Yesterday I exposed a pretty nice compost pile in our back yard and hacked away at three giant fountain grass clumps, untended for probably years. I am no stranger to untended fountain grass but in middle age I do not hesitate to cut it down to the ground. My better half would prefer it 90% eradicated. This is how I feel about any kind of ivy, only100%. Shooting it with RoundUp is better than having an XBox.
I also located the lawn and leaf recycling center on North Chouteau Drive. It was kind of a long trip because of the KC Marathon, a traffic jam on 71, and my alternate route all the way down Prospect to Independence Avenue to Chestnutt Trafficway. But I had a nice sense of adventure getting the recycling center dialed in and still appreciate how much of the city I do not know. When I drive some of those blocks full of boarded up houses I try to envision how this will change for the better because someday it will. On Woodland I saw an old theatre with a beat old sheet metal marquee and wondered what bands and movies played there.
Lawn shears, snow shovel, foaming hornet spray for an underground nest--all while flea bombs off-gassed at home--this way my errand-y day. And of course what errand-y Saturday would be complete without a trip to the carwash? Always psychedelic.
Stuck waiting for a train near Knuckleheads in the East Bottoms, I listened to Mose Allison's
Back Country Suite for about the 20th time and read the liner notes, soaking it in after re-discovering it in my cd re-organization and cull. (The Westport library now has our doubles of Sugar, Beach Boys, Flaming Lips, and Son Volt records.) Witty, intelligent, and narrative with country blues soul, perfect for being stuck by the tracks for half an hour with 9 bags of black walnut yard debris and a gnawing appetite for fried food on a Saturday afternoon.
For the first time in a long time I have my trombone out on a stand in a music room and I have been playing it for 15 minutes a day trying to get some kind of embouchure back. The sound comes back, and it is relaxing, like ohming or chanting, just to play long tones. But attacks are all spitty and florfy after only 5 or ten minutes. I can't believe I played a whole 25 minute set with Drop A Grand. I don't remember the pain, and don't usually associate low brass with punk rock adrenaline. Looping back to trombone as a classically trained player who plays self-taught rock and roll has always been really weird. I immediately assume a strict concert posture even with Steve doing high kicks near my face. Almost every time I pick up the horn I think of my old KC trombone teacher, Stephanie Bryant, who died this year.
