Saturday, January 10, 2009

A Mofo of a Sycamore.

During an adventure to the Montague Book Mill with Llama today, we spotted this tree off Rt 47 just past Sunderland center. According to the plaque placed in front of this tree, it was alive and growing when the Constitution was being signed in 1787. It is thought to be the largest Sycamore tree east of the Mississippi River. The trunk circumference has been measured at 25' and the height is roughly 110'. Here are some other noted Sycamores around New England.

Below, the Sunderland Sycamore looking up and Jim and Llama below that looking at.
There's a new TURN IT UP! store at the book mill. Wylie Smith who was the heart and soul of For The Record in Amherst for 30 years is the proprietor. The store is really good lookin' and the stock is inscrutable as one would expect from Mr. Smith. I forgot to take a picture of him in the store so instead I will show you what I bought.
I used to own a ton of pianist Bill Evans music back before I lost my record collection in a fire of sorts. I never read up on him and only know a bit about his history. I listen to a lot of jazz ignorantly, unlike rock of which I'm a minor scholar. I know he had a heroin habit and was a huge influence on the contemporary pianist Brad Mehldau. I could always rely on him to improve my mood, or at least lay down a score for it with the drop of a needle. Even the sadder stuff. Especially the sadder stuff. Aside from that, he has one of my favorite album covers of all time, Undercurrents, which is of a woman floating in the water at Weeki Wachee Spring, Florida. The image by fashion photographer Toni Frissell was published in Harper's Bazaar in December 1947. Click it for a nice high res version. I sourced the photo from the webiste Shorpy, who's slogan is "Always Something Interesting." Shorpy is an amazing archive of historical photos. So, of course, is the Library of Congress Digital Collection.

9 comments:

Mo said...

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I read this bit - "* 11:25 p.m. - Police determined people throwing food on cars at a College Street parking lot were determined to be members of a college lacrosse team goofing off." -

as in, they were determined to be members of a college lacrosse team like, trying really hard to be members of that team.

caravan70 said...

Terrific to see that "For the Record" enjoys a new existence of a sort, even if different. I frequented the place back in the 80s and there was almost always good stuff to be found there. Now that I'm back in the area, I've been planning a Book Mill sojourn anyway, but I'll be pushing it up thanks to this post, I think....

Interesting to read about your adventures at WMUA. I was at WAMH in the 80s and had my share of disagreements with program staff, primarily over the 1/3 new music requirement. My gripes were similar to those of your friend Sam, but focused a little differently - you could play what you wanted, but you had to interrupt the flow and theme of your show by throwing in whatever crap graced the "new music" shelf at a given time. It wasn't acceptable to substitute something arguably in the same line or formative within a particular musical universe - no Little Willie John instead of LL Cool J, say, and you certainly couldn't argue as I tried to do that Area or Magma were much more subversive politically than any of the "indie" tripe they insisted on foisting upon the audience. But then, I'm sure their continued flow of promos depended on that "new music" showing up on the playlists, so I can't fault them as much now as I did then for what I considered to be a disservice to listeners searching for truly "new" sounds.

Thanks again for the great post!

Anonymous said...

do you know about weirdo records? seems like stuff you might like maybe?

http://weirdorecords.com/cpCommerce/

Jim Neill said...

Wow, thanks for the Weirdo link! Haven't seen a Chrome album in a long time.

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