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Found this while cleaning out the filing cabinet, in a Caroline Knapp column for The Boston Phoenix, August 18, 1995:

"There's a real passivity to the way I ended up here," says a New York-based acquaintance, a woman who moved to Manhattan from the Midwest nearly 15 years ago and simply never left, without consciously deciding to make the city her home. "I just gradually realized that my life is in New York now, that the chances of me picking up and relocating are slimmer and slimmer." That seems to be the way it works: you figure on one or two years in a new city and - presto! - you wake up one morning and realized that a full decade has passed, maybe more. You realized you've established roots, settled down in spite of yourself. You realize that leaving has ceased to be as simple or appealing an option as it once was.

( Friday Random Ten )

I'm getting more aggressive about discarding CDs. Here are some more.

( Free CDs )

Apropos of nothing, I think I'm going to live in Uptown.

I thought about doing that other interests meme but it didn't pick ones I had much to say about. Anyway, here are notes on ten of mine: ( Read more... )

In case anyone's curious, the other organizations I settled on are the aforementioned People's Hurricane Fund; the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, an environmental group; WWOZ, a listener-supported music station; and the Louisiana Library Association's Disaster Relief Fund.

The Texas Library Association, by the way, is looking for recent issue books that are new or in good condition to help libraries affected by Katrina to rebuild. The collection point is in Austin, but you can ship books from anywhere, cheap.

elks tagged me for the "five songs you currently love" meme. I tried another one like this, and you know, really, I think I'm a monogamous song-lover. The only song I really love right now is

1. Richard Buckner - Ariel Ramirez

as I mentioned the other night. But, okay, I've also been listening to a lot of

2. The Blue Nile - Easter Parade

and trying to arrange it for accordion and voice.

And the other night I really wanted to hear something by Rachel's, not a specific song, but I ended up highly satisfied by the first one I ever heard,

3. Rachel's - Tea Merchants

Whenever something comes on from this one album by a Swedish traditional fiddler working with a sort of new-age American guitarist, I turn it up and I'm happy, so let's throw in

4. Knut Hamre and Steve Tibbetts - Noringen

Finally, driving home from the Jason Webley show last week, antisocial and needing to cocoon myself in rock, I chose

5. Kid Dakota - Pilgrim

I don't usually tag people, but then usually people don't tag me, so. If you don't feel like doing it or you already have, skip it, but here's my list (see here for the real instructions): artname, perci, helloreplace, maneater, spin_withagrin.

"I have time now for horseback riding,'' he says. ''I've always liked horses. Also, I enjoy hunting sometimes, and I do quite a lot of reading. Also, going on the Internet. I have a Web site.''

-- Muammar el-Qaddafi, 2003

Friday Random Ten:

• Peter Case, "Lakes of Pontchartrain"
  
• Mark Eitzel, "Seeing Eye to Eye"
  
• Art Garfunkel/Buddy Mondlock/Maia Sharp, "Everything Waits to Be Noticed"
  
• Pet Shop Boys, "We All Feel Better in the Dark"
  
• Craig Armstrong, "Laura's Theme"
  
• Thomas Dolby, "Airwaves"
  
• Thelonious Monk, "Trinkle Tinkle"
  
• Medeski, Martin & Wood, "Syeeda's Song Flute"
  
• Whiskeytown, "Losering"
  
• Tears for Fears, "I Believe"

Some of my favorite songs and artists are in there, including three that I've rated five stars in iTunes: "Losering", "Airwaves", and the Garfunkel/etc song. Plus, a topical reference!

After a few weeks of intending to start recording again, but not quite getting around to it, I finally set everything up in the living room, got the microphones placed just right, tweaked the levels, practiced the song a couple times, took a deep breath, and... someone started up A CHAINSAW OUTSIDE MY WINDOW.

I'm having a going-away party for myself, in the form of a show on October 15. There'll be short sets by me solo and with bands, plus some sets I'm not in, so I'll have time to hang out. I'm trying to crowd a lot into one evening, so if you're coming and there's a song you want to hear, let me know. More details later.

I need a few more worthy charity organizations, on the general theme of Hurricane Katrina relief and reconstruction. So far I have the American Red Cross, Mercy Corps, Modest Needs, ACORN, AFM-NO Local 174-496, WWOZ, and possibly the Baton Rouge Area Foundation. Via Chris I see that Naomi Klein recommends the Vanguard Public Foundation, but their web site doesn't say anything about a hurricane, and in any case seems pretty California-focused. Any other suggestions?

Lauren Slater, "Repress Yourself", 2003:

While storying one's life is undoubtedly an essential human activity, the trauma industry may have overlooked this essential fact: not all of us are memoirists. Some of us tell our stories by speaking around them, a kind of Carveresque style where resolution is whispered below the level of audible language. Then again, some of us are fable writers, developing quick tales with tortoises and hares, where right and wrong have a lovely, simple sort of sound. If we are all authors of our experience, as the trauma industry has so significantly reminded us, we are not all cut from the same literary cloth. Some of us are wordy, others prefer the smooth white space between tightly packaged paragraphs. Still others might rather sing over the scary parts than express them at all.

Three New Orleans things: Allan Topol's "Lessons from Katrina". Fafblog's "Do-It Yourself Emergency Management Guide" (warning: funny). And another of the many organizations collecting donations for hurricane relief is the American Federation of Musicians, New Orleans Local 174-496.

In the car I've been listening to The Circle and the Square, an oddity by Red Box from 1986: Weak-voiced Englishmen obsessed with Native American themes, singing over a wash of new wave synths, "world beat" percussion, and often a full choir. Good stuff. Apparently it was a hit in England, but if it went anywhere over here, I missed it.

I make a cameo appearance in Natalie Schrik's photos from the Sam Shaber house concert. There are also many good shots of Sam, Paul, and people whose names I don't know.

I adore these photos of low-income housing in Ixtapaluca. Actually the photographer has a lot of others I like too. I guess it helps to have a helicopter.

What are good ways to dispose of used textbooks? Comics? Um, RPG manuals? Maybe art supplies? A t-shirt for a band I liked so much I got all four members to autograph it, and now I don't want to wear it because it has people's names scribbled all over it?