April Showers and Coastal Powers

Spring break came late this year - April 1-5th. Tina and I were able to take a few days off of work and head to the coast with the boys for qa bit of frolicking in the fog. Yachats is a place we love, just a perfect little quiet tourist town, not totally overrun in the early spring months. We rented a place overlooking the ocean waves, which were pummeling and stormy most of the time, and cooked food, watched tv, strummed guitars while the kids mostly played games or languished like droopy, life-like figures in a Salvador Dali painting. We were able to visitng with Dave and Samantha, second time in less than a year. We brought over some ice cream bars after dinner one night and then they came over a few days later to check out of place, Dave and I also jammed on some acoustic guitars at his place, was a nice visit. Tina made the most of our outdoors location, exploring all areas of the beach and rocks and trails around town. We hiked south of town on a section of the OCT Oregon Coast Trail (did you know there was an Oregon coast trail that runs from Astoria to Brookings?) to a place called Amanda's statue where there was a statue of a blind Coos woman named Amanda, who in the 1860s was taken away from her husband in Coos Bay and marched back to Yachats overland to an internment camp that was north of town, where she later died. Depressing and awful is our history of cruelty and imposition. The trail was beautiful and at times overlooked the blue ocean south of town. We've tried most of the eateries in Yachats by now but by far our collective favorite is Luna Sea fish & chips, where the catch is so fresh it slaps you in the face. Henry lost his "Don't Trip" hat and we looked all over town for it, coming back to Luna Sea twice before it was found in the bar. Yay! I also wrote in my journal and sent off a letter to a friend. I love a relaxing 1/2 week off - 1/2 week vacation.

Ouch my ears are ringing wait this orange is really good

February has been good so far. I got to go on a work trip to perform a few citrus tasting events up on the Olympic Penninsula. My friend Elissa and I drove up in the work car with a box full of promo stuff and set up a pop-stand at a couple different natural foods stores, the Food Co op in Port Townsend and COuntry Aire natural foods in Port Angeles. Rubber gloves, cut fruit, food cards and strange short conversations with a few hundred people. A highlight was going out to dinner at Alderwood Bistro in Sequim with our posse of produce account managers - incredible food, good conversation and good bonding with our colleagues in produce. Back in Vancouver, we've been working in the yard, enjoying the spastic changes in the weather and also using the inflatable hot tub most days. Therapy! We've been going to our friends bands shows around town - last week was Pink Tornado, Mountain Meadows Massacre and Desert Shame at No Fun bar:

Work continues on the Latinum project. Tina finished the vocals recently and I am now waiting for the band to review the current mixes so I can finalize the project and send it off to be mastered. I am liking doing audio work for a project other than my own recordings. In my personal life, I tend to be a little rushed and slap-dash in my recording process since I'm usually trying to write a song at the same time as recording. With a band where I sit in the engineer's chair, I am realizing how much work it is to parse the small details of someone else's performance. Overall it's sounding really good when I listen to mixes in the car - sounds nice and thick with a reasonable amount of low-end and good clarity. I can't wait for the project to be done so that people can listen to it. My good friend Sleeve linked me to my new favorite band - RMFC Rock Music Fan Club from Australia:

John Peel Music List / 1973 Thin Lizzy

I found this amazing list of most knwon Peel Sessions artist from the David Peel BBC long-running show - it's overwhelming to even think of where to start but I'm starting with Thin Lizzy:

Octoberdome

October has nearly come and gone. We've had a busy month - transitioning out of the summer garden-era, anticipating the rainy Fall-time. Our garden is still bumpin' with tons of tomatoes , peppers and pumpkins and flowers but it is slowly dying back and then we'll cover the beds with leaves and plant some over-winter crops. We've also added some new chicks to the henhouse. We were down to just Lonely Linda, our ever-laying leghorn. Unbeknownst to her , we aquired a variety of new chicks about a month ago that we had been nurturing in the garage, under the heat lamp. During a nice patch of weather last week, Tina brought them out to the chicken run and set up the lamp for those chilly nights. Of course the new chickies are cute as heck, bouncing and trying out their wings and pecking at everything. Linda was non-plussed at first but is slowly warming up to the new comers. The circle of chicken life! Ugh, I'm getting over covid - basically over it but still experiencing fatigue. On top of that my gout toe has returned - why, oh great Gout Toe, do you punish me? I guess everyone gets handed some cards against humanity; mine aren't that funny to me but I know somewhere, someone else is laughing - so be it. A few pics - Tina performing with Latinum last week at No Fun in Portland; Lovely Linda, the broody, fretful leader of the coop; the new chicks.

Mom 7/2/1939 -7/3/2023

Mom passed in the early hours of July 3d. Nancy Victoria Cole-Schultz was known as Vicky to her friends and mom by us kids. Where to start with a eulogy for one's mother. Mom was a lover of books, playing cards, raising animals, the Olympics on TV, road trips and the natural beauty of the western USA. What I remember most were her stories. On long drives to Bend or California, mom often told stories from her childhood in Grand Junction, Colorado and her teen years in La Jolla, California, all about her family, her aunt Virginia, the camping trips she and dad used to take with my brothers when they were young and many more. She was the kid who didn't want to grow up, hiking the cliffs and beaches of southern California and reading books while her peers were listening to Elvis, whom she despised, and having teenage fun at social events, which she wanted no part of. She loved the original Disney movies, classical music, adventure books and roller skating. One of the coolest facts about mom was that she was in the early wave of roller derby in the 50s and she was a great skater all through her life. When I was 10 we used to go roller skating on off-nights at the Bend roller rink, skating to Devo, Blondie, the Rolling Stones and Pat Benatar and after we would go for a slice of pie at a truck stop near our trailer park. In the 50s, mom was part of the group of youths that held court at my father, Ed Cole's garage, outside of Escondido. Some evenings she would gather with characters like Big Charlie and Bob Lambert and listen to my dad tell war stories about WWII, talk about books, life during the depression and who-knows-what-else, but it sounded like a Steinbeckian scene with my dad cast as Doc from Cannery Row. As the story goes, she brought dad over to her parents house for dinner and they all had a wonderful time. After he had left, mom's parents stated, "Nancy, that was the most interesting man we've ever met." and mom said "THAT is the man I intend to marry." Her parents didn't take it well and sent her off to Florida for a month. Needless to say, that tactic backfired and mom did marry dad upon returning. Yes there was an age difference but I can't help but think that it was a mutual affair, such is the power of the story. Ed Cole and Nancy Denslow married in 1959 and started having kids soon after, my brothers Darrow, Monty and Mike born in quick succession followed by my sister Neva in 1965 and myself in 1970. In the early years of their marriage they lived in La Jolla in a house inherited from Mom's family; later we moved to Ramona which was my first home before we all moved to north to Smith River in 1975, where my dad died soon after. I remember her crying a lot that year. With 5 kids in tow, we now moved to Gasquet where we re-settled for a few years before uprooting again and going to Bend, where we could be near our friends the Jacksons and also Mt Bachelor, as by this time the whole family was into skiing. We met the McKinnon family around this time, as Mike had returned to Gasquet and was dating Leona McKinnon. Mom became fast friends with Moni and Richard McKinnon and invited the whole clan, 11 in total, to come up and stay over at our place for skiing during Christmas 1979. We became best friend families all through the 80s and we spent a ton of time at their wonderful, chaotic house on Gainard street in Crescent City. As my older siblings graduated and moved out, it was mom and me for a few years, roller skating and seeing movies and having great conversations while she also embarked on dating, often leaving me over at the Jacksons or McKinnons. Eventually she married Gordon "Shorty" Schultz in 1984, another fine roller skater, and we were back in Gasquet and my younger brother Walter was born around this time. What happened after that is more of a blur, since I was on my own path and not thinking too much about mom but she always had her dogs that she loved, most of all a black lab called Blackstar that she put a lot of effort into training. Living in Philomath, Sweet Home, Crescent City and eventually Lebanon, mom spent her final 2 decades with Ron Schrick, the man who took care of her til the end. I don't think mom thought about things like legacy, but what I took away from her was the importance of visiting people, always taking around her elderly friends for errands and staying for hours for tea and conversation. She had so many friends like this - "Bobbie", "Bruce and Dorothy", "Gus and Alice", and several others. I would be bored, playing with my R2D2 figure while they chatted away about events and people long past and sometimes playing cards but it was a nice vibe. Many times she would dispatch me out of the van to go hold the door open for some old lady or person in a wheelchair. Kindness mattered to mom and I think that was her greatest gift to the world - she was kind and she really appreciated people. Rest in peace, mom, it's been a long road and you will be missed.

Drone Zombies / Dormant AI Flowers

I realize I've been spending too much time on the internet for about, oh, 20 years now. Remember chat rooms, early html web pages, Alta Vista? Yeah, me too. Has any of this internetting helped me grow or mature into a better person in any way? I'm not sure that it has. I have a friend named Matt that I've never met in person. He sends me songs by Magnetic Fields and I've become a fan: Drone Zombies - what a scary concept. Can you imagine if they did this to people? or cats? Have you ever googled "do I have depression?" The results are never good. I'm hoping someone can fix the AI in my head. I've been living through some trials with my family, my mother in hospice, a few siblings on the edge, imminent to fall into the abyss, and my usually February blues, despite taking my megadoses of vitamin D/ The usual things that bring me joy aren't really working right now, so I'm focusing on staying away from bad substances, news feeds and negative creeps. Also my work has been perilous, accounts that used to be stable and easy to manage have been steered into difficult terrain by forces above my control. Ugh. I started a long blog post about the feeling of realizing I'm not as smart as I ever used to think I was - should be obvious to anyone who isn't a narcissist but I'm not exempt from that apparently. I'm hoping this winter will pass and that with the spring the flowers in my mind will bloom again but for now, bury me deep like a bulb and let me be dormant for awhile.

Season of Darkness LIstening

When it starts to get dark in the middle of the day, my mind starts to wander. Focusing on tasks at hand become more difficult with the absense of daylight. Caffeine and alcohol consumption goes up slitghtly and those delicious fatty foods go down the hatch. Yum! Today, I'm drinking water, pretty sure I'm done with coffee. I have a few favorite dark-season albums: Robyn Hitchcock / I often Dream of Trains lp. The best thing RH ever did, and that's saying something. Every song drips with icicles, snowy silence, echoes and ghosts. Bob Dylan / John Wesley Harding lp. I'm not that knowledgeable about Bob Dylan but I like this record: I love to listen to Hellhammer in the dark with a glass of wine that looks like blood, brooding under the harsh winter moonlight. Non-homoginized punk metal that tastes of blood and defiance: Rowland S Howard, only at full-blast, with the lights low. The realest of the real, or did he just channel the sonic saber of irony? Contradictory noise and pop and amazing songs: Ok happy darkness.