A Place For My (Online) Stuff
Valerie June captured our hearts from the very start (with her 2013 debut album Pushin’ Against A Stone) and, like Buck Meek, she’s always great, a bit off the beaten path, and a little unexpected. But man oh man, this record is sooooo, soooo good.
Get some music in your ears, everybody!
Could be that I like this so much mainly because I kinda lost track of these guys over the years and haven’t heard them in a long time. Regardless, it’s the February release I’m returning to the most.
Get some music in your ears, everybody!
Finding ourselves at home so much during the pandemic, Suzy and I unintentionally started a habitual Friday night review of the week’s album drops. About once a month we find something we really like. Eventually it occurred to me to post our monthly recommendations on Facebook. Which I have since been doing. But this morning I got thinking that I should post them here as well because a) it will make them much easier for me to find and refer to and b) I mostly hate Facebook.
Our January pick was Buck Meek’s Two Saviors
I love Buck’s unusual songs structures and oddball lyrics and subject matter. We’ve been big fans for several years now, but this album is off the charts good. Can’t say enough positive things about it. There isn’t a single dud anywhere on the record, but for me “Second Sight’ is a real standout.
Get some music in your ears, everybody!
Sometime over the years we started adding chicken to this basic pasta e fagioli recipe from Fine Cooking magazine (issue #11, 1996). Sunday I decided to try making it on my grill as an entry to this month’s soup challenge on one of my online BBQ communities.
So here goes:
First, I spun a chicken on the rotisserie. I made a simple injection of melted butter, salt, and garlic powder, and then sprinkled the outside with salt and pepper.
I also tossed half a lemon and two cloves of garlic into the cavity of the chicken before trussing it.
I put it on the rotisserie at 325°F, with three small chunks of cherry for smoke.
While the bird was spinning I gathered all my soup ingredients, chopped half an onion, and boiled one cup of ditalini pasta.
When the chicken was done, I dismantled the rotisserie, added more lump to the firebox, set in my heat deflectors and grill rack, and put my cast iron pot in to heat. While the grill came up and settled at around 350°F, I shredded half the chicken (and vacuum-sealed the other half for another day), and got everything set up in easy reach of the grill.
Now for the soup part. First, I sautéed 1 1/2 tsp. black pepper, 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes, and two cloves of finely minced garlic in 1/4 cup of olive oil for about half a minute or so.
Then I added the chopped 1/2 onion, and cooked it until tender, maybe 2 or 3 minutes.
In with two cans of great northern beans, plus the cooked pasta.
Then three cups chicken stock, plus the meat.
With the lid on the pot and the grill dome closed, I let it come to a boil, which took about 30 minutes. Then I moved the pot lid sort of cockeyed and (again) with the dome closed, let it simmer for another 10 minutes.
Finally, I stirred in 1/8 cup parsley flakes, 1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese, and a tablespoon of lemon juice.
For dinner, we served it with some leftover greens and Brussels sprouts, and a good chunk of bread.
***
I got this recipe (which Suzy and I lovingly refer to as “Nigella Helper”) from Nigella Lawson’s free Recipe Of The Day email. Like most of her Recipes Of The Day, it’s an absolute breeze to make; you can easily whip it together on a weeknight after work. But I like to make it ahead because it saves well and, like most soups and stews, I think it gets even better after “soaking” for a night or two in the fridge.
Heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil in a Dutch oven over medium heat while you finely chop a carrot, a stalk of celery, a small onion, and a clove or two of garlic. I usually use a little mini food chopper. When the oil is hot, pour in the veggies and let them cook 5 minutes or so, until they’re softened.
Add in about a pound of ground beef and turn the heat up a bit. Stir as needed to break it all up and get it cooked through until all the pink is gone.
Add a can of kidney, pinto, or other beans, undrained. (Nigella’s recipe says borlotti beans, but I virtually never have them, and I almost always have kidney beans.)
Stir in the beans, and then pour in 4 cups of beef broth and stir in a can of diced tomatoes.
Let that come to a boil, and then add in 8 ounces (half a box) of macaroni or other small pasta. Stir it up, bring it back to a boil, and then turn it down to a fairly active simmer. Let it ride, uncovered, for about 20 minutes, stirring every so often. I find it needs more stirring at the beginning to keep the mac from sticking to the bottom of the pot.
In the end you’ll have a sort of a thick stew. I like to let it get to the point where it’s equally suitable to serve in a bowl or on a plate.
Nigella’s recipe calls for a sprinkle of parmesan when serving, which nudges the whole thing in a bit of an Italian direction. Pair it with a green salad or simple steamed vegetables. I’ve also discovered that if I skip the parm and add a little hot sauce, it makes for a pretty good chili. (Bonus!)
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A couple months ago I made this and posted the finished result on Instagram. Since then, a number of people have asked for the recipe. Most often my response is that meatloaf is kind of like soup; you should just put whatever you like in it and call it a day. Apparently this is an unsatisfactory answer for a sizable portion of folks, so when I made it again yesterday I took pics, and today I’m laying out exactly how I made it.
First, chop up a small onion, probably a little less than a cup. (Neither of us is a big fan of onion, so you may want to use a little more.) Cook them in some olive oil with two or three cloves of minced garlic. Mine cooked long enough yesterday to get a little color, but that’s not necessary. Just be sure they’re softened.
Meanwhile, combine one pound of ground beef and one pound of sausage, give or take. My package of ground beef was about 1.3 pounds, which is plenty close enough for me. Anyway, get it mixed up really good.
Pour in the onions & garlic, and add in two eggs (beaten), one cup of milk, one tablespoon Worcestershire sauce, two teaspoons of your favorite BBQ rub, and 1 1/3 cups of panko bread crumbs. Then get your hands in there and start working it.
At first it will seem way too wet, but as you knead and squeeze, it will gradually pull together into a slightly-wetter-than-normal hamburger-y consistency. If you really feel like it’s just not happening, add more bread crumbs a little at a time until you’re happy with it.
Form it into a loaf in some sort of baking dish and smoke it at around 350°F to an internal temp of 165°F. It took mine roughly 90 minutes to get there. The two times I’ve made this I used hickory for my smoking wood, and I was pretty stingy with it. I feel like it’s really easy to over-smoke ground meats, but of course, like the onions, that’s a matter of your own preference.
NOTE: It probably goes without saying, but you can just as easily bake this in your oven as in a smoker. I’m sure it would still be perfectly good. Just not smokey.
Tent it with foil when it comes off the heat, and let it rest for at least 5 minutes before you slice it. Or tent it and let it cool completely if you’re making it ahead. We can get two meals out of half the loaf, and we vacuum-seal and freeze the other half for quick meals later.
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Finding myself with a week off at Independence Day and having nowhere to go and nothing to do thanks to the restrictions placed on us by our ol’ pal COVID-19, I decided to cook up a bunch of stuff to vacuum-seal for future weeknight meals. On Monday, for no particular reason, I did a twofer. First up:
For this cook I used boneless beef ribs, which I often get at Costco. Other times I’ve made it with regular bone-in short ribs and it works exactly the same way, so use whichever beef ribs you can get your hands on.
Also, this is basically a stew, so if you’re playing along at home don’t feel compelled to follow my directions to the letter. Add what you like, and leave out anything you don’t. I make it different every time, but Monday I pretty closely following a recipe from John Setzler, of the Kamado Joe Cooking Channel on YouTube, and owner of KamadoGuru.com. I love his saying: “Cook more, measure less.”
Anyway, on to the recipe.
The night before you plan to cook, take about 1 1/2 – 2 lb. of beef ribs and coat them good with BBQ rub. (You could just as easily use plain old salt and pepper, or any other beef rub that suits you.) Bag them up tightly, getting as much air out of the bag as possible, and keep them in the fridge overnight.
On cook day, while you wait for the grill to heat up to around 250°F, slice the ribs into pieces, maybe twice as big as bite sized. If you’re using bone-in ribs, just cut them into single ribs. When the grill reaches temp and the smoke is rolling nicely (I used hickory), put the slices in over indirect heat and let them smoke for an hour.
While the ribs are smoking, prep the braise. Dice up one onion, and chop two carrots (this time I used heirlooms) and three stalks of celery. Heat a 1/4 cup of olive oil in a dutch oven, and cook the onions gently until they’re translucent. Add the carrots and celery, and stir occasionally until they’re tender.
When the ribs have smoked for an hour, remove them from the smoke and boost your grill temp to around 325º-350ºF.
While the grill is coming up to temp, go back to your pot and add one cup of chicken stock, two cups tomato sauce, 12 oz. of beer, some rosemary, thyme, and oregano, and a teaspoon of garlic powder. Bring it to just boiling, and add salt, pepper, or other seasonings to taste. (Keep in mind that the flavors will intensify during the cook as the braise reduces. Go easy on the salt.)
When it just reaches a boil, stir in the smoked ribs.
Put the pot in the grill and let it cook undisturbed for a half hour or so, then give it a stir, cover it with the lid, and cook for another hour.
After that hour covered, you’ll have a thick, dark, rich dish, ready for serving. Most often we serve this over rice, but this time we needed to use up some potatoes. Doesn’t matter; you can’t go wrong.
*
The second dish I cooked Monday was
This meal is usually all cooked in one pot. Monday, though, since I already had the grill fired up and at my disposal, I changed it up a bit.
Start out with a pound and a half of chicken parts. The original recipe, which I found in Fine Cooking magazine issue #37, calls for bone-in parts, but we almost never have those on hand. We always have boneless skinless breasts, so that’s normally what I use. Also, to make it a little easier to eat when the time comes, I cut the breasts into more manageable pieces. Maybe two times bite sized, like I said above with the beef ribs.
Give the chicken a good solid sprinkle of salt & pepper.
Also, take about pound of Italian sausage –hot or mild, or a combination of both– and cut them into roughly 2-inch pieces.
Now, normally you’d heat some olive oil in your pot and sauté the chicken. If you’re using chicken parts, you want them done and starting to brown. If, like me, you’re using boneless skinless breasts, you want them to be ever so slightly underdone. They’re going to get a few more minutes’ cooking time later in the process, and if you get the skinless chicken completely done now, it will dry out when you get to those last few minutes. Either way, when the chicken is ready, remove it from the pan. Put the sausages in and cook until done. Add more oil along the way if needed.
Again, that’s all according to the recipe. But as I said before, Monday my grill was hot and I had plenty of extra room, so I cooked the chicken (again, stopping just short of done) and the sausage over indirect heat at about 350ºF.
Otherwise, though, I followed the recipe like normal.
In the aforementioned large pot over medium heat, add about 2 tablespoons of olive oil (which you’d already have if you cooked your chicken and sausage in the pot) and sauté one small chopped onion and 4 minced cloves of garlic until tender, about 5 minutes. Add 1 tsp. ground cumin, 1/4 tsp. paprika, 1/4 tsp. chili powder, and 1/2 tsp. ground turmeric, and stir for a minute or so to distribute it throughout.
Add a can of crushed (or diced) tomatoes, with their liquid, and 1/2 cup white wine or beer. Bring the heat up to medium high and cook for two minutes. Then add 2 1/4 cups chicken broth (or water) and 2 cups uncooked rice. Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. Return chicken and sausage to the pot and stir to distribute.
Reduce heat and cook, covered, at a mild simmer for 15 or 20 minutes until the liquid is absorbed and the rice is done.
***
This is a old(ish) family recipe that probably came from a label or the back of a package of some sort. It’s become a staple at my mom’s house for Christmas, but I make this all the time for dinner. We love breakfast for dinner, and we can usually get multiple dinners (or two dinners and some lunches) out of one batch. That’s especially important while we’re all self-quarantined for the corona virus. And also, this is REALLY easy to make. So here goes:
Brown one pound of breakfast sausage, or any other kind of sausage you’d eat with eggs. I’m personally partial to Jimmy Dean breakfast sausage, but it’s up to you. Drain off the fat.
Dice up enough white bread to cover the bottom of a greased 9″ x 13″ casserole dish. The written recipe says 6 slices, but we almost never buy sliced bread, so just cut up however much it takes. Note: This is a great chance to use up stale bread. You’ll never notice the difference.
Grate up two cups, give or take, of cheddar cheese.
In a fairly good-sized mixing bowl, beat 6 eggs, and then mix in 2 1/2 cups milk, 1 teaspoon dry mustard, and 1 teaspoon salt.
Now it’s all just a matter of assembly. Layer the cooked sausage over the diced bread.
Then layer on the cheese.
Pour the egg mixture evenly over the whole thing. At this point, you can refrigerate overnight if you wanted to make it ahead of time.
Otherwise, bake uncovered at 350°F for 45 minutes.
It should come out looking something like this. Let it cool for 5 minutes or so, and cut yourself a slice.
After it cools, cover the dish in plastic or cut the casserole up and put it in any kind of airtight container and this will keep great in the fridge for three or four days. But it probably won’t last that long. Oh, and it reheats beautifully in the micronuker.
Enjoy!
*****
More often than not, I spend the biggest part of my Sunday in the kitchen. Usually I make something, or a couple somethings, that we’ll have on hand to eat throughout the following week. It occurred to me that some of the cooks might make interesting blog posts. So here is the first of what might become a quasi-regular feature.
This week’s project was homemade meatballs from the Frankies Spuntino cookbook. It’s kind of a no-brainer of a recipe. You make it all in one bowl and just keep chucking in ingredients. But it’s a bit time-consuming because I find that, for the best results, you need to mix each ingredient in before adding the next. The upside is that one batch makes quite a lot of meatballs, so you get a lot of yield for the time spent. I use however many we need for whatever meal(s) we’re making and freeze the rest in vacuum sealed bags, two meatballs per pack. Then we can thaw as many or as few as we need for future meals.
Start with six slices of bread. Use a fairly good quality bread; not exactly fancy, and certainly nothing expensive, but also not Sunbeam or Wonder. Get something from the deli section in your grocery store and slice it yourself. (The Frankies cut off the crusts, but I don’t usually bother.)
Anyway, take six slices of bread and put them in a large mixing bowl. Fill the bowl with enough water to cover the bread, and let it get completely soggy. The book says “for a minute or so,” but in my experience the bread is soggy pretty much instantly when you run the water on it. Regardless, when it’s soggy, pour the water out and squeeze out as much water as you can, then tear the wet bread into tiny pieces.
Add in 2 pounds of ground beef and knead the bread into it until it’s evenly dispersed.
Next, work in 3 cloves minced garlic and 1/4 cup fresh parsley, finely chopped.
Then comes 1/4 cup grated pecorino romano or parmesan cheese, and 1/4 cup raisins (weird, I know, but trust the Frankies).
Now add 1 1/2 teaspoons fine sea salt or Morton’s kosher salt, about 15 turns of freshly ground white pepper, and 1/4 cup pine nuts (again, keep the faith).
Finally, add 1/2 cup dried bread crumbs and 4 large eggs.
Work it really good. Initially it will seem way too wet, but as you keep kneading it all together the eggs will become more and more incorporated. If it is still too wet to work with, add a bit more of the bread crumbs and keep kneading. The mixture should be wet, but not sloppy.
Preheat the oven to 350° F.
Roll the mixture into palm-sized balls, give or take, and place them on a baking sheet. (I’ve never needed to grease or oil the pan.)
Bake for about 30 minutes. They should be firm, but have a little give. You know, like a meatball.
Now they’re ready. Simmer some in tomato sauce, make a meatball parm sandwich, or whatever. When they’re cooled, you can refrigerate them for a day or two, or as I mentioned, freeze them for later.
***
What I did with mine on Sunday was slice up a couple of them and make a pizza:
One no-knead pizza dough from Jim Lahey’s book, My Bread.
One 15 oz. can of diced tomatoes, one teaspoon olive oil and 1/4 teaspoon salt, pulsed in a mini-chopper to a coarse puree, and spread evenly over the dough.
A 50/50 blend of mozzarella and parmesan cheeses. This time I didn’t even grate them myself; I just bought the prepackaged shredded stuff.
A healthy (or unhealthy, depending on how you look at it) dose of pepperoni.
And a couple of the aforementioned meatballs.
Threw together a green salad while the pizza baked at 500° F for a little over 15 minutes, and voila!
That’s dinner!
I think I start roughly every other post on this much-neglected blog by saying I’m going to try to write more. But this time I mean it. I meant it all the other times, too. But this time I really mean it. My plan is to use this space as a kind of open journal. I don’t know exactly what I have to write about, but I’ve made it about as easy as possible by converting to a WordPress format, so I guess time will tell.
So anyway. Since the beginning of this new year also happens to be the beginning of a whole new decade, I thought I’d start off with a roundup of notable stuff in my life from the last ten years. A few of these things have been mentioned or written about in previous posts, but a roundup is a roundup. So here goes.
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DEVILS: One of the biggest things Suz and I did in the ’10s was become season ticket holders for the New Jersey Devils. I thought I had pretty much struck gold when Suzy got interested in hockey in 2006. At that time I never would have guessed in a million years we’d (she’d) become avid fans. Ya just never know what life’s gonna bring.
It all started because we bought a partial package (I think it was 12 games) for the 2010-2011 season. We kinda thought we were shittin’ in high cotton even then. But when it came time to renew I asked the agent, just for giggles, how much it would cost for a full season. Of course it was quite a bit more expensive overall, but the per-game price was less than half what we paid for the partials. We thought we might as well give it a try, and ultimately we stuck with it for seven years. Over that time we built friendships with our fellow seatmates (and everyone at Hobby’s Deli), met players, had our photo made in the goal, watched warmups from the penalty box, toured the arena, sat on the bench…. By far the two most exciting times were going all the way to game 6 of the finals in 2011-12 ( Suzy even bought herself a playoff beard), and going to the Devils/Rangers game at Yankee Stadium in January 2014. But narrowing it down to only a few experiences doesn’t do it justice. The whole time was a blast.
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TRAVEL: To celebrate my Mom’s and Suzy’s Dad’s 70th birthdays in 2011, we made a big family trip. Suz and I flew to NC, and the following day 10 of us headed out in a convoy to Nashville. We explored and toured the town for 3 days, and then moved the party over to Memphis for 3 more. We saw and did way too many things to recount here, but some of the Nashville highlights included the Country Music Hall of Fame, dinner at the Loveless Cafe, Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, a Ryman Auditorium tour (basically a religious experience), and of course, the Grand Ol’ Opry.
On Friday afternoon while we were taking a rest before dinner, I read that Sam Bush was going to be a special guest on the bill later that night at the legendary bluegrass venue, The Station Inn. Suzy and I immediately decided we had to be there, and my sister and her husband joined us. An outstanding show, which also introduced us to singer David Peterson and fiddle phenom Michael Cleveland.
Memphis highlights included Graceland (duh), touring Sun Studio (my second religious experience of the trip), and just walking around Beale Street where we spent two consecutive nights listening to Dr. Feelgood Potts.
In 2012 we spent my birthday week in Barcelona. We deliberately kept a leisurely pace, but we still crammed in a lot of sightseeing because we stayed right on La Rambla and almost everything we wanted to see was within easy walking distance. Of course we were thrilled to enjoy so much of Gaudi’s architecture, but Barcelona also happens to be home to a museum and foundation dedicated to my favorite painter, Antoni Tapies. And we were also completely blown away by the Boqueria market.
And we spent nearly a whole day at the Basilica de la Sagrada Familia
We visited friends in Ottawa for a long weekend in September of 2013. We all met at the Newport Folk Festival (more on Newport later), where the four of us stayed for several consecutive years at the same B&B. The Ottawa trip was more to hang out together than to really tour the city, but of course we managed to do some of both.
The last major trip we managed to fit in during the decade was a week in San Francisco and Napa in September of 2015. We met up with friends in both places and had absolutely gorgeous weather the whole time. First time in California for both of us.
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COOKING and FOOD: I realized I was interested in cooking when I started trying to recreate my grandmother’s biscuits back in the early ’90s. Then after I began brewing my own beer in ’96, I started experimenting more in all sorts of cooking. But I really got concentrated on it after we moved to New Jersey, when I bought an offset smoker. Learning about rubs, marinades, different prep techniques, and how to tend the fire on long, low-and-slow barbecue cooks really set me off and running in the kitchen. About 4 years ago I retired the offset and made the switch to a kamado cooker; tremendously expensive, but well worth every penny. Unfortunately our work schedules are no longer very conducive to cooking at home, especially during the week. But nothing is better than spending a whole Saturday or Sunday in the kitchen, messing up every pot and pan we own.
Speaking earlier of beer, after going with a couple buddies to several tasting festivals in New York over the course of a few years, in May of 2015 three of us decided to start having our own tastings. Soon more members were joining us and before you know it, we gave birth to the Maplewood Ale and Lager Tasters (M.A.L.T) Club. We take turns hosting (i.e. – providing lunch) each month, everyone brings two 16- or 20-ounce beers to share, and a good time is had by all. Genius!
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MUSIC and ARTS: Of course Suzy and I spent an awful lot of time on concerts, art shows, and assorted other entertainment over the last 10 years. Way too much, obviously, to write about it all. Here is a tiny smattering of the highlights.
As I wrote about briefly at the time, in 2011 I was asked to play guitar for a local writer who, taking a stab at something new, started writing songs. Over time she added a piano player, an acoustic bassist, and a drummer. They were some of the best musicians I’ve ever played with; each one of them well above my level. Playing with them was fantastic, and I stayed with it for about 5 years until other things got in the way, as they’ll do.
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Easily one of the most impressive artists we discovered over the last 10 years was Jason Isbell. He’s the whole package; great voice, excellent guitar chops, and his songwriting is second to none. We heard the Southeastern album first, and then he just kept getting better and better.
Another big find was Lake Street Dive. Like many people, we learned of them from the concert film Another Day, Another Time: Celebrating the Music of Inside Llewyn Davis. Just a couple seconds into their (one and only) song in that movie, we looked at each other and said, “Who is THIS!?” The next day, I bought every CD they had out at that time. In the years since, we’ve watched them grow from relative obscurity to selling out Madison Square Garden.
Other bands we fell in love with were The Wood Brothers, Gregory Alan Isakov, both of whom we heard first on The Loft channel on SiriusXM radio, and The Low Anthem, who we discovered at the Newport Folk Festival.
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There are two albums that particularly stand out for me in this time, as well. Jake Xerxes Fussell’s What In The Natural World and Noam Pikelny’s Universal Favorite. On first listening, I wouldn’t have guessed that either of these records would stick with me like they have. I mean, to be clear, I liked them both a lot right off the bat. But over time, I find that both of them stay right at the front of my mind all the time. I think of one or the other, or both, nearly every day. Universal Favorite, especially, is an absolute gem.
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In August of 2015, the Recreation and Cultural Affairs Department in Maplewood brought to town five Tibetan Buddhist monks from Drepung Loseling monastery in India for The Mandala Project. Over the course of a week in the Great Hall of the Woodland community building, the monks created a traditional mandala from colored sand. They worked on it eight hours per day, pouring the sand through long, thin metal funnels to create the image, which represents the cosmos as conceived in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. The Hall was open to the public for the duration. After completion, and according to tradition, the sand is swept up and dispersed into a river or stream in a ceremony symbolizing the impermanence of everything in life.
In 2018, the Brooklyn Museum presented the Victoria and Albert Museum’s “David Bowie Is…” and there’s no doubt it was the best museum show I saw in the last 10 years. In fact it’s one of the best shows I’ve seen, ever. And I’m not even an especially big David Bowie fan. Of course he’s been around for my whole life, but even so, it’s astonishing to see, all at once, just how influential he was. There’s essentially no part of western popular culture that he didn’t affect or address in some way. There’s not much more I can say about it except that we spent more than three hours in the show, and if my back and feet would have allowed it, I would have happily stayed three more.
Another major entertainment highlight, also in 2018, was the play Yerma, at the Park Avenue Armory. We bought tickets based on nothing more than the fact that the lead role was played by Billie Piper, who had played one of our favorite characters on the TV show Doctor Who. When I read later that the play is about a woman who wants a child and can’t conceive, I thought, “Oh well, that doesn’t really sound like our kind of thing, but it will be a nice treat to see her in a play.” And it was. It also turned out to be one of the heaviest, most intensely gut-wrenching stories we’ve ever seen. Incredibly powerful. The audience was nearly silent as we left the building.
One more exhibit that stands out in my mind is Laurie Anderson’s Chalkroom, currently showing at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) in North Adams, MA. Laurie Anderson has been one of our favorite artists since the ’80s, and we’ve loved a lot of her work through the years. But this show is a high water mark even for her. It was the first Virtual Reality experience for Suzy and me, and I was completely blown away. It is visually stunning, as I expected, but I was not at all prepared for how real it felt. Amazing experience. I hope the show is still there next time we go to MASS MoCA. I’d love to explore it more.
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SOLID SOUND FESTIVAL: Years ago some friends we know from the Newport Folk Festival were telling us that one month before Newport they had gone to Solid Sound, a bi-annual festival in Massachusetts hosted by Wilco. Two years later, in 2015, we decided to meet them there. They were absolutely right; it’s a great festival. Located at MASS MoCA, your ticket includes full weekend admission to the museum in addition to the festival. So, as with Newport, the venue is as much of a draw as the music. Each festival includes two Wilco shows, a Jeff Tweedy show, and a full 3-day lineup of other music. We’re Solid Sound regulars now.
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NEWPORT FOLK FESTIVAL: I like to tease my mother that she starts planning Christmas on December 26th each year, but the truth is I know a little something about how she feels. Every year when I go back to work the day after we get home from Newport Folk Festival, I start daydreaming about the next year. I have so many good feelings about the festival that I hardly know what to write. It has become such a part of our lives that I can no longer see it in an objective way. Our first trip there was for the 50th Anniversary in 2009, and with each passing year in the decade since, the festival has come to mean more and more to us. We skipped it once, in 2015, when we went to Solid Sound for the first time. Then when Newport weekend rolled around, we were crushed to have been so short-sighted. We decided then and there that we would never miss it again. The quality of the music is consistently outstanding, the venue –Fort Adams State Park– is gorgeous, and Newport is a great town. But it’s so much more than that. There’s something about that weekend every year that makes you feel like you’re more than just a spectator. You, along with everyone else, become a part of the experience. The shared sense of community and good will is unmatched. (So much so that I started a blog dedicated to fostering that feeling year ’round. Check it out at millionsofsmallthings.com.) The best weekend of the year, every year.
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LUTHER: Although we brought him home in 2006, there’s simply no way to look back on the last ten years without writing a little something about Luther. He was the light of our lives for most of that time, and very literally changed Suzy’s life entirely. After a few puppy classes, it became clear that Luther loved “going to school,” and so did Suzy. Within a few years Luther was a Certified Therapy Dog and he and Suzy were visiting hospitals and nursing homes together. Soon after, Suzy was teaching classes and Luther was her demo dog. In just a few short years, Suzy had changed careers completely and become a Certified Professional Dog Trainer. Even in his old age, Luther would occasionally come out of retirement for a day or two and go to work with Suzy at the behavior clinic to show some younger dog how it’s done. Unfortunately, after a couple bouts with cancer and a few other problems, we lost him in 2018. But, my God, what a life that boy had.
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LIFE HAPPENS: Of course not everything in the last decade was happy and fun. I mean, we wound up with Trump in the White House, fergodsakes. I was never overly patriotic to begin with, but my first lesson from this administration is that I care a lot more about my country than I thought. I know this because I’ve never been ashamed to be an American until now. Only now, when everything I believe to be good and just about the U.S. is being shat on by The Powers That Be, do I realize how important it all is to me. On the other hand, however demoralizing and dispiriting it is to find ourselves in this situation, I’ve never felt more proud than I did standing with Suzy and some of our friends on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. for the first Women’s March. Never happier than to see thousands upon thousands of people show up at airports across the country to stand against the travel bans. There are way too many things to list, but I detest virtually every move Trump has made in office, and I take solace in the fact that he meets with so much resistance. However futile it may seem, it matters. Thanks to Trump, I’ve never been more concerned about other people and my ability to have an effect on them, and I know I’m not alone. I know that eventually this will all be behind us and the future will be better than the present. I don’t know when, and it won’t be soon, but it will come.
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Finally, I’ll close out this post by mentioning how we closed out our decade. In the Spring of 2018 I was unceremoniously let go from my job. I can’t precisely say it was a shock, since I knew business was slow, but I wasn’t exactly expecting it, either. Thankfully I have a lot of friends in my industry, an within two and a half weeks I found another job. But it’s in Pennsylvania, so it required us to move. We settled in Hackettstown, NJ, because it was approximately halfway between my new job and Suzy’s workplace.
Then, a little less than a year after we moved, Suzy lost her job, too. If we’d known that was going to happen we’d have most likely moved closer to my work. But we love our house and we’re quite happy in Hackettstown, so we have no regrets. Suzy has gone into business on her own, and our location makes it possible for her to continue to see some of her previous clients. So in the end, it’s all worked out pretty well.
So those were our big points of the decade, bringing us to where we are now.
Happy New Year, everybody, and Happy ’20s!
