Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1605
Methodist branding, more Annie remembrances, Jeff's Husker Du remaster, James Gunn's V for Vandetta remake, Edmund Fitzgerald, Patti Smith, Wilmington Coup, mulch and wheelbarrows
Good morning good morning. Really gotta fix the numbering on these issues, but not this morning. Not feeling up to it. Just back from taking Jane to school she was lovely. We took a break from our Ford Tetris rip-off game and she did some drawing. She asked me what I wanted her to draw. I said a kitty. Man that is a cute kitty.
Stopped at the grocery store after. Blue Superman from the school drop-off line was there. There was a brief moment where the driver and I were both coming back to our cars at the same time. I think there was a moment where she glanced up at me and I could have said hi. I chickened out and looked away. Not my most social self this morning.
Drove past the Methodist church and it had a new very professional, well-designed billboard out front. It said “Refreshingly honest. Refreshingly hopeful.” Could use some of this. Looks like a national branding campaign for the Methodists, but, like. I was literally just sent some photos from my childhood Methodist church and they don’t have a new billboard in a hipster font. Or what goes for one these days Chank and Emigré you are missed. Neither does the one in Southern Village. Mysterious.
Wonder what’s up with the Methodists. They had that big schism a few years back, the conservatives left the lefties I think the lefties got to keep the name? I wonder if the dust has settled on all that. I wonder if the lefty Methodists are super lefty now maybe I could get into that whole thing if they, you know, welcomed immigrants and fed the poor like the bible says. Look out world, sure, Rick spent his childhood playing Monopoly in the back of his church and his teen years hooking up with girls in the pipe organ pipe room, but he’s ready to come back into the Methodist fold.
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We are listening to Husker Du’s new box set on Numero Group 1985: The Miracle Year. It is some old (bootleg, I think?) live recordings lovingly remastered by the always excellent, talented Jeff Lipton. He’s the real hero of this whole affair. It’s the first time I’ve heard the famous Husker Du live sound with any bass in it and let me tell you it is revelatory. Jeff is great. He mastered both Rockets records, friend of Annie’s, Annie did his website. He wrote some kind words to me yesterday, I got him in touch with Bill. Live is a circle, hakuna matata, etc. etc. Bill’s the only person I know who got to see Husker Du live (oh man all my older friends are gonna write to me now and make me so jealous). I didn’t see any of them till Bob on the Black Sheets of Rain tour and Grant with Nova Mob at TTs in 92. Setlist tells me he played a few Husker songs that night. No recollection.
Thank you for all your kind words about Annie it really has been an overwhelming show of support and grief. Lotta people really cared about Annie. Annie was one of those people who was absolutely terrible, okay not the worst, but we’ll give her a D, on staying in touch with far-away friends. We talked about it a lot. Because I am pretty good at it and I made a point to always stay in touch and nag her about it. “It just makes me feel like I’m bothering people, and I rather converse in person,” she said and I think a lot of people are that way. But of course we all know by now, at this age, that how in touch you are at this moment has nothing to do with how much we care about someone and the grief we feel when they pass.
I am finding that I can handle death a lot better when I am not completely surprised by it. My grief at Annie’s passing is very deep and will be with me forever, but I am not dysfunctional or in complete shock like I was for Jill or Andy or Mike, or even people I was far less close with like Dylan or Bill W or, gawd, the other Annie. All those were out of the blue for me, and, man, that really fucks me up. With people like Annie, or my parents, I pretty much slide into a different, slower grief right away.
But I feel for the people who didn’t even know she was sick. So this was all very out of the blue for them.
I dealt with my grief yesterday in the way I know best, a way Annie would approve of, with projects and chores. We got 30 yards of mulch (sorry Emily) delivered across both houses and we spent most of the day spreading it. First we took care of the old wildflower patch at Chore House, which had turned Redwood with some insane tree-like pollinators. I miss the bed of flowers, and I plan to add some beds to the patch, but in the meantime I needed it to be something more than exposed landscape fabric. Then while Emma trimmed some bushes for the tenants I laid down landscape fabric in the garden in an area I’ve never managed to fully kill an old bush/tree that needs go and I can’t use weed killer on it because it’s in my garden. Still need to spread mulch there.
Then we went to our house and got a groove going where I shoveled mulch and left it in piles around the mulch beds and Emma spread it, mostly by acting like a dog and flinging it between her legs it was very cute. I shoveled and moved and dumped sixty loads of mulch I am very sore. There were thirteen shovel fulls of mulch per load, for a total of 780 shovel dumps. It’s basically like cross fit, you use every muscle. Some are used to the labor, some aren’t. 400% of my workout goal on my rings, yo. SORE.
Back when we purchaed Chore House I stole our wheelbarrow. And Emma’s been wanting a new one. And a year or two ago we were on our nightly walk and our neighbor had one of those two-wheeled wheelbarrows, so Emma wanted one of those. So on the way home from dropping Jane off at Tae Kwon Do camp yesterday, before I told you all about Annie, I bought a two-wheeled wheelbarrow for Emma. And I got to use it while dumping mulch yesterday.
Oh my god those things are so much better. You can drive them with one hand! When you dump your load (huh huh nice), it goes right where you want it. I love it. I am ruined for the crappy one-wheeled one I have at Chore House now. It was $100 more for the two-wheeled one, which is pretty steep, but also it was assembled. And when I bought the one-wheeled one I had to assemble it and I don’t know why but it was one of the most miserable assembly experiences I have had. So I would pay $100 more just for assembly. Okay, well, I wouldn’t, but that almost makes the whole thing seem reasonable.
Two-wheeled wheelbarrows. Rick approved™.
In all our grief and what with the holiday, we missed commenting on a few exciting anniversaries that happened on November 10:
The Edmund Fitzgerald sunk 50 years ago on Tuesday. It was the last major ship to sink in the Great Lakes thanks to NOAA and the NWS Modernization and Associated Restructuring, which has saved thousands of lives, imagine them talking about that sort of thing on a Silicon Valley podcast instead of crypto or some shit while project 2025 tries to destroy public weather services cuz all the think of is the potential, I don’t know, mobile ad revenue or something?
When Nick visited last weekend he brought me a gift: A hat that says “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot absolutely wrecks me.” It goes without saying that I wore it with pride on Tuesday. And Yesterday. And I will wear it today. It is my new winter baseball cap now that we have moved out of weather where one needs a mesh baseball cap.
It was also the 50th anniversary of Patti Smith’s Horses on Tuesday man, November 11, 1975 was a hell of a day my little three-year-old self didn’t even notice. What an amazing album. I have never seen Patti Smith, to my eternal shame, and it will be too late soon. I was supposed to go see her at this gala benefit thing about ten years ago. My friend was putting it on for a charity she worked at and got me a seat. But I had a dumb work thing. And I chose the work thing instead. And later she told me my seat was right next to Emma Watson. Man. I chose poorly. That decision still haunts me.
November 10 was also the anniversary of the Wilmington Coup of 1898, where the legally elected black government of Wilmington were brutally murdered by white supremacists, more than 50 deaths in all. As an historian put it, “Things functioned the way they were meant to function as a result of Emancipation.” And we can’t have that, can we? Too woke. Too DEI. Too reverse-racist or whatever the fuck they call it these days.
I was just thinking about HBO’s Watchmen and how it put the Tulsa massacre on the modern political radar. Someone needs to do that for Wilmington. Horrific.
Speaking of Watchmen:
Semi-relatedly, it seems James Gunn is making a V For Vendetta TV show remake. I am… I dunno, man. Could it be as good as Watchmen? That was so out of the blue. I wonder if James Gunnis currently on the same vision quest as Damon Lindelof (one F) or Zack Snyder or the Wachowskis, trying to convince Alan Moore to like him. Man I would be pissed if I were one of them but this time Alan decides that James is all right.
The ultimate Hollywood nerd director final boss: Getting Alan Moore to like you.
Jane’s been lovely these last few days. The streak board is still working with her teeth and my god she has been so nice to me about my dead friend. She remembers Annie, vaguely. But she is just being so kind to me. Grief is a lot more tolerable when there’s a super-cute cuddly daughter around to give you hugs. I remember when Andy died and we were in the thick of baby parenting and I was so sad and crying and she was just a baby and did not care one whit and kept screaming at me. This is a much, much better time. For that, I am truly grateful.
Nick’s written one of his ambient pieces for Annie, so we are gonna leave that for you for the music today. The Cartographer was a real person. He lived in Detroit. I only met him once. Nice guy. Wonder what became of him.
Until tomorrow, friends.
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Thanks for reading.
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Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.