Portland, Oregon

(I've seen this sign close up! But I stole this image from here.)

Yes, we arrived safely.  Our internet was turned on today but it was a busy day but I thought as we creep into nighttime - most of you have already gone to bed - I should give one last update before I return to talking about a radio show which hasn't been on the radio for over a year & which might not be on the radio any time soon.  Thank you for indulging me as I ramble about our ramblings.

Before I go into dumb detail about our journeys, I want to give props to the wife for her amazing skill at sneaking cats into hotel rooms.  At the place in Twin Falls, the clerk told us we'd need to keep the dogs in crates if we left the room.  The wife said, "No problem.  We bring their crates in."  & she did, although of course inside said crates were three freaked-out cats.  There's a thrill - it's kinda like being naughty, isn't it - to being involved in something that feels like a caper.  Although of course the cats disappeared in our tiny hotel room & we had to turn everything over & upside down to find them before we left.  Note to self: add thirty minutes to prep time if you're taking cats anywhere.

Despite getting a decent night's sleep, I got sleepy driving through Idaho's farmlands & was grateful when we made it to Boise.  Boise is a lovely little town - the wife felt it was quite Lexington-like - & we found a vegan-friendly place that made delicious sandwiches.  We ate outside with the dogs begging for food at our feet, & we made sure the cats in the minivan were parked in the shade.  It was a lovely day & quite chilly so I was surprised when I overheard that it gets over one hundred degrees there in the summer.  "For just three weeks," the person next to us told me.  I figured that was better than three months!

Western Oregon didn't start feeling like the Oregon I expected until we found our way north to the Columbia.  What a joy to drive alongside that mighty river, that Woody Guthrie song in my head as I marveled at it.  Soon the trees became prominent & the wife was calling to tell me that the place reminded her of Santa Cruz, where she was an undergraduate.  (She also told me that the previous farmland reminded her of Sacramento & nearby environs.)  We stopped a couple of times, in Baker City, where they let me pump my own gas (to the horror of people we told in Portland), & at a rest stop, where I made the wife leave the minivan on because it had gotten warm out.  Cooked cats were not on the menu for our destination.

It's true, it got hot!  Portland's been in the 80s the past week.  I didn't mean to bring Texas weather here but I have asked it to leave.  I am not looking forward to lots of rain but I would not trade that for six months of heat.

We arrived around five, met our next-door neighbor, a specialist in fonts named Thomas, & his sweet hound Bella, & after we had carried things in, we went for a walk.  It's true!  We were exhausted, we were discombobulated, we were barely coherent, but we took our hounds for a walk.  Pauline in particular had grown very tired of the drive, it was important to let her know her life was not in fact a car ride five hundred miles a day.

It cooled down, we enjoyed wandering around on a Friday night in a lively town, I wanted to get some whiskey, & on our way back from a liquor store, we passed a taqueria (this place) which had a prominent vegan/vegetarian menu, so we got food.

We ate & watched tv shows on Hulu & wanted to settle down to some kind of normal.  Except.  Our stuff won't arrive till Tuesday.  & this place we're renting - it wasn't easy to find a place that would accept all our animals - it's expensive & it's big.  We have four bedrooms & three bathrooms.  & so far only the cats have truly taken advantage of our delightful spaciousness.  & they spent most of the first day using it to hide from us.

Though today (Saturday) has been punctuated by dogwalks (one of them took us to this delightful place which is like a ten minute walk from where we live), I did spend a good deal of today asleep.  I don't often feel like the fifty-one-year-old that I am, but extreme fatigue caught up with me & I'm sure the heat didn't help, nor the long dog walks.  But I will say that I love that it's still spring here, & especially in this area we live, people have let their lawns & gardens grow wild, & it's an explosion of colors & fragrances & I swear I'm not talking about all the hippie types that live in this town.

Tonight we spent some time on the porch with our sweet neighbors & talked about British sitcoms & Marvel movies & our dogs cuddled with their daughters & all felt right with the world.  The cats have decided to spend time downstairs with us & they seem happy & as I write this the dogs are spent.

Thanks for reading this, I hope to have updates about volunteering at local community radio stations soon.  But no matter what happens, this town feels like the right place to end up.  The wife & me & the animals - we're great.  & tonight the windows are open & despite my nap (& perhaps because of the whiskey) I'm feeling sleepy.  Good night.

Twin Falls, Idaho

(Not Twin Falls, but Shoshone Falls in Twin Falls, image from here.)

Boy, after driving through the middle of Utah, the rest of the trip suffered from the comparison.  & driving up I-15 to I-84, through Utah into Idaho, one is exposed to many different kinds of natural beauty.  But gosh the area around Arches National Park is gorgeous!

Here's something you might not know: the speed limit in Utah & Idaho on major highways is eighty frickin' miles an hour.  That's really, really fast.  I joked with the wife that the reason is, the people who make the rules know drivers want to get out of these states as soon as possible.  But it's amazing, there's virtually no one on these roads.

We started out early, we were in a caravan of folks leaving Moab until we turned onto I-70 & everyone else went... somewhere else?  At some point the only car I could see (going either direction) was the big red Chrysler Pacifica behind me, driven maybe by cats as the wife napped?

Speaking of, the cats were very comfortable this morning & last night we blocked hiding places so they were easily nabbed & put into their carriers.  Bolan again was the most agitated - I heard him every time I talked to the wife.  The dogs were fine, although I think they are getting quite tired of the long drives.  I looked at Pauline today & I felt like I could see in her eyes that she was thinking, "This is my life now."  Except!  Wherever we stopped - outside a convenience store, at an Idaho rest stop, here in Twin Falls - she was excited & she wanted to smell everything & she pulled to go, go, go.  She's now asleep on my side of the hotel bed, she's so worn out.  I'd sleep in the chair tonight but two cats are doing that.

My favorite part of the drive was the winding road (I think it was 191) from Green River up towards Salt Lake City.  We were driving through mountains, there was a small but agitated river alongside the highway, & a pair of train tracks as well, including cool-ass tunnels for the tracks blasted through the rocks.  I felt like I was going too fast - the wife later scolded me - but I'll bet there were people behind us on the road grumbling about elderly Texas drivers.

Salt Lake City is a big place & the traffic was as bad as in Dallas.  We stopped at a nice vegan restaurant in the gay section of town (the cross street was Harvey Milk Blvd) & discovered a vegan donut shop next door.  We ate in a little park nearby & nearly froze to death.  It's quite cold up here - I forget that you can still be chilled in parts of this country in the month of May.

In fact, we saw snow not just on the mountains but on the ground in parts of northern Utah!

We didn't see any Mormon places in SLC, the wife asked me where the Tabernacle was, but I had no idea, we just drove straight through.  Five hundred miles & all that.  I almost didn't make it - the wife saw me swerving a bit on the last leg of the trip, assumed correctly I was on my last leg, & called me & made me talk.  I don't think I fell asleep, but I was feeling like I should close my eyes a bit.

Two things I should mention: the wife wondered about the constant use of the beehive on the state's signs, which I looked up & told her about.  The other is the weird street names - I had heard about the beehive before, Utah is called the Beehive State for pete's sake - every street in SLC is numbered in the hundreds.  As I have just discovered, it is in fact a Mormon thing.

In any event, we made it to Twin Falls all right, & Magda said, "This is the ugliest place we've been to on the trip."  She wasn't talking about the falls or Snake River - we'd take the dogs down to the river once we sneaked the cats in & unpacked, & once we were down there, we found it breathtaking - she meant that the place was all box stores & fast food joints & big trucks.  It reminded her of D/FW I'm sure.

The dogs were very excited & we had a great walk.  I don't understand why I am not tired right now.  We ate more food we brought ("vegan options" is not a phrase commonly found in Idaho, I'd wager) & the wife fell asleep surrounded by hounds & cats & is now snoring like a drunken lumberjack.  Not really, but if you let her know I said that, you can get me into some trouble, which may lead to hilarious shenanigans.

Tomorrow is our longest drive, & we'll get to Portland late.  We traveled there in March, you may or may not know, & we found a place, so we have a home to go to.  It's too freakin' big, but we needed a place that would accept our animals & fortunately we found one.  The weather there is supposed to be very Texas-y - a high of 89 tomorrow & Saturday! - but we'll be there for the weekend & it'll give us time to explore.  Anyway, we found out our furniture & stuff won't arrive till Tuesday.

Speaking of: I hope I haven't bored you too much with this shabby travelogue, but you've been spared another one.  We won't have cable & internet when we arrive, therefore I don't know when I'll be able to write a long, tedious description of what I've been doing.  I'll post something on Facebook but I'm not trying to compose something like this on my phone.  Although I suppose I'll written some novella-length texts in my time.  Which means: we'll see.

Tomorrow, Portland!

Moab, Utah

(Main Street in Moab around the last time I was here.  Ain't like that now!  Image from here.)

Moab, Utah, holds a special place in my heart.  I first visited here I believe in 1994 with my friend Lauren.  Our friend Abbie was working as a park ranger at Arches National Park at the time & it seemed a good excuse to come camp & hike.  (I believe Abbie also gave us her reservations at Canyonlands that same trip, so we camped there, too.)  I came back in 1995 & dropped Lauren off - she & I camped for a night I believe, then I went to California, but I picked her up when I returned.

There's simply nothing like the landscape around here.  It's not something one forgets & yet I was surprised how unreal it seems compared to memory.

Moab was a sleepy little town the last time I was here.  No more!  The Main Street is bustling, there are apartments being built on the outskirts of town, there are restaurants & businesses I don't remember seeing the last time I was here - which was twenty-four years ago, mind you.  Wikipedia says Moab in the 1990s had around 4,000 residents, & the current population is over 5,000.  But just walking down the street today, I saw far more tourists than I remember seeing in the 1990s - & far less granola/hippie types.  (It's good to know that they have a community radio station now, though.)

None of this is terribly important because I'm supposed to be writing about my journey from Texas to Oregon, but I was stunned - stunned! - at how bustling the place seemed.  When we were first here, Abbie took me & Lauren to a tiny vegetarian restaurant (that doesn't seem to exist today) where we saw Woody Harrelson!  Now there are chain motels & a craft beer place.  & there was actual traffic getting here.*

Because it was a mostly quiet drive from Santa Rosa to Moab.  Even Albuquerque didn't seem too busy.  But the trip took longer than usual because, except for I-40, most highways were the kind which went through towns, where we were subjected to reduced speeds & traffic lights.  & sporadic rain.  That has nothing to do of course with the route, but we did hear so much about the storms in Fort Worth (& all over Texas) that we feared we'd be driving into tornadoes or hurricanes or I don't know earthquakes.  The wife & I chatted less on the drive than yesterday because we drove through "dead zones," where, as she put it, "there were no bars on the phone."

Many of the areas were Indian lands, which prompted me to tell the wife this terrible joke:

"Hey, Magda, did you know that New Mexico almost didn't join the United States?"
"I didn't know.  Why not?"
"They had reservations."

She hung up on me & blamed it on the lack of cell reception.

One other funny moment happened when we stopped at a truck stop, & I was offered some snack foods when I bought a soda, a two-for-one deal, & I just said, "No, I don't need that kind of temptation in my life."  I amused the clerk quite a bit with that comment.

The dogs were fine, they were with me of course.  Pauline, our lanky beagle girl, was initially not very happy with the lack of grass in these desert areas, but she adjusted.  The cats were not, however, as happy.  In the hotel room last night, Boone found a way through a hole in the box springs to hide under the bed, so at five am we were looking for him in the hallways of the hotel.  & they very reluctantly returned to the carriers.  Okay, they fought us.  & whenever I talked to the wife, I could hear Bolan complaining in the background.  She said she often stuck her fingers in his carrier (it was in the area just behind her seat) & he would rub his face on them & calm down a little.

Once in the hotel, they were all fine.  We took the dogs for a walk & got a vegan pizza & were lost in the midst of all kinds of tourists: campers, off-road bicyclists, jeep enthusiasts, travelers, the like.  Pauline loves meeting new people, so she was happy to say hello to whomever she could - a pair of Jehovah's Witnesses stationed outside the visitors' center were waylaid by her charms, & we were gone before they could even begin to tell us their version of the Good News.  For her part, the grumpy Yoko was too overwhelmed to bark at everyone so she barked at no-one, which prompted the wife to muse that maybe she'd be a good big city dog after all.  Maybe we'll test that hypothesis on long walks in Portland!

It was a long day & everyone is pooped.  There are no hiding places in the room for the cats so they're just lying around kinda spitefully.  The hotel lets us open the window a tad, which is fine - you forget how cold it gets at night in the desert! - & we had our pizza & now we're winding down.  Just two more days of this.  The wife is yelling at someone from Spectrum on the phone because they're charging us for something & she won't have it.  A second ago Bolan tried to jump from the floor onto the desk where my computer is, he didn't quite make it, & one of his back legs used the soft but sturdy tissue of my forearm to finish the leap.  I probably should put some neosporin or something on it.  It's quite bloody.

Tomorrow: Idaho!

* The wife wanted cookies so we walked to a nearby supermarket around 9:30 & the city had quieted down considerably.  Ten pm seems to be when it goes to sleep.  But I wonder if old-timers are a little freaked out by the late hours these days!

Santa Rosa, New Mexico

(This is where we are.  Image from here.)

We made it.  516 miles.  Three dogs & me in a tiny Prius.  Three cats & the wife in a rented minivan. (A Chrysler Pacifica if you really want to know.)  The wife was happy because it had Sirius radio, & she loves the First Wave channel.  I am exhausted.

Last night I couldn't get to sleep, which is par for the course.  I get anxious before trips - my first trip by car to this part of the world, I spent the night until I collapsed from exhaustion around 3am thumbing through a Mapsco deciding the best route.  (This was in 1995, in the days before GPS.)  Then, as this morning, I woke at six.  It's 9pm New Mexico time, & I am running on fumes.  Which is great!  I'll sleep like the dead tonight.

We planned to leave at eight but it took a little longer to get the house cleaned & our shit packed - kudos to the wife for putting four & half times as much as realistically possible into the minivan - & so far the only thing we left behind was Magda's lunch.

It was sad to let the house go.  It's a lovely place, & I know even though they really can't miss it, the dogs (especially Pauline) are going to miss the beautiful yard.  I think my anxiousness about last night was equal parts going from the house & going to Portland.  The wife put so much work & so much of herself into the house & it was the most comfortable place I've ever lived.  Even after all our belongings were taken away on Thursday, I would find myself going to this room or that as I had been doing for two or more years, out of habit, surprised that my stuff wasn't there anymore.

But I love moving, I love going to new cities, I am very excited about getting to know Portland.  It's not that I have wanderlust per se, I just wish I could relocate every two or three years & spend time in a new place.

The dogs - who doubtless thought we were just going to the park - were easily cajoled into the car.  The cats, however, were freaked out - we put them in an empty room while we packed up & it unnerved Bolan, who was quite frantic.  Bronte & Boone hid in an empty closet, & they were easily grabbed & put into carriers.  Bronte & Bolan shared a large one, Boone had to be by himself in a regular-sized one.  The wife tells me that Bolan complained occasionally throughout the drive, & when we stopped & I checked on them, Bolan was meowing to get out while Boone & Bronte stayed in the back of the carriers.  I wish I could have trained them to be walked like dogs!

We hit the road after 9, I got to hear a bit of my friends Pippin & Carole begging for money on the show I used to do, the Tuesday Morning Blend.  They were much, much better at it than I was, & I was glad they were doing it & not me.  The route began on I-30 till it became I-20 & wound its way through Weatherford, past Mineral Wells, through Abilene, & made a right onto 84 at Sweetwater.  Thanks to the magic of cell phones, the wife & I talked a great deal of the drive, although I did listen to some new records, & a collection of Momus tunes I made so I could sing along.  I didn't listen to any podcasts or books on tape, though I brought those, too - I just really love to listen to music when I drive.

We made a promise to stop every hour or so, for everyone but the cats to go pee, & we pretty much kept the schedule.  We stopped outside Abilene to eat lunch - we brought a lot of food, since we ate out with friends pretty much the entire last week we were in Fort Worth (though, as I've said, the lunch Magda prepared for herself last night was left, we later realized, by our unused fireplace).  While I was eating my sandwich, I met a fellow at a gas station who had a pro-beagle bumper sticker & I also met his beautiful sixteen-year-old beagle named Buster.  The guy was so obviously pro-beagle that Winston, who is famously stingy with his love, gave him a lick when the fellow put his face close to Winston's.

The route took us around, & not through, Lubbock - which seems to have more wind turbines than oil derricks these days, hooray! but the same amount of stockyards, so boo!  - & we had to improvise to find a gas station, which we did, in a town called Littlefield, at a service station on Waylon Jennings Road.  Would you believe I was listening to Townes Van Zandt when we drove up?  I was, but you don't have to believe it.  It began to rain as we left, & the very gregarious cashier told us bad weather was coming.  How did she know? I asked.  She said, "I don't watch TV!  It's just what people tell me!"

She's very good, it turns out.  We later discovered we just missed a storm which included a tornado watch.  We had escaped over the border to New Mexico by then.

The highway was smaller, & we had to drop from 75 mph to 35 mph in a matter of fractions of a mile from time-to-time.  That happens in Texas, too, of course, & also there are generally cops there to give tickets to the unwary.  About an hour from Santa Rosa - in a town called Fort Sumner - we met a young woman who was moving from Washington State - the wife noticed her license plates - to Austin (we asked).  We talked about the Austin that we knew & she admitted that she was moving reluctantly - her husband recently got a job there.  Magda thought I might sympathize but nope!  There isn't a lot of reluctance with this move.

Highway 84 took us to Santa Rosa & I noticed we were in a new time zone.  It is earlier than it once was.  We sneaked the cats into the hotel room - luckily our room was near the back door - hey, we paid extra for three dogs! - & they were pretty unhappy.  It's been a few hours & they've finally come out to eat. They still don't know what to make about the noise in the hallway, but I think they'll be fine - although I am not entirely sure they won't hide when it's time to go.

The hotel is on what used to be Route 66, so we walked the dogs a mile or so down the road & back & I took a lot of pictures of cool signs & abandoned places, two of my favorite things.  I'll post the ones I like best at some point - to my personal Facebook page & to the show's Tumblr blog - but knowing how long it takes me to get through my pictures, I'll be settling into regular life in Portland by the time they make their appearances.  Hey!  I take a lot of dumb pictures!  I go through them chronologically!  They remind me how much I forget things!

For dinner, we ate leftover enchiladas I made in Lexington*.  There are not a lot of vegan choices in Santa Rosa.  Let me rephrase that.  There are hardly any vegan choices in Santa Rosa.  Might I try again.  I would be surprised if there were vegan choices in Santa Rosa.  The enchiladas were good.  If I don't say so myself.  Though I just did.

It's earlier than I feel, but I am exhausted.  The wife has already fallen asleep.  I had last driven in this part of the world maybe twenty-five years ago, & for some reason back then I usually drove around here at night.  But the desert is lovely in its way & I've missed it.  Like Jonathan Richman says, "When I'm in the desert, I wanna see the desert some more."

Luckily we're driving up into Utah tomorrow!

*  (I wrote this sentence at the end of a very long day; of course I meant Fort Worth)

Last Day In Texas

Sort of.  I'll be here until the morning.  I'll take your questions now.

Are you having too many feels?

Strangely enough, no.  I'm looking forward to this next adventure.

How long will the trip take?

Four long days of driving, about five hundred miles a day.

Why are you driving?

In addition to the human I live with, I'll be bringing along the six cats & dogs who live with me, too.  Most of them are afraid of flying.  The rest like road trips.  None of them could afford the bus.

That's a lot of animals crammed into a little car, isn't it?

Oh, we're renting a minivan.  Dividing the cats & dogs.

Are you camping or what?

We're staying in motels.

Which ones?

Why are you being so creepy?

What if I were, you know, nearby?

You're basically just me inventing questions!

Oh yeah.

But.  We're going to be in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, on the first night; Moab, Utah, the night after that; Twin Falls, Idaho, the third night; & Portland finally on Friday night.

Hey, I'll be in Moab when you will be!

No, you won't.

We should hang.

We're done here.

Self Help Radio 050319: May 3rd

For no reason I can readily discern, there have been a lot of Self Help Radio episodes on May 3rd.  If the show has been on for eighteen years - & it has - that's a total of one May 3rd show every three years.  & here they are:

In 2006, the theme explored was Painters, Painting, & Painters Painting. (That's a theme I'd like to revisit some day.)

In 2010, & this was one of my favorites, it was Miss Brown.  There were a surprising amount of songs about women with the last name "Brown."

In 2011 - just a year later! - the theme was "bounce."  I don't know why I felt the need to put the word bounce in quotation marks when I haven't done that for any other theme, but there you go.

In 2013, it was necks - see, no quotation marks! - & just three years ago it was bees.  A year later, the theme was Turn It & now I'm wondering, why did I capitalize that particular theme?  Who knows.

What you're thinking now is, can I listen to any of these shows?  The answer is, yes!  But not all of them.  I found a treasure trove of old shows on cassette recently but they're in a box now on the way to Oregon.

The shows you can listen to are: the bees show, part one & part two.

Plus: the turn it show, part one & part two.

Remember! You'll need a password & a username, one of which is SHR & the other of which is selfhelp.  I got that backwards but it's not hard, flip it around if you get it wrong the first time.

There's a real relief on my end that I didn't do another May 3rd show today.  There have been too many.  For a May 3rd, anyway.

Empty House Blues

Five days before we leave - five days! - movers came & took almost everything in our house away.  As I write this, I am standing (not sitting) at the kitchen counter where my computer is.  We have two chairs we've saved, but the counter is too high & I feel like a child trying to figure out a parent's or older sibling's login information, my hands seemingly above my head.  But doing it standing up isn't really any better.  Perhaps I should sit down.

Why, you may ask, are we sending our stuff on ahead of us?  First of all, it'll actually arrive the day after  we get there.  That's because they move lots of folks' things.  & there are only so many hours in the day to gather up a household & put it in a big truck.  The fellows today - who commended my wife on her packing prowess, prompting her to ask them if she could get that in writing, maybe perhaps on a certificate - were here from around 8 till around 1.

Second of all, it was a little about comfort.  We had to make the decision whether we'd want to be here, in our familiar home, obviously without a sofa or bed to sleep on, but still, the place we've lived for over two years (we're sleeping on one of these), in a more or less chill setting, than adding extra weird complications to an already weird night: first evening in a new place.

The house seems huge without anything in it.  I keep wanting to wander into my room to check stuff on my computer - even though I am writing on that very computer in the kitchen!  & it reminds me that it's a lovely house.  I've loved living in it.  But I don't know if I love it enough to stay - in Texas, where it's going to get very hot very soon; in Fort Worth, which is a fine place, but I wish were as cool as Dallas, & closer to Dallas; in a place where I can't do Self Help Radio.  A house is a home, but home is where the heart is.  & my heart wants to be somewhere else.

Do I have the Empty House Blues?  Nah.  I am looking forward to whatever's around the corner.

Bolan's Thirteenth

My cat Bolan turns 13 today, a very lucky age for a black cat.  He has issues with his urinary tract (I hope he doesn't mind me telling you) so he eats a special food, but I gave him wet food today, which he very much enjoyed - the dish was cleaner when he was done than it was when I put the food in!

He's a precious thing, brought home when he was a kitten from a vet clinic where he was waiting to be adopted.  Despite have two other cats in the house, he glommed on to our beagles Ringo & George, & he's been much more doglike than catlike in his life.

It occurs to me I've written about him on the blog before, especially when I did a Halloween show about black cats.  (Many pictures of Bolan there!)

Two other times here on the blog I focused on him: once in 2012 when I was sharing pictures of my pets & again in 2017 when I did a "meet my pets" series.

He's a sweetheart, the only cat unafraid of visitors, & definitely willing to eat your hair if you sit still on the sofa.

Happy birthday, old man!  Stay with us for a while, please!

Yesterday In Boxes

A week from now I should be in New Mexico, in a small town a hundred miles from Albuquerque, which happens to be around five hundred miles from where I am now.  The place we'll be living in Portland is over two thousand miles away so we're going to need to drive five hundred miles a day to make it.  We'll be in two cars, our own & a rented minivan.  The plan now is to have the dogs drive with me, & the cats in the minivan.  They will be in carriers, to minimize stress.  The dogs will sleep as they always do in the backseat.

As for me, I'm a little leery of such long drives.  It has to be done, & we'll do it, & we won't be driving through densely populated areas, so it should be fine.  When we drove from Memphis to Fort Worth nearly three years ago, we arrived in town on a Friday at four pm.  It took longer, it seemed, to get from Dallas to Fort Worth than from Texarkana to Dallas.

Today I finished packing up my cassettes.  I found a whole lot of old radio shows, most of them from my KVRX days.  Way back when I did my seventeenth anniversary show, I tried to find a copy of the original show to digitize to share.  I found it, actually.  It was in another box with all my other radio shows.  I listened, briefly, to a couple of them.  I feel like I should digitize them - who knows when the cassettes will finally give out? - but I don't think I'll listen to them any more than I do my current shows.  & no one else really wants to listen to them, do they?

A few years back - it's been ten years! - when we moved from Huntington to Lexington, I gave away most of my vinyl.  (If I had known how beloved vinyl was at WRFL, I would've waited to donate it to that station.)  I now have three boxes of it, including my singles.  I really thought I'd have more.  I have five of the same boxes of cassettes.  I really need to have less.  & oh shit, where the hell are my videotapes?

Also I started packing my CDs.  That'll be done early tomorrow.  The movers come to take all of that away on Thursday, & then - we have an empty house for a few days.  It's going to be quite strange.

It's all going to be strange, until it isn't.  It's such an adventure, this moving.  I guess I never felt like I'd stay in Fort Worth forever.  Anyway.  Enough of this.  More packing to do.

Today's News

One: I got new glasses.  They're progressive lenses, so I imagine I will have difficulties.

Two: I am going to see Endgame.  The movie is seventeen hours long.  So, you know.  My day is shot.

Self Help Radio 042619: April 26th

Holy moly, I am counting six times Self Help Radio has fallen on April 26th!  This is interesting (to me at least) because there are days of the year when no Self Help Radio has aired.  Despite doing around fifty shows a year for nearly eighteen years.  That's more shows than there are days in the year!  For example, there has never been an episode of Self Help Radio on February 3rd.  That's odd, right?  Is it because that's Norman Rockwell's birthday?  I don't know!

But on April 26th, the following themes were explored:

Pennies (April 26, 2006)
Busy Busy Busy (April 26th, 2010)
Indiepop A To Z # 31 (April 26, 2011)
Indiepop A To Z # 40 (April 26, 2013)
Indiepop A To Z # 50 (April 26, 2016)
& Indiepop A To Z # 53 (April 26, 2017)

You'll notice a bit of a trend toward the end there - it's been my habit since 2014 to return to my never-to-be-finished series "Indiepop A To Z" every four months.  I almost made it every three months & maybe one day I will.  It will take me a decade to get through the letter S.

All of the indiepop a to z episodes are over on the Self Help Radio Archive Page.  There's a lot more to listen to.  Remember: username is SHR, password is selfhelp.

We are just a little over a week away from leaving.  My room is a mess.  I'm a little nervous.  But gosh I think it was a good idea to stop doing the show for a time.  I would be even worse now if I did the show up until the very last minute!

True Doctor Story

This was just shared by me on Facebook:

Today I got a physical & afterwards they handed me some paperwork I didn't bother to read.

Sometime in the afternoon, I got a call from the doctor's office.

"Mr. Dickerson?" the person on the line said. "We're so sorry about the mistake on your patient report."

"What mistake?" I asked.

"Instead of noting your blood pressure," she said, "we accidentally wrote that you're HIV positive."

"Oh my!" I said.

"We're very sorry," she said. "If you'd like to come in for a corrected report, we can give it to you."

"No, no," I responded. "This one is all right. Anyway, I'd really like to scare my wife."

Too Many Cassettes: An Introspection

We are moving, as you know, in less than two weeks.  I have too many cassettes.  They fall into these categories:

1) Very old cassettes of me as a kid recording shit with friends & alone
2) Cassettes of things I recorded from vinyl that I either sold back or borrowed from someone (later I would do the same with CDs)
3) Cassettes people made for me
4) Cassettes I made for people but never sent (not a large number)
5) Recordings of radio shows I've done (I stopped recording them on cassette - this is true - around 2006!)
6) Commercial cassettes I either bought, got somewhere, or were given to me
7) Mix tapes I made for myself back in my walkman days (this includes tapes of albums that I taped because I couldn't carry a turntable with me on the bus)

There are a lot of cassettes.  Too many.  & I am getting rid of some, especially the ones that I have other forms, in better quality media.  Why keep them?  It's silly.

The ones that are most interesting to me are the old recordings, because I haven't listened to them in years, perhaps decades.  Some of them I don't even remember making.  There was a time when I had cassettes & a recorder nearby always, because I would send tapes to friends or I would want to talk into the recorder or whatever.  Cassettes were ubiquitous.  It's why I have so many!

But my weird insight today is this: I have romanticized my life with cassette tapes.

Let me clarify: I don't miss them.  I never liked their sub-par sound quality.  I never liked the fact that, if you had a certain number of minutes per side, you'd have to fill all of it, or get long hissing silences.  (CDs stop when the tracks you've burned onto them end, you know.)  I of course hate rewinding.  I have cassettes that I have obviously "operated" on - I cracked the case & used tape to splice broken ends together.  Scotch tape!  Nothing fancy!

What I'm talking about is that I felt like there were treasures on these tapes.  I wish I could explain it better.  I thought the me on these tapes was worth preserving, & carrying around from Austin to Huntington to Lexington to Fort Worth, from numerous residences in those cities, & now to the Pacific Northwest.  & you know what?  It's not.  The me on the tapes isn't really worth preserving.

If most of those tapes disappeared tomorrow, I might be a little sad, but I don't think I would miss them much.  I don't even know if I'll ever listen to them again as it is.

Tonight I digitized one of them, a faux recording session with two friends in high school.  They are musicians, I am someone trying (& failing) to be funny while yelping in a microphone.  These days I am way too self-conscious to do such a thing - I guess I hadn't yet become entirely aware how utterly talentless I was - so there is a kind of wistfulness to experiencing my exuberance.  I knew I was pretending to be a rock & roll star but I still also kinda believed I could be a rock & roll star.  Life had yet to knock me down a few pegs, a few feet, a few flights of stairs, a few levels.

The radio show tapes may demostrate the same thing, & maybe one day I'll digitize more of them.

Still.  I'm taking a lot of them to Portland.  But I'm hoping to leave a lot of them behind.  Half, maybe?  Or more?

"What a treasure trove!" a friend said today when I sent a pic of a big box of cassettes to her through text.  Oh yeah.  It's treasure.  But it's fucking cursed.

Still Thinking About This House That Is Emptying Slowly

As I write this, a nasty storm is rolling through Fort Worth.  I am not a meteorologist or anything, but I do notice that storms are nastier in this part of the world than in other places.  In Lexington - which, don't get me wrong, has nasty storms as well as tornados & such - it seemed like it could rain all day & it would just be rain.  No thunder, no lightning, just endless rain.  That hardly ever happens here.

Another thing to note: it usually doesn't rain during the day here.  It happens at night, like now, where there's always a chance the power will go out.  I type frantically in anticipation of that event.

This is a dumb thing I remember about rain in West Virginia, where, like in Lexington, it didn't seem to storm much.  I told a friend that the rain was more beautiful unaccompanied by lighting & thunder, that it seemed more "poetic."  She made fun of me for weeks after that, she'd ask, "How is your poetic rain?"  I deserved that.

My little dog Winston hates the thunder, & needs to be cuddled while it's storming.  He gets nervous & shivers & for some reason wants to go outside, to panic in the rain.  Like he thinks the thunder is coming from inside the house.  It's a shame he feels this way, & it's something he's picked up in his later years, possibly since we've returned here.  I don't know if it storms like this in Portland.

Speaking of: two weeks from tonight, I will be sleeping in a hotel room & not in this house.  We moved in here at the end of the year 2016, so we only lived here for two years or so, but I have loved this place like no other home I've had.  I don't know why that is - I haven't been crazy about the town, or the sad lack of opportunities for Self Help Radio, or the perpetual months of heat, but I've loved this house, this little room where I've made the show, the kitchen where I cooked, the backyard where the dogs played.  I know a home is just a place & you find your home where the things & people you love are, & I trust my wife to find another place in Portland for us, but that doesn't make it any easier knowing we'll be saying goodbye to this place soon.

Now I need to see if the dogs will brave the rain before they go to bed for the night!  Rain is something else we'll have to get used to, too.

A Modest Observation

In about two weeks, we leave this home where I've lived for over two years.  We are boxing things up & getting rid of things & taking things off walls.  In certain rooms, there is a pronounced echo that wasn't there a week ago.  In these ways does a house stop being a home.

& it makes me think: how strange it is that the last moments one lives in a place so resemble the first moments one lives in a place.  Because when we moved into this house a little over two years ago, it so resembled what I am seeing now.

Except.  I was unfamiliar with everything, & now I know this place as much as I've known anywhere I've lived.  It's a strange sadness, a feeling of loss, & luckily keeping busy keeps that at bay.

Self Help Radio 041919: April 19th

There was an idea I had: while the show was on hiatus, I'd feature some show from the past - I mean, I've been doing this for almost seventeen years! - that happened on the same date.  It turns out, April 19 is a pretty well-traveled moment on the calendar for Self Help Radio!

Two years ago, I did a show about umbrellas.  Should you be so inclined, you may listen to that show in two parts right now: part one & part two.  (You'll need a username & password, & that will be SHR & selfhelp in case you didn't know.)

Three years ago, in 2016, there was a show with the theme everything's fine.  Do you remember, back in 2016, when everything seemed fine?  Me neither.  But you can listen to that show, if you want, by clicking on part one & then part two.  Same password situations apply.

But wait!  There's more!

In 2013, on April 19, there was a show with the theme on my mind.  You were on my mind then.  But I didn't reupload the show, sorry.

On this day in 2011, the show explored songs involving the word crawl.  That would've been one of the earlier WRFL shows.  How wonderful it might be to hear that show!  But you can't.

A year earlier, in West Virginia, the show examined the theme mushrooms.  No one listened to the show in West Virginia except people at WMUL, & the Station Manager himself called & said it was amazing I did a show about mushrooms on 4/20.  Except it was 4/19.  & I'm not that clever.

We can go way back, though.  To one of my favorite episodes, which aired in 2006.  I have no idea if the show is any good, but I enjoyed making it.  Self Help Radio wasn't even four years old.  I had the idea of making a show where all the songs were covers of 1980s tunes.  I called it "the eighties, translated".  I don't know if it were well-received or what.  But I had a lot of fun.

Believe it or not, there are still days in the calendar which have never had an episode of Self Help Radio aired on them.  April 19 is not one of those days.

Now.  Back to packing!

Our Correspondence Was Very Weird

Guess what I'm doing here:

A process in the weather of the heart
He put on his clothes & stepped out & he died.
I who was shapeless as the water
Of unremembered skies & snows
Shall I unbolt or stay
Hearing the raven cough in winter sticks
My world was christened in a stream of milk
I climb to greet the war in which I have no heart but only
The jacks of frost they finger in the hives
But for the common wages
For my voyage to begin to the end of my wound
Possessed by the skies
And the doors burn in their brain
And every stone I wind off like a reel
So fast I move defying time, the quiet gentleman
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime
Escapes to the flat cities' sails
He drowned his father’s magics in a dream
Dry as a tomb, your coloured lids
Know now the flesh's lock and vice
Or waves break loud on the seashores
Being innocent, he dreaded that he died
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away
Your sport is summer as the spring runs angrily

What I did was, I was reading Dylan Thomas poems, & I took lines from them - the first line from the first one, the second line from the second one, all the way down to the twenty-fourth line & poem.  It almost makes sense!

This I'm doing instead of packing.  Aren't I glad I gave up my radio shows?

Putting Stuff In Boxes (An Obloquy)

This is the way my mind works: I decide to write about putting things in boxes, & suddenly I think of this word: obloquy.  What the hell?  Where did it come from?

Well, according to Etymology Online, it's from the Late Latin obloquium, meaing "speaking against, contradiction," from comes ultimately from the Latin obloqui, "to speak against, contradict."

It means verbal abuse, usually in public.  But that's not what I meant.  I was asking, "Where did it come from in my mind?"

Why would I want to hurl verbal abuse ("evil speaking") at putting stuff in boxes?  Is that even possible?  Does a task have agency?  Or would I be targeting myself, as the person who is putting things in boxes?  Is there any way to know?  Do I even care?

This post has nine questions.  Here are the answers:

1) I know!

2) Asked & answered.

3) You know a lot of words, sometimes they just pop up, unwanted.  It doesn't have to mean anything.

4) You wouldn't.

5) Probably not, unless it's in a poem or some shit.

6) Again, probably in a poem.

7) No, I think the question (such as it was) was about the act, & therefore you couldn't really be obloquious toward it.

8) Sure.

9) Not really.  But there's space to fill.

There's not going to be a countdown or anything, but we leave in about twenty days.  That's not a lot of time.  I probably should be putting things in boxes instead of talking to you.

It's So BORING To Talk About DREAMS

Uh oh.

This is true: I dream a lot.  I always have.  Sometimes my dreams have felt more real than my life, which says nasty things about my life, not my dreams.  I had a dream I fell in love with a girl I never met in a dream in high school, & almost convinced myself she was real.  It was only when I tried to figure out how someone could appear to you in your dreams - trying to work out the mechanism - that I realized it was only a dream.  Also, she looked a lot like a girl I was crushing on in school.

There's one recurring dream - it's not that the dream is recurring - there's an element of dreams that happens or has happened enough times that it's seemingly recurring.  It's this: I dream that I have written & maybe even performed a song.

It's usually just one song.  In the dream, I'm reflecting on how hard it was & sometimes I even think I don't like the song, but I say to myself, "Hey! At least I wrote a song!"

& it's not like I just wrote the words.  Nope, in the dreams what gives me satisfaction is that I not only did that, but I wrote the music & possibly even played some of the music.

It probably wouldn't surprise you that not only could I fail to carry a tune in a bucket but also I have no natural ability when it comes to music.  I can barely grasp the basics of music theory.  Oh hell yeah I can talk for hours about lyrics in a song & I can chat about some elements of the composition but ask me what key it's in?  Forget it.

The treacherous thing about these dreams is not just that I am somehow goofily proud & even a little smug that I wrote a song, but that often - like this morning - I wake up thinking, "Yeah, I'm glad I was able to write that song that one time, & then record it."

Of course, I've never done that.  & it dawns on me as the morning wears on & I start trying to think about the song.  When did I do all that writing & music playing?  Why?  Where is the song now?  Why am I not thinking about it all the time if I'm so durned proud about it at the moment?

Oh yeah.  There's no song.

Yes, I was in a "band" in high school where I shouted improvised lyrics into a recording device.  But my friend Russ went back & added all the music touches - all the instruments, really.  The song was barely mine & I of course wasn't singing & didn't have a sense of melody or anything.  The same thing happened in my living room fifteen years ago with friends from radio where they played their guitars & I sang along with them.  But those weren't my songs.

Still, I am not angry about these dreams.  They let have a feeling of accomplishment I don't normally feel in real life.  If only I could remember as I'm waking up that there's no song, no song of mine, anywhere but my dreams.  That sleepy realization is the worst part.

Hm, this wasn't entirely about dreams.  Still, it probably was pretty boring.

The Beginning Of Six (Or So) Long Weeks

There was this book I was fascinated with when I was a kid because I like trivia, it was called the Book of Lists.  I must've thumbed through it hundreds of times.  At some point, one of my older brothers brought home - or I saw at his house - something called The Book Of Rock Lists (which existed because imitation is the sincerest form of flattery & also because The Book Of Lists was bestseller).  I was a big Beatles fan at the time & there was a whole section for the Beatles, including something I had never heard: rumors of Paul McCartney's death & replacement in the mid-1960s.  That freaked me the fuck out.

The original copy is long gone, so my memory might be faulty, but I recall a long list of how rock & rollers died.  One of those was a fellow named Johnny Ace, whose music I had never heard at the time.  He was in the list of "rock & roll suicides."  He had died on Christmas Day, 1954, backstage, while playing Russian Roulette.

Years later, when I was finally exposed to some of his songs, I remembered that entry & wondered, "If you die by Russian Roulette, is it really suicide?"  The other thought is, "How shitty is being a musician if in your down time you wile away the hours playing Russian fucking Roulette?"

It just so happens that today I was listening to some Johnny Ace & of course the story of his death popped into my mind.  I wanted to read more about him.  That Wikipedia article I linked to mentions how he died, but suggests a more sensible scenario, told by the bass played for Big Mama Thornton, his name was Curtis Tillman (Ace was touring at the time with Thornton): "I will tell you exactly what happened! Johnny Ace had been drinking & he had this little pistol he was waving around the table & someone said ‘Be careful with that thing…’ & he said ‘It’s okay! Gun’s not loaded… see?’ & pointed it at himself with a smile on his face & ‘Bang!’ — sad, sad thing. Big Mama ran out of the dressing room yelling ‘Johnny Ace just killed himself!'"

There must be a word for the satisfaction one feels when something that was unexplained but which one took to be true is cleared up.  I felt that today.  & it made it easier to enjoy the tunes I was digging.

Hey! I told you I'd write in the blog in the usual way despite the show being on hiatus!  This is the sort of shit you're going to have to get used to!  (For a while.)