of the store, eyeballing the walls and aisle widths, walked back to the front of the store and stood silently looking toward the rear of the store.  “We’re going to set up here,” he said.  Now that you’ve heard the distinctive tone of his voice (above), you know what his proclamation sounded like.  He made a sweeping gesture with his arm that encompassed the narrow area in front of the check-out counter and the front door of the store.

You should know that we traditionally created a space for our in-store artists halfway down the length of the store, facing toward the middle.  In that place, any musician or singer could be heard clearly anywhere in the store, with or without amplification.  We had already moved tables and CD bins out of that space, in anticipation of that afternoon’s in-store.  “We have an area already set up for you over there, James,” I said to him.  I motioned to the area that he had already surveyed but rejected.

He said nothing, but was mentally preparing something.  You could practically hear the machinery in his brain churning away.  It showed through his downcast eyes, that coiled intensity.  “I think I know where my music will sound the best, and it will be from right here.”  It was apparently his final word.

This is what they call, in Westerns, the Mexican Stand-off.

I thought of the effort we had taken in rearranging the store for this event.  I wondered where in the hell we would put the store fixtures that we would need to move so that McMurtry could play at that end of the store.  Customers were beginning to show up.  Would we be required to rearrange the store around the customers?  I was uninterested in doing anything that would prevent us from making a sale, even if the blockade was playing a free rock show.  I was going to have to be uncharacteristically tough.

“You’ll be playing over there, James.”  Pause.  I used the Jedi mind trick: “Can I help you set up?”  I waited for him to explode, refusing to play.

He muttered one or two syllables, I’m not sure what they were.  Maybe he just grunted.  Either way, he said nothing I could decipher.  He picked up his guitar and walked to the back of the store.  He stood in the corner for five minutes or so, facing the wall, tuning his guitar.  He was either pouting or newly focused on the upcoming performance.  Or both.  I wasn’t necessarily thrilled with having won a game of hardball against someone whose artistry I admire.

Several minutes later, James McMurtry and his band played a blistering set that lasted between 45 minutes and an hour.  Their version of “Choctaw Bingo” alone lasted nearly 15 minutes.  They were amazing.  If you were there, I know you remember it.

And I imagine that James McMurtry was glad when it was over.

April 17, 1943

Dear Babe,

I was so happy to get your letter and I’m anxiously waiting for the one that will tell us where you are.  My 7th graders are studying the South Pacific now and with each area I wonder if you are there.  I found some good material in the N. Geog.  It always has such colorful pictures.  The children like it very much.

We have been doing big things the last two months.  March was Red Cross Period and we went way over the top.  The school’s quota was $250 – we topped $500 and the town went well over the $3000.  Cedric Adams gave us a big boost over his 10 o’clock broadcast.  Last night he told all about the Big Basket Social at which the baskets were auctioned to the highest bidders of bonds but he forgot to say that the town was Staples.  That was Thursday night – two of the baskets sold for $5000 and several went for $1000 and over.  They raised about $27,000 of their $60,000 goal.

This is our vacation week but I decided to stay here and get my defense school finished.  I can buy a bond with the R.R. fare it takes to go home.  I think one of the girls is driving to Fargo on Wed. and I’ll go along and come back Thurs.  Dee has company, her sister, and baby.  They’ve had big spring floods at Fargo.  I had a nice letter from Aunt this week.  First one for a long time.  I hope you have a happy day on your birthday.

Much love,
Judy

4-17-43
Saturday noon

Hello wonderful one!

I feel like a million – no, a couple millions, as just received two swell letters from the one I love.  Guess who?  Yes, you.  I do love you, Sweetheart.

This is a glorious day and hope to get out and hike this afternoon.  Just finished giving the house a thorough cleaning and really worked up an appetite.  But before lunch, first comes you.

Your descriptions are very beautiful and I’m so glad that you’re still enjoying yourself.  The country, with those rolling hills by the sea, really must be thrilling.  I did enjoy living by the ocean so much.  Maybe someday we can do it again.  It was because I was with you that I liked it so and was so very happy.  Those have been my happiest days, and it is wonderful to have those memories.

I could just picture that fisherman’s camp, and could almost see the various birds you told about.  Write real often, won’t you, Darling.  Take good care of yourself and remember, I’m thinking of and praying for you every day and loving you always.

I’ll be writing again tomorrow.

With all my love and flutes of kisses,
Bev

In a speech yesterday at Haverford College (in Haverford, Pennsylvania), Michelle Obama said:

There’s a lot of people talking about elitism and all of that. But let me tell you who me and Barack are, so you are not confused. Yeah, I went to Princeton and Harvard, but the lens through which I see the world is the lens that I grew up with. I am the product of a working-class upbringing.

Did anyone notice?  Was she speaking poorly in an attempt to engender identification with the “working class?”  Were Princeton and Harvard helpless to teach her simple rules of English grammar?  Should we blame it on the grade school system in which she grew up?

I heard this segment of Michelle Obama’s speech broadcast on MSNBC-TV and it crashed with a !clang! into my ear.  I have a hard time with the idea that a politician (or a politician’s partner) would speak poorly so that people might not think him or her elitist (read: educated), in a possible effort to win votes.  But, maybe I am reading too much into this.  Maybe she just operates with a deficient grammar set.

Thanks for the tip, CJ!

I had never seen this before, but the third time the doctor says it…that’s the one!

About a month ago, I started swimming again.

I spent the first half of my life as a swimmer.  It was part of my identity.  My daily schedule revolved around it.  Swimming provided constancy for me.  It centered my being.

I didn’t realize how much I missed it until about two weeks into the month.  Once submerged in the water, my 48-year-old body began to think with a 27-year-old brain, which is about the age where my swimming had almost completely tapered off.  I was concentrating more on my kick.  I was focusing on the pull of my arm stroke, reaching for the bottom of the pool as I glided over the lane line.  The “machine” was beginning to find its groove, and the result was, frankly, exhilarating.

But my 27-year-old brain was not considering the current limitations of my 48-year-old body, and I began pushing too hard, too soon.  I began feeling sharp pains in my lower back, and the muscles in my upper back were knotting up with knuckle jabs.  I thought I might have done some real damage to myself, so I stopped swimming and went to see my doctor.

My doctor.  I like this guy.  We’re the same age, and I assume because of that we probably share some of the same health concerns.  You can’t beat an empathetic physician, right?  When I had my first appointment with him, nearly three years ago, I was primarily concerned about losing weight, and I had hit rock bottom with my physical and psychic health.  I told him this and he said, “Yeah, I’m working on developing my six-pack…got about three months to go till it’s just right!”  I can imagine the look on my face (it’d be like the one I had when, while I was retailing music, the woman asked me for a recording of Warsaw Concerto in Blue).  So I’ve got a doctor with a healthy dose of self-confidence, maybe arrogance, but it sure as hell beats the alternatives.  And I can learn from this.

So, Doc checks me out, and after making an initial guess of “kidney stones!” and seeing the color drain immediately from my face, he concludes that the issue is most likely musculo-skeletal.  He refers me to a physical therapist.  I make the appointment.

Meanwhile, I have four days to wait around, and the pain isn’t getting any better, though it’s not getting worse.  I decide that I can’t stand the downtime any longer and I go to the pool.  I concoct a swimming plan that involves a lot more kicking and less full-stroke swimming.  Two lengths of kicking only, followed by four lengths of very easy-going crawl stroke.  This actually seems to work quite well.  The kicking is giving me a respite from the back pain, and by the time I hit the wall at the end of the crawl segment, I am feeling only the lightest pain response in my back.

While kicking, I have plenty of time to watch my surroundings, and I start to focus on the time clocks at either end of the pool.  I begin timing my laps (which would be two lengths, there and back, per lap).  In my competitive swimming days, we called that one lap a 50, as it was 50 yards round trip, ending at the point where you began.  After I time one of my “easy-going” 50s, my 27-year-old brain becomes filled with self-loathing over my 48-year-old body, as it believes a 78-second 50 equals failure as a human.

I mentioned my competitive swimming days.  The house I lived in for the first ten years of my life was next door to the municipal swimming pool and, as a result, my sisters and I spent quite a bit of time there.  There were swim meets on a regular basis, and we each collected our individual piles of blue, red and white ribbons for placing in the top three positions.  It was good training for high school, which is the period of my life I am thinking of when I say “competitive swimming.”  On the swim team, I was the final member, or anchor, on our relay, and swam the 200 or 400 long-distance events, depending on the strength of our rivals in those races.  But my best event was the 50 Free.  The 50 was an all-out sprint, and it demanded more intense and concentrated focus than any other event I swam in.  I would take only two or three breaths per length, and could flip-turn without even thinking about it.  The event was over in a flash, in one big adrenaline-rush flash.  One of my best friends on the team was also a swimmer in the 50, and it was great motivation for both of us to excel at the meets, having that friendly competition at each practice.  We constantly battled to see who could beat the other’s time in the 50, and by beating time, I am speaking of mere fractions of a second.  We were consistently timing less than 30 seconds for the 50, and clocking 27 to 29 seconds in the event at swim meets.

My 27-year-old brain is thinking of this as I clock in at 78 seconds on a 50 yard lap.  My 27-year-old brain says to my 48-year-old body, “Hey, Body, let’s just try one balls-to-the-wall 50 for old times’ sake, to see what this machine can do.”  My 48-year-old body compromises: I decide to finish my workout as planned, do a few stretches, and then swim a 50 with abandon and attempted finesse.  Just like in the old days.  When I was 27, or 17.

It went surprisingly well.  My 78-second “easy-going” 50 was now a 59-second middle-aged 50.  Hey, it was below one minute, and I didn’t damage myself.

I tried a full-power 50 the next day.  My time was 56 seconds.

And on the third day, 54 seconds.

The next day was my physical therapy appointment.  The therapist was aghast at the stiffness in my back and claimed, basically, that I had the mobility of a wooden library chair and, to be honest, I felt about as flexible as one.  I couldn’t do even the most simple trunk extensions very well.  After doing a fair amount of prodding and kneading and shaking of her head, she got me to lay on the table while she placed electrodes on my back in preparation for a procedure which she called “Tingle.”  I lay on that table under a heat blanket for about 20 minutes, while electricity zapped my back muscles into a merciless state of alertness.  I’ve not ever felt anything like this.  It was fantastic.  When the therapist came to turn off the Tingle, I told her just that.  Fantastic! I said.  She said, “Well, now for the not so fantastic part,” and began digging the heels of her palms into my back.  She knocked the wind right out of me.  While doing this, she says “I should have had my Wheaties this morning!”  I was grateful that she hadn’t.  We finished up with some lessons on stretching.  When I left the hospital, I felt that I was walking a quarter-inch taller.  No joke.  We scheduled two more visits for the week.

With permission from the therapist, I returned to the pool in the afternoon.  The difference from just that one session was obvious.  I found I could now swim underwater, something I hadn’t the availability of movement to do before.  But I decided not to get carried away and do more damage during this recovery phase.  I stuck to my half-mile swim of two lengths kicking alternating with four lengths crawl.  When I finished, I went to the deep end and did stretches, preparing for another shot at the 50.  And you know what?

I did it in 47 seconds.

The B-52’s / Funplex

Here’s my general longtime feeling about The B-52’s: they are a group of energetic entertainers who release party records that no one seems to dislike, and that most anyone with a mind to, and with a modicum of musical talent, could make.  I’m thinking, in particular, how easy it would be to entertain a room of people with only a simple rhythm track and a microphone: invite members of the crowd to the stage to exultantly exclaim, with clear pronunciation a la Barack Obama, lines like “Come here, you little butterbean, you…Come on!!” or “Here comes a Great Dane, trotting down the lane!!”  There’s the makings of a fun party, where everyone feels an equal part of the action, as long as they aren’t standing in the corner snickering at the uninhibited fools with smiles on their faces.

All that said, I’ve always had a great time listening to albums by The B-52’s, and Funplex is no exception.  It’s a dance record, a party record, a rockin’ record to listen to in the car.  It’s not high art, but there are enough people attempting to make music like that while, strangely, hardly any even attempt to make records like this.  The B-52’s know what works for them and they want everybody to have a good time listening to them doing it.

Case in point, the song “Love in the Year 3000,” in which Fred Schneider gets to sing, er, exultantly exclaim, lines such as “Robots, bootybots, erotobots!” “You turn ’em on, they turn you on!” and “We’re in the spandex spiral vortex!” over a New Wave beat that sounds like Devo’s “Whip It” brought down a notch in speed.  No heaviosity about that, but it is an absolute blast to listen to.

If this weren’t the Age of Cynicism, Funplex could have been an integral part of this summer’s soundtrack.  I imagine that it’s still possible.  I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

Simon & Garfunkel / Live 1969

First, the bad news: the only place I was able to find this CD was at a neighborhood Charbucks.  There is no Hear Music logo on the back of the package, so I assume that it’s not exclusive to them, but it wasn’t available at the Barnes & Noble music department here or at amazon.com.  So, it may be a bit of a challenge to find it, but when you hear the good news, you will hopefully make the effort.

And the good news is…?  This is a wonderful CD!  Live 1969 is a collection of performances from the late ’69 tour that Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel embarked upon a couple of months before the release of Bridge Over Troubled Water.  Part of the thrill of hearing four of the songs here is that we can imagine being in the audience and hearing them for the first time, before the Bridge album was owned by and listened to by everyone in America and became a part of the national cultural vocabulary (a fifth song from the album, “The Boxer,” had already been released as a single, and was all over the radio airwaves at the time of these concerts).  This performance of “Why Don’t You Write Me,” for instance, may be as close as Simon & Garfunkel ever got to full-on rock and roll, and the simple delivery of “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” with only a piano accompanying Art’s sweet but raw vocal, brings the house down with deafening applause.  “So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright” is given a vivid reading, with guitar, bass and conga accompaniment that recalls a private samba, unlike the wistful, string-laden version on Bridge.  There is also a stunning version of “For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her” that, for me, beats the pants off of the studio recording.

As a collection, this CD is a good overview for those unfamiliar with the duo’s career, as most every “hit” is included.  For the fan, the few revelatory moments mentioned above (and there are others) make this essential.