Jazzing it up

This week we switched the cable music channel from Smooth Jazz to just plain Jazz, and there has been no turning back. I’m keeping a list of the saxophone players that I hear on the channel, and pretty soon I’m going to need another index card: this one is almost full.

Why say no when it feels so good to say yes?

Starting with contemporary smooth jazz and moving to a mix of classic and contemporary jazz, I have heard from Dave Koz, Paula Atherton, Mindi Abair, Vandell Andrew, Riley Richard, Jazmin Ghent, Michael Lington, Richard Elliot, Hank Mobley, Don Byas, Dan Block, Marcus Anderson, Gordon Goodwin, Steve Cole. Charles Mingus, Kim Waters, Adam Schroeder, Ryan La Valette, Stanley Turrentine, Greg Chambers, Kirk Whalum, Art Farmer, Danny Green, Andy Snitzer, James Carter, Charlie Parker, Charles Lloyd, Ben Webster, Euge Groove, John Coltrane, Jimmy Smith, James Moody, Tia Fuller, Herlin Riley, Bobby Watson, Johnny Hodges, Scott Robinson, and Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis.

And each night last week I hauled out saxophone 2 while saxophone 1 was out receiving an estimate of the cost of cleaning and overall refreshment. I received that estimate on Thursday, and I decided to send in saxophone 2 for its own estimate in hopes that it would be less costly. In the end, I’ll be playing for my own pleasure and I’m not sure that pouring a lot of money down the bell of the alto saxophone I played in high school will make a huge difference to my ear.

Today, however, I had to do a different sort of musical practice, since sax 2 is on its way out and sax 1 hasn’t yet returned. So I sat down at the piano and restarted my Learn To Play Piano in Six Weeks or Less book. I don’t know how long I played; I didn’t even bother to set a timer. I took my time and enjoyed it. I’m looking forwrd to doing it again, and might even pay closer attention to the instructions this time.

This week I’ve been so busy listening to jazz and practicing the saxophone and going to physical therapy and going to occupational therapy and taking myself out for dinner and a saxophone concert and, yes, working, that I haven’t done anything towards the Impossible Read or any knitting projects. This week it’s been about [a certain amount of] variety and not so much about balance.

I am, however, sticking pretty well to my schedule of working on the book project. I’ve located a few more sources, asked a few more questions, and requested a few more inter-library loans. Watch this space.

Third Generation

I hope that you’ll forgive some parental pride in this space this weekend. This morning I attended the college graduation of SecondSon. They finished a four-year degree in Creative Writing and German in just three years, also working several campus jobs, and I am just so proud. Our collective family will celebrate a high school graduation (Youngest) next month and another college graduation (ThirdSon) in three more years, but today was pretty special. None of my grandparents attended college, so this graduation marks the third generation of college students on my side of the family (both of my parents earned Master’s degrees).

It’s been a long and complicated weekend with regard to logistics, but all the effort was worth it. Congratulations, Liam. I love you so much and can’t wait to see what you’ll do.

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Knitwise, I didn’t do any knitting this week. Shortly after I published last week’s post, I had a bizarre accident (which I’d rather not describe) in which my right thumb suffered a severe contusion. I spent Monday afternoon — after I noticed some bruising on the pad of my thumb — in the local Urgent Care, waiting to get X-rays and make sure that the thumb was not broken. Because it would have been even worse if I thought it might be broken, didn’t have it checked out by medical professionals, and had to have it re-broken in order to set it properly.

I spent about four hours at the Urgent Care. I was whisked away for X-rays rather promptly — promptly enough to think that I would be sent home soon. Oh, no. Not at all. The issue of the day, which had been going on for several hours before I set foot in the place, was that the Urgent Care patients who were admitted to the Emergency Room just weren’t going anywhere. At a certain point, “triage” meant identifying the people who didn’t have to be admitted, and resolving their incidents as quickly as possible.

The secondary issue was that people kept walking into Urgent Care. Including people who had been there previously and had decided to leave. At one point, a potential patient walked in when the Urgent Care attendant was out of the room and helping take vitals on someone who was being interviewed by a nurse. The fellow stood in front of the empty desk for a couple of minutes, fiddled with his cell phone, and then decided to leave. Within 30 seconds the attendant returned and I could only comment, “Some people have no patience.”

The people ahead of me had already been waiting for hours to be seen. It became a small community of people with mild to intermediate levels of suffering, and I’m certain that the experience has provided me with several writing prompts. One young women in particular let me know how many people had arrived ahead of and after her. After at long last she and her male companion were able to meet with a nurse and be released, she left by calling to me, “They got the fish gill out!” From where, I do not know.

The afternoon also soured me on celebrity chef Bobby Flay, since the waiting-room television was showing the Food Network. I watched so many consecutive episodes of “Beat Bobby Flay” that I just didn’t care anymore.

Eventually it was my turn to meet with the nurse on call, who let me know that my thumb wasn’t broken and let me go home. I sincerely wish that the fellow who arrived just after I did and was complaining of two crushed fingers, which he had wrapped in gauze and was holding tightly for four hours, received all the medical assistance that he needed. I was happy to grab a Quarter Pounder meal, gobble the fries in the car, and finally head home.

But I didn’t want to stress the thumb. I wore a wrist brace for part of the next couple of days, then took it off but was hesitant to risk re-injury by knitting. Almost a week later, I think I’m in the clear now.

I did sustain another Stupid Injury on Saturday morning, when a wine bottle fell out of my car when I opened the rear hatch. (Perhaps the less said about that, the better.)

Though I haven’t made any progress on the Habit-Forming Scarf, I have alighted on a Secret Knitting Project which I must start immediately. It must be complete by the end of June, and I’ll share photos and a pattern then. For now I must be content with organizing the Yarnhawk May Meetup this Tuesday.

The wicked wind to the west

A few nights ago, I took shelter as a first-ever February tornado made landfall about 45 miles away and blew its way into Wisconsin’s weather history. In a state where almost any weather can happen at any time — I have heard that July and August are the only two months which have never seen snow — it’s getting even more ecumenical here with regard to weather events.

That’s not snow in my back yard: it’s hail. I remember one July in Ohio when I was equally startled to see hail. (Is hail expected in any season?)

It felt like a long week full of stress building up to the day the tornadoes came. I helped to put together a campus forum, and I stayed a few extra minutes to make sure it got off to a safe start. Then it was time to head back to my department, lock up for the night, and head for home. As soon as I got out of town I could see the strong flashes of lightning to the west.

When I got home I was still thinking that I would head out again to a show to which I had a ticket. But it wasn’t long before I decided that it might be wiser to put the car in the driveway and hunker down with my boys. Eldest leashed up the dog and Youngest baked up some snacks that we took with us to the basement. Two rounds of hail pounded against the house before it was calm again and we felt it was safe to return to the ground floor.

When I wasn’t hiding from tornadoes, planning campus events, or setting up writing retreats this week, I was preparing to clean the next typewriter on my list: my mother’s 1966 Smith-Corona Galaxie II. I did get some of the dust blown out of it, but one of the critical screws — to the ribbon cover — wouldn’t budge. So I put almost everything back together. I’ll take the screw’s twin to the hardware store this week to see if I can buy a better screwdriver (and perhaps pick up some extra screws in case I destroy this one in order to save it).

After I get the cover off and have better access for cleaning the hammers, I can work on repeated gentle cleaning of the keys themselves. Mom wasn’t particularly rough on the typewriter, but time in storage did take its toll.

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Knitwise, the only thing I did with yarn this week was to completely frog a finished object (my apologies to the Noro triangle I knitted up a few years ago just to be making something). Oh, and move some project bags into a different space, and move some unallocated yarn to yet another different space.

Well, that’s not quite all. I did — finally — wash out the Leroy Cowl I made from Laurenspun and “block” it out to dry. This was one of the side effects of deciding to de-clutter my bedroom this afternoon instead of doing, well, just about anything else.

It will be resting and air-drying for about the next 24 hours, after which it may be cold enough again to give it a real-life test. Who knows? It’s frosty in the mornings, windy all day, and occasionally warm enough to spawn tornadoes.

While I was sorting through the boxes and bins of clutter in my bedroom, I found a steno pad (remember those?) in which I briefly started a journal in 1986. Those were college years for me, and I used it to take notes during campus visits by novelist Tom Wolfe, Poet Laureate Rita Dove, and legend Kurt Vonnegut. I also used it to write drafts of a fiction workshop response and an article for the honors program newsletter, and brainstorm directions for two fiction pieces I was working on at the time. One ultimately wound up in my creative writing portfolio, and I have no idea what became of the other one. But how glad I am to discover the thinking behind those two stories!

During the time I spent in the basement, though, I peeked into several boxes of old notebooks, journals, and folders; the answer to the background of the forgotten story might lie in one of those cardboard moving boxes.