Coming Up Tomorrow On The Dickenbock Report: National Lazy Day

August 10 is National Lazy Day. In fact, it's supposed to be much hotter than normal in Portland on that day & heat makes everyone really lazy. The staff is already dozing. Maybe there'll be a show. Maybe not. Surely someone will rise to the occasion?

Tonight noon to 1pm on 91.1+107.1fm in Portland & online at xray dot fm everywhere. It'll take almost no effort for you to listen, anyway.

This Week In Self Help Aug 1 3 + 5

That's another lame picture I've taken, this one of a ridged potato chip (not one of the more commercial brands) because Self Help Radio this week was about ridges. The funny thing is, as I wandered around the house looking for decent light to take the picture, my dogs followed me wondering what the hell I was doing with that food that should belong to them. I did not give it to them when I was finished.

Here's radio things I did on the radio this last week.

August 1 on KBOO on The Songcircle I played lots of songs about August because it was August first.
Listen on the KBOO website. Listen on the Self Help Radio website.

August 3 on XRAY on the Dickenbock Report I finished the two-part special on the year 1925.

Listen on the XRAY website. Listen on the Self Help Radio website.

August 5 on KBOO on Self Help Radio I had a show about ridges.

Listen on the KBOO website. Listen on the Self Help Radio website.

Also August 5 on KBOO on Corporate Standardized Programming I played songs by artists we lost in February of this year.
It's the last hour on this KBOO link, but you can also listen on the Self Help Radio website.

The next Self Help Radio is about porches. I'm sure there will be better images. I love taking pictures of porches!

Oh yeah - the Self Help Radio website might ask for a username & password - those are SHR + selfhelp respectively.

Self Help Radio 080525: Ridges

Look I know that's just a close-up of a rock & not an actual ridge there aren't any real ridges nearby in Portland & I didn't have the time or to be honest the wherewithal to drive to Rainier or Hood or St Helens just to snap a picture of a ridge so cut me some slack here please. Because I did an entire radio show about ridges & you know what if you can have ridges in your fingerprint there can be small ridges on rocks in your garden which you thought might fool somebody but it's obvious it's not.

Anyway, here's your radio show about ridges. I found lots & lots of songs about the Blue Ridge Mountains & lots & lots of songs in the bluegrass genre, but I tried to be evenhanded & sparing with both. It's still a lot folky tho. Not a lot of indiepoppers spending time on ridges.

Listen to the show now at the KBOO web site or at the Self Help Radio website. For the latter you might need the username SHR & the password selfhelp. Most of the things that happened on the show are listed below.

& if I get to a ridge I'll change out that lame picture!

Self Help Radio Ridges Show

"There's A Blue Ridge In My Heart, Virginia" Abe Lyman & His California Orchestra _Abe Lyman & His Californians Volume 2 (1926-30)_

"My Home's Across The Blue Ridge Mountains" The Carter Family _Wildwood Flower_

"Blue Ridge Cabin Home" Flatt & Scruggs _1948-1959_

introduction & definitions

"Blue Ridge Mountain Blues" Bill Monroe _Bluegrass 1959-1969_

"Run The Ridges" The Kingston Trio _The Capitol Years_ 

"Rocky Ridges" The Castels _Rocky Ridges_

"Gladys Ridge" James Keelaghan _Small Rebellions_

"Ridge Rider" Judee Sill _Judee Sill_ 

interview with realtors Jack & Judy Foster

"Blue Ridge Mountains" Townes Van Zandt _High, Low, & In Between_

"Hicker Nut Ridge" New Coon Creek Girls _So I'll Ride_

"Up On The Ridge" Joe Ely _Twistin' In The Wind_

"Pine Ridge" Kid Dakota _The West Is The Future_

"Put The Oak Ridge Boys In The Slammer" Austin Lounge Lizards _Paint Me On Velvet_

interview with entrepreneur Tex Duncan

"I Sit On The Ridge At Dusk" Dirty Projectors _The Getty Address_

"Rigomortis (On The Ridge)" Danny Cohen _Shade Of Dorian Gray_

"Blue Ridge Mountains" Fleet Foxes _Fleet Foxes_

"Dandelion Ridge" The Shelters _The Shelters_

"Up On The Ridge" Sarah Louise _Deeper Woods_

interview with journalist Lucy Wayne

"Fire On The Ridge" Jenny Don't & The Spurs _Fire On The Ridge_

"Kelly Ridge" Eric Lindell _Revolution In Your Heart_

"Missionary Ridge" Shovels & Rope _Little Seeds_

"Ridge Rider" Makar _Fancy Hercules_

"The Ridge" Julian Taylor _The Ridge_

conclusion & goodbye

"The Ridge" Sarah Neufeld _The Ridge_

Whither Ridges?

(image from the Oregon Ridge Nature Center website)

Why a radio show about ridges? What the hell are ridges anyway? Like, thin lines of rock? What the what?

It's so boring that this always happens - I just recently found myself listening to a lot of songs that mention ridges. & the weird thing is, almost none of them were bluegrass songs & almost none of them mentioned the Blue Ridge Mountains. That is odd because a large amount of the songs that I found for the show were in the bluegrass genre & were about the Blue Ridge Mountains. Anyway, my brain says to me, "Are there enough songs about this for a show?" & I respond, "Let's look!" & then a show starts to take form around me & my brain.

That show happens tonight at midnight on 90.7fm in Portland (where I don't think we have many ridges) & online kboo dot fm everywhere (where many ridges abound).

Preface To Ridges: Ridgewood Shopping Center

When I think of the word "ridge" I think of a place in Garland, Texas, which still exists, which occupied a singular space in my life for many years. In addition to living for a short time on a street called Ridgewood - which I talked about here - I lived for a time next to a place called - as you can see in the sign there - the Ridgewood Shopping Center.

Here are some places I've written about it before - a specific set of memories about the part of the center nearest to the apartments where I lived here, & about the library I spent way too much time in here, & about the carnivals that might shop in the empty parking lots here. Here is an article about the Ridgewood Theater, with lots of info in the comments.

As I said, I lived next to this space for at least four years, from around 1977 to 1982. I can still walk around the space in my head. I was there when they opened a Minyard's - though I was not a paying customer, still they gave me a little plant which I never took care of & it died in my room. I shoplifted there, & at the local TG&Y, & at a little pharmacy called Drug Mart. There was a Sears store where I think people picked up things they ordered - it wasn't a giant Sears department store, just a little showroom or maybe an outlet store. Around the back, there would be giant boxes as for refrigerators & other appliances which we would take & make into big forts in the filthy parking lot behind the store. We would spend hours making them & probably disgruntled employees would break them down & throw them back into the trash the next day.

When video game spaces became a thing, someone opened an arcade on one of the side areas of the shopping center. My mother, who worked, would give me & my little brother money for dinner - imagine that! we fed ourselves sometimes when we were next even yet tweens - & we might buy a can of Spaghetti-o's & use the rest to put in arcade games we never got good at. That space closed & a Domino's Pizza opened - which I believe is still there.

In fact, the shopping center is still there. The area now being predominantly Latino, there's a Fiesta & another discount shopping center which seem to be the dominant businesses there. There's a Family Dollar where the Sears outlet store used to be. The theater stands unused for decades now - I think I last time I went in there was in the early 1980s, before high school. Indeed, the last time I did most anything in that shopping center was when I lived near it. The information I have about it now is by going briefly to Goober Maps to look around. My oldest sister, who lived quite near it till her death in 2015, had decided to go to other, farther shopping centers by the 21st century - tho I remember a time when she shopped at that Minyard's & new everyone there & introduced me as "my brother who's in college."

Wow I can actually still walk around that Minyard's in my head. The magazine rack - where the comics were too - were in a back corner of the store where the restrooms were. I'd hang out back there & read comics - especially the oversized tabloid editions which they did not get at the convenience store at which my mother worked - & then sneak back into the employee area where the restrooms were not to use the bathroom but to drink from the water fountain they had there.

My oldest sister would often keep, along with her son, our niece, the only two I think that were born at the time (my oldest brother's niece was around, too, but older & my sister never watched her), & I have a fond memories of pushing them through the aisles in a shopping cart & spinning it around. They of course loved it & my sister hated it - but I always wanted to give them the sort of fun I wanted as a kid.

Mostly now I think about walking home from the library to my apartment complex with an armful of books. Walking through the big parking lot which never held as many cars as it could - it's why they'd put traveling carnivals there! Sometimes in the heat, sometimes in winter gloom. I would narrate my life as if I were the only person left alive - always pretending, always in my head - & the books were how I would keep myself a part of humanity. What television show or book or movie or comic was I pretending to be in? It wasn't all that far off to how I really felt.

My relationship to Ridgewood Shopping Center, like I said, was situational. I hardly ever went back once I had left the area. Though I did I think in 2015 take some pictures there - one of which is above, the other of which - this is the theater's marquee - is here: