A Roman recipe from An Alphabet for Gourmets by M. F. K. Fisher from a collection of her works entitled The Art of Eating:
GARUM (400 B.C.)
Place in a vessel all the insides of fish, both large fish and small. Salt them well. Expose them to the air until they are completely rotted. Drain off the liquid that comes from them, and it is the sauce garum.
Kennedy Fisher, Mary Frances . The Art of Eating: 50th Anniversary Edition (p. 901). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.
Or perhaps it is the cesspool of death that it appears to be…
what my latest poem looks like on my desktop computer monitor. October 2023.
Something perhaps has changed with WordPress. I’ve been irritated to see that choosing the “Verse” setting for a block, which I thought yielded the above, doesn’t even come close on some devices. Here’s what my friend received in his email:
what my poem looks like on an Android phone, as delivered in a Gmail message. October 2023.
I knew that WordPress converted poetry to a monospaced font, rather liked it actually, because I follow a couple of poetry blogs which deliver the entire poem to my inbox. I’m pretty sure in the past that I saw the same thing on the WordPress website when I used my phone. Ah, but now there is Jetpack, newly changed for the…better? This is what appears on my actual blog when using an Android phone:
What my poem looks like on an Android phone using WordPress/Jetpack. October 2023.
That’s not “verse,” WordPress, nor is it “poem.” That is called “paragraph” and “prose” and perhaps “simplistic crap” unless one makes a living as a stream-of-consciousness author, and even then one must establish a certain cadence and structure to ‘musically’ signal to the Reader that yes, this is something beyond prose. (Unless one is James Joyce, then nevermind.)
Canadian philosopher and communications theory god Marshall McLuhan invented the phrase “the medium in the message”. I’ve perverted what this means. He meant that content doesn’t really matter, that a children’s cartoon or a vicious slasher movie is all the same when broadcast identically on television. To me he meant the message of any communication effort takes its ultimate meaning from the medium by which it is delivered. Spoken words in a living room conversation take on new meanings when sung in a concert hall. More familiarly, books turned into movies tell a different story and cannot help do otherwise. Even if Peter Jackson had managed to control every reference in his Lord of the Rings movies, visual, aural, or what-have-you, the story still would have been just as vastly different than the books as they turned out to be.
For these reasons, it’s deeply unsettling to oldsters such as me to watch the different devices reformat and repackage the content of what purportedly is the same thing. I see this nearly every day as I follow Major League Baseball. MLB.com presents a side-by-side box score for both teams, but on the phone you must select one team or the other–never can you present them at the same time on your phone’s screen. Baseball-Reference.com displays a wonderfully useful tool when looking at any particular season for a baseball team: a histogram of green and red bars which tell the tale of the entire season, game by game, read left to right. Mouse over any bar and it tells you the date of that particular game, who this team played (and where), and what the score was. It also shows what the team’s Won-Lost record was when the game finished. On a mobile device (tablet or phone) this histogram tool disappears. It makes me wonder if certain features of a website are completely unknown to a majority of the younglings who stare into their phones for 90% of the time they’re awake.
Thus, we come back to my dilemma/consternation and the question posed in the headline. Have I delivered a poem at all when it looks like a short paragraph raising an offhand question? Does the trivialization effected by the mobile presentation indicate my poem lacked substance and can only stake a claim to poetry because of its window-dressed arrangement? (Believe me, I’ve thought some unkind thoughts about other’s postings which, if returned to a more prose-like arrangement, look like the musings of a teenager in a diary. Am I just as shallow?) Did McLuhan not go far enough? Does the message ultimately get defined by how the technology delivers it, even when it lives simultaneously in different media formats?
A light bulb creates an environment by its mere presence.
Marshall McLuhan from Understanding Media (as quoted in Wikipedia)
Ultimately I think McLuhan would argue each device configuration represents a medium. But I never signed up for this, WordPress! My understanding of the matter was this: you give me the tools to put my message together, and I pay for it by giving you ultimate ownership of my content (which I cannot believe I did, but there ya go). I expected a bit more, though. I expected a very nuanced difference to my content. Sure, I’ll accept McLuhan’s theory that those who read my stuff on a phone get a different message than those who read it on a big desktop monitor, but I would prefer to be left out of the “definition changing” part of the equation. You’ve made me a partner to it by changing my content not just the medium.
Which leaves me little closer to answering my question but has given me an excellent opportunity to rely on that first college degree and to prove yet again that old age clothes old men in curmudgeonly behaviors as surely as dogs become grizzled and oaks gnarled.
Things that have been bouncing around in my head lately:
What’s wrong with these directions from a recipe I used this morning? “Sift before measuring: 2 cups flour.” Seriously, Joy of Cooking? How do I sift 2C without measuring it first? (The waffles were delicious, however.)
I’m trying to be on a stay-cation while my wife travels to Florida. This means I don’t want to do “chores” — but I reminded myself that “even on vacation, one has to pack the trunk.”
One of the all-time best blues-rock (Chicago style) performances is Kenny Wayne Shepherd’s “Dance For Me Girl” on Live in Chicago.
“Attaboy, Harper!” Jesus, don’t poke the bear, Arcia. That’s just basic Survival 101. As if Bryce needed more motivation!
I’ve realized recently my emotional IQ hovers around “special needs”. Unfortunately, my intellectual IQ makes me think I’m the smartest person in the room at all times. In terms of roulette, smart people think that just because it comes up red 98% of the time, it will always come up red. So, 2% of the time they’re wrong. Unfortunately, we never know if “this time” is in the 2% or not.
Getting old sucks.
I will need to be institutionalized if my wife dies before I do. There’s only so much crazy society can tolerate. (Our current politicians notwithstanding.) I’ve been alone for four days, and I remember how the internalized thoughts and lack of social contact distill the craziness. Not pretty.
Those of you with big families have no idea the paucity of having few (if any) relatives. I have/had one uncle, four cousins, and one brother. Grandparents died, the uncle died, one of the cousins has died. My brother had two children–one is estranged to the point of “whereabouts unknown”. My close family consists of a brother and a niece. My wife, meanwhile, has seven siblings, and 23 nieces and nephews, and her parents are still living. Those nieces and nephews have had a good handful of children. It’s night and day here in my house.
I daily lament not “getting to the important things” and then spend the afternoon reading, cruising the Interweb, and drinking beer. And writing posts like these. Not one important thing is addressed.
Johnny boy, he's always propping up the bar
He sees life crystallized through his jar
He says he only lives for beer
But deep in his heart is a cry of fear
Give me a heart to hang onto
Give me a soul that's tailored new
Give me a heart to hang onto
A heart to hang onto
--Pete Townshend, "Heart To Hang Onto" from the album Rough Mix with Ronnie Lane
if you’re going to post poetry as if you’re a poet, for God’s sake, learn the damn language! It’s pretty easy to do that and still write bad poetry, but it’s impossible for you to write good poetry without a basic understanding of grammar, usage, and mechanics.
I’ve just completed reading My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman. He’s the one who wrote A Man Called Ove which was made into the movie A Man Called Otto with Tom Hanks recently. It’s a tear-jerking adult fairy tale of a book which skirts the edge of formulaic, contains frequent self-referential passages (which I find tiresome), tells a well-worn tale without breaking any new ground,…and I gave the book a five-star rating. For one thing, I like a pathos-riddled book which adroitly brings tears to my eyes. Mainly, though it’s for two other reasons I gave it those stars. The book re-taught me a lesson about reading (and therefore about life a bit): when you dislike a book (or a person or whatever) because it isn’t what you thought it was going to be, then you’re not disliking it for what it is, you’re disliking it for not living up to your expectations. If those expectations were based on very little, as most of our snap judgments tend to be, then it isn’t the book’s fault. In this case, my expectations were built upon some not-very-specific blurbs which said what the book was ‘about’. I expected a different storyline. Once I accepted it wasn’t going to follow my imagined plot, I realized I liked the book very much. (Had I not, I would have put it down, but with the acknowledgement that I did so based on what it was rather than what it wasn’t.)
Since the blurbs I read led me to expect a book where an adult protagonist runs around Europe delivering letters from her now-deceased grandmother, here’s my blurb, only slightly more accurate and still very vague:
When the grandmother of the “almost-eight-year old” protagonist dies, the granddaughter is charged by her Granny to deliver a series of letters to people from her grandmother’s past. Through this device, Backman weaves together the competing narratives of being someone’s hero and being a shit, and teaches a young, precocious girl that Truth (and Life) lie somewhere between the two. Oh, and along the way he makes a good case for forgiveness and tolerance, fairytales, loyalty, courage, and that anyone can redeem themselves and become a hero.
Me
Other than that, I liked the book for its style which led to some lovely little quotes:
“Only different people change the world,” Granny used to say. “No one normal has ever changed a crapping thing.”
Backman, Fredrik. My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry: A Novel (p. 89). Atria Books. Kindle Edition.
Children know that time is just an emotion, so “now” is a meaningless word to them, just as it was for Granny. George used to say that Granny wasn’t a time-optimist, she was a time-atheist,…
Backman, Fredrik. My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry: A Novel (p. 231). Atria Books. Kindle Edition
Because life is both complicated and simple. Which is why there are cookies.
Backman, Fredrik. My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry: A Novel (p. 368). Atria Books. Kindle Edition.
I wish there were more quotes, but I became too involved in the novel to take time to highlight them. I’ve been gifted some alone-time what with my wife gone for a week, which led me to read hours yesterday and today, which I do too seldom much as I did before adulthood. (True, many would argue about calling me an adult, but I’ve shook them from my boots like the clods they were and kept walking.)
And now, because all posts deserve a photo, here are the mushrooms I’m going to sauté in an hour or two. After the fiasco of the first kit, my purveyors made good with one which burst forth in just seven days and has yielded these fully ripe, ready-to-harvest golden oysters in just 11 days:
Golden oyster mushrooms, at Day 11 + 5 hours. October 2023.
View from Fort Macon State Park, Emerald Isle, NC. September 2023.
As mentioned in a post on Monday, last week I began an unusual period of travel: all of it by someone else, unless you count this day-trip to coastal waters last Friday. The above contradicts the National Weather Service’s forecast of partly sunny, but temps were in the 70’s, and it wasn’t raining. I would have traded Thursday’s sunny weather, but it permitted a nice walk around Lake Lynn where we espied turtles, ducks, geese, more turtles, still more turtles, and a couple of hunting herons:
Great blue heron with turtle at Lake Lynn, Raleigh, NC. September 2023.
That afternoon my good buddy received his wish, and we visited the Duke University Store to purchase swag. While there we took a quick peek at the chapel:
Duke University Chapel. September 2023.
The cones and barriers in the photo were courtesy of the setup for Game Day, a Saturday morning TV show focused on college football–according to my friend since I do not follow any sport except baseball. The resemblance to construction fit right in with all the real construction which was occurring nearby.
Now we entertain my brother and watch post-season baseball. Good times.
[Note to CIMPLE: all photos taken with Google Pixel 6 Pro. Top two edited with Faststone. Last one not edited.]
Small, shriveled golden oyster mushrooms. September 2023.
When I converted an old, seldom-used blog into this one, I envisioned a writing outlet and ‘daily’ blog combination. After all, I’d just canceled Facebook for reasons too obvious and previously stated. I figured my need to communicate, to shout into the gale winds of social media would inevitably fill this site up with lots and lots of pithy writing punctuating my daily doin’s. It’s now time to admit something about getting older I had witnessed but not from this side of the divide, so to speak: that driving urge to make something happen and accomplish something fades. Some of this is good. Recently I’ve reflected on my typical mindset four years ago when I juggled weekly trips across the continent to San Diego and Seattle from my Raleigh home, monthly visits to attend to my ailing mother in Spokane, and to arrange her final rites in October. (I ended it all with an audit performed in Toronto…in rainy November weather. Yay.) I barely recognize the person who kept multiple itineraries in his head, who could tell you which airports had which kiosks at which intervals, who had a set and efficient routine for unpacking and packing a suitcase, who parleyed sarcastic cynicism into a business persona, and who grabbed beers and food as time allowed. I wish I could convey the inner pressure which led others to give me wide berth at times, but which seemed to be crucial to my survival. But now…
Hard to thrill, Nothing really moves me anymore.
from “Hard To Thrill” by Eric Clapton/John Mayer, performed by Clapton & J.J. Cale on The Road To Escondido
When Covid partnered with retirement to give me a crash course in inactivity, I reverted to a boyhood prototype: read; pursue an idea as it blossomed; eat; drink; repeat. But don’t call me lazy. I bristle at being called lazy. “Inside my head I’m more active than you’ll ever be,” I think. (We’ll leave to another day what steps I took to slow down and/or turn off the voices in my head.) I learned early that giving voice to my stream of consciousness at speed guaranteed a fairly quick response: “oh god, would you PLEASE JUST SHUT UP!” (Well, I somewhat learned it. I’ve received refresher courses throughout the ensuing 50 years.) Example from a coastal drive during this past week’s visit from a lifelong friend: “There’s a Free Will Baptist Church…not to be confused with a movie about orcas…and definitely Free Willy shouldn’t be confused with that series of pornographic films.” I think I saw heads spin in the car. Did I mention I liked Robin Williams because he delivered comedy at a speed I could appreciate?
All of this by way of explaining my consternation at noting only three or four posts in the past six weeks. Remove the writer’s conceit of a Virtual Vacation and I’ve posted little in the past three or four months. No promises, but I’m headed into a (slightly) more optimistic future in October. In mid-month I’m looking at two periods in the month which hold a dozen days of solitude–a gift to a loner like me.
Our shriveled photo at the top represents a failure at growing a beautiful blooming of golden oyster mushrooms. I was promised a gorgeous cluster, maybe two or three from a kit I purchased in early August. It should have looked like this…ah but that would be stealing someone else’s photo. Let’s just say it would be ten times bigger than the clump in the photo above.
Instead, nothing happened within the 10-14 days it should have. I gifted a friend with the same kind of mushroom kit, and he started a week ahead of me. He didn’t reach harvest until about day 19 or 20, so I held on. About three weeks in, I finally got some growth where it shouldn’t have occurred and it consisted of two distinct clusters which both looked like the picture at the top of this post. It’s an accurate symbol of my shriveled hopes these days. The vendor came through though and sent me a new block which arrived Friday. I started it Sunday, and noted I had not followed instructions–imagine that. This time I made the required shallow incision in the mycelium-impregnated starter block as specified. Stay tuned.
It’s possible that the advent of Oktoberfest with its namesake beer has contributed to some of the lassitude I feel. Or…others…. I’m still polishing off some representatives from the Michigan trip in July. (Though not representative of the state: it’s where I found North Coast Brewing’s Old Rasputin, an imperial stout that drinks like a cross between beer, chocolate, and coffee, all without any additions. Good stuff, but potent. Two of these babies and you’re more than halfway through a typical six-pack.)
The glass is mightier than the sword…particularly when the glasses gang up on the pen.
September saw a few happenings. We got to know our new steel steed, Percy Pilcher:
Percy Pilcher, aviator extraordinaire!
We set out at the end of August to replace Mr. Lincoln, a 2015 Lincoln MKC and a beautiful realization of automotive vision, but who had become a bit outdated, frustrating, and tired after eight years. “A hybrid, dear,” I told my wife. “That’s what we need. And probably a minivan, though I’m loath to admit those words. We need the cargo room.” We went shopping. Hybrid Toyota Sierras would be available six to eight months–if we pre-ordered. Chrysler Pacificas looked cheap, even at the so-called high end of the model spectrum. The others were DOA, and so…we headed back to the Lincoln dealership where we were treated like returning royalty. No hybrid Aviators? There’s a familiar song. A ‘pre-owned’ model? (Hmm. Weren’t those called “used” not long ago? I think I’m differently opinionated!) Sure. And that’s how we wound up with a current-year Aviator which was returned after five months because the purchasers just loved the vehicle they had traded in, so they bought another one and used this one to cover the cost. Their disappointment was our gain. We bought a vehicle with less than one year’s mileage on it, looks sharp, has all the features we wanted, and…it’s a Lincoln. When I woke up from the euphoria, though, I realized we had purchased another gas combustion engine and that it had 25% worse gas mileage than what we had traded in! Ah, no matter. For now Percy is our new Aviator. Why Percy? Because Percy Pilcher, a relative for sure–there aren’t many Pilchers in the world–achieved quite a bit of notoriety as an inventor and aviator, and likely would’ve bested the Wright brothers at the first to fly a heavier-than-air aircraft if he hadn’t been killed right before attempting it. If you click through to that link, the photograph of him looks similar to my grandfather, the Rev. Howard B. Pilcher, enough that he could’ve been a cousin. I’ve not done much with genealogy, so I’ve no idea how close the relationship is.
Tuesday marked the beginning of a month of travel, both us and others. Or more specifically, both my wife and others. I’m not going anywhere. In my teen years I became acquainted with a guy who later became a good and close friend. Throughout junior and senior high I knew who he was, saw him in groups, but not until I dropped out of college after my freshman year in 1973 did I start working at a Spokane hospital where he also worked. We started hanging out, and because I had become just a little more “normal” we connected. Though diametrically different, we became friends. He was the best man at my first wedding in 1983. We fell into and out of touch, but by 1990 we had renewed it for good. I moved away, and he served in the wedding party for my second wedding. (It was only fair. I participated in multiple weddings for him. Perhaps I’ll tell that tale later.) This past week represented the second time he visited us in Raleigh; the first occurred only because he had followed a woman to Florida in 2009. Had that not happened….but that’s also another story.
This week my brother visits for the first time in over a year. When he leaves a week later, one of my wife’s triplet sisters drops in the next day to pick up my wife and continue to Florida where she (my sister-in-law, not my wife) will look for her retirement home. When that’s done my wife and I will enjoy a whole seven days all by ourselves before she takes off again with a group of friends called The Biker Chicks (though my wife has never ridden a hog or any other type of motorcycle that I am aware of). Finally, as October bows itself out with Hallowe’en, and All Saints and All Souls ushers us into November, I will settle into a sedate period of enjoying my life with my wife. I really don’t need much else. She lets me be to sit here and write these screeds, matches me drink for drink and recipe for recipe, creates handcrafted art in a panoply of media, and joins me in a love of good video, good music, and good times.
What could be better? It’s why I sometimes don’t post here regularly. I’m having too much fun.
This will be short but a necessary post if we are to obtain closure. Day 14 took us down the interstates to Beckley, WV, where we spent our first night out. For variety’s sake, I reserved a room at “Tru by Hilton” instead of the Hampton Inn where we had lodged on Day 1. If you’re over the age of 50 and like things such as closets, drawers, and enough desk space to plop down all your electronics, I would steer you away from this brand. Similar to Marriott’s Aloft, it appeals mostly to 20- and 30-somethings who thought the dorm aesthetic in college “was really rad” or whatever I should have inserted here to show I’m not too far over the hill to know (or care).
Before we checked in, we dropped by the Tamarack Marketplace. We had visited in 2010 when I said, “hey, let’s explore West Virginia” and even though that vacation offered a very mixed bag indeed, I still managed to be surprised when we circumambulated the center (it’s more or less a circle): “That’s it?” We revisited in 2023 because we thought, “hey, we probably were just jaded by the end of a vacation. It couldn’t have been that boring.” It was, exemplified by my uttering the same comment I had the first time: “hey, I think we’ve seen this already. Have we really walked the whole thing?” If you would like to pay $23-25 for a semi-unique pottery coffee cup or hundreds/thousands of dollars for art, then this is your place. Even the snacks get priced as if they’re works of art.
We checked the dry-erase board of recommended restaurants–yeah, that’s how Tru does it–and found an acceptable Italian place close to our lodging.
I’d entertained the idea we would stop by the New River Gorge National Park a second time on Day 15, but the idea of getting home in the early evening didn’t appeal to us. When you’re headed home, most of the time you just want to get there. We arrived around 2 p.m., cracked beers while we unloaded: luggage-direct-to-laundry hamper; ice chests disgorging their contents to the beer fridge; and all the miscellaneous crap which creeps out of your luggage and hides in various corners of the car over the two weeks you’re on the road. We joined our good friends from around the block and went out to a better dinner than we had enjoyed in three days.
Returning from a vacation satisfies just like leaving. The familiar looks slightly less so, but the routines comfort in ways hotels cannot provide. Cats cling like two-year-olds demanding you never leave again. You revel in about ten times the square footage you’ve had for the previous two weeks. For me, I look forward to the next day because the day after returning is Re-entry Day, nearly as good as the vacation itself. One gets normalized again, processes multiple loads of laundry, considers midday naps, starts drinking as if it’s still vacation, catches up on all the videos cached during one’s absence, and pulls leftovers from the freezer. It’s like a stay-cation; it’s transition; it’s re-entry. Here we go again.
Rain reflecting where we’ve been. Thurmond, WV, near Beckley. July 2023.
I love rock and roll. (Put another dime in the jukebox, baby.) For years I’ve wanted to visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, and on Day 13 we did just that. I selected a hotel downtown specifically to be near Progressive Field where the Guardians play baseball. On this day our boys, the Phightin’ Phillies of Philadelphia, would open a three-game series against the Guardians and we planned to be there. Having a hotel which was more or less across the street from the park satisfied my first requirement, and offered an extra perk: one mile straight north from the hotel sits the Hall of Fame.
Obviously a popular photo spot–this was the fewest number of persons between me and the sign! Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland, OH. July 2023.
We both liked the Hall despite the thick crowd of people everywhere. I felt let down, though. I’ve been to the Baseball Hall of Fame several times, and to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, and both of these establishments have a more formal visual presentation which leads to a better understanding of the subject matter. I had a great time remembering the various decades of popular music (the RnR Hall uses the term “rock and roll” quite loosely), smiling as songs from big names (Rolling Stones) and small (Link Wray, early pioneers in the 50’s) blasted out of the speakers in front of each display case. The Hall does a great job explaining the antecedents of rock, and it dwells on early stars with entertaining and memorable videos which loop back to the beginning when completed. This last feature facilitates watching the video as soon as you see it; you’ll pick up the beginning sooner or later. Several displays, however, were mystifyingly not connected to other areas to which they chronologically belonged.
One of the special exhibits featured Peter Jackson’s The Beatles: Get Back in a multimedia curved display. No one stopped me from taking photos, so…
Of course signature instruments, clothes, and miscellaneous items jam the displays: an electric guitar used by Howlin’ Wolf at the beginning of his career, a 1952 Kay K-161; one of Gregg Allman’s organs with a Jaimoe kick drum and a guitar from brother Duane; a large window display with many items each for quite a few signature acts, such as The Faces.
If you go, be sure to go all the way to the top. Each floor in the Hall gets successively smaller–look at the shape in the photo above. At the top a small room featured short films on four acts. My memory should be better than this…one was Nine Inch Nails… Alas, the others have escaped my porous memory cells. Too bad because I do remember eagerly awaiting a film up there, and it wasn’t NIN. Ah! A second film featured Quicksilver Messenger Service. This leaves two including the one I wish I could remember…
We returned in mid-afternoon, snapping photos along the way and prepped for our early dinner and the true highlight of the day: the Phillies meeting the Guardians. A decent dinner later we walked the one block to the field, presented our ticket QR codes….and heard the dreaded “ANCK” all scanners seem to produce these days when they can’t electronically parse the information they’ve just reviewed. One more try, one more ANCK and the ticketmeister said,
“Oh, these tickets are for tomorrow.” I’m going to need quite a bit of time to expunge from my memory the shock and sadness I saw on my wife’s face. We walked back to the hotel, a lot more slowly on the return than on the approach. As a consolation, the hotel’s TV featured the regional sports network which carried the game that night. While the game started I crunched some numbers: if I canceled the hotel for Day 14 and added one more night to our stay in Cleveland it would increase our vacation lodging expenses by over $350, the cost for one night when the Guardians were playing at home. The other hotel room was on points; no money saved there. In addition, we would have a nine-hour drive on Day 15 to get home, not something we like doing on a vacation. Alternatively we could stay out on the road another night, incurring one day’s additional expense for the cat sitter plus the $350+ for the room, plus the extra food we’d need to eat. We didn’t take long to decide to resell the tickets on SeatGeek. Two weeks on the road is enough these days, perhaps a function of my flying weekly to locations all over America during the final five years of my working life. SeatGeek rubbed some vinegar into the wound when we realized less than 50% the original price of the tickets.
I still can’t figure out how I managed to buy tickets for the wrong day. On the MLB website for each team, the game calendar features large squares just like a printed calendar. Difficult to believe I clicked the one furthest right (representing Saturday) instead of the one next to it. Unless I had a brain fart….did I momentarily think we were going to the game on Saturday? No matter; done is done. This was to be our only Phillies game for 2023, though. [insert crying emojis].
We drank a bit extra that night–and the Phillies lost in a dispirited contest, although Bryce Harper played first base for the first time in his MLB career and made a fantastic catch into the photographer’s area.
Howlin’ Wolf, play a sad song for me. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland, OH. July 2023.
all the voices in my head 