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.
When I was at
WMUA back in the 80's, a man named Sam
Gilford had a show called "Bird Lives" which was all Charlie Parker music. Four hours of it weekly. Sam was unstable and prone to outbursts at station meetings, but as with Ted
Kaczynski, arguably, removed from his behavior, he was usually speaking the truth. Sam never blew anyone up but he bombed us with his mission. He tried to convince
DJs to break out of their genre
obsessions and play music of all kinds all the time. Those were turbulent times at
WMUA.
BMCP, the Black Mass Communications Project, was a student group that wielded a lot of power. They had a lot of airtime and by sheer will usually operated outside of the stations official governance. This was in the days when rap was just beginning. Sam's biggest gripe was with
BMCP. He accused them of ignorance of their own black musical history. He called jazz music "Black Classical."
Sam's vision for the station was musically
Utopian but practically untenable. It was a student run radio station; still is, with a solid chunk of non-students on the air; people from the community who did programs that students weren't capable of producing. The tradition continues and it's a source of plenty of creative tension at the station. This is for the best, as difficult as it may be for the student officers. I was the Program Director of
WMUA for 3 years and it was no picnic. It was some damn good radio though.
Sam
Gilford wanted to stop playing just Charlie Parker and branch out, but the PD at the time, not me, or maybe it was, insisted that he continue to at least play jazz. He made these crazy tapes of music from around the world with illegible scribblings for track lists and distributed them to station members as an example of his vision. This was well before King Sunny Ade or even Paul Simon's Graceland broke down global boundaries in westerner's musical tastes. Sam was ahead of his time. Finally the PD relented and Sam's show became "The Time Is Now." It was so eclectic as to be
unlistenable in most people's opinions. I'm
embarrassed for us all in hindsight.
I wish I could remember exactly why, but Sam was finally kicked off the air and banned from the airwaves. But not before he locked himself in the studio and had to be taken away by police. Sam was the son of actor Jack
Gilford. In
Jack's Wikipedia listing, his son Sam is listed as an "artist and archivist." Oh my gosh. I've been talking about him like he's dead. I just discovered
this page about Sam. Seems he's taken up sculpture and painting. These paintings look a like those old cassettes he would make. His story is fascinating. I am suddenly excited to have located him and may try to make contact. I'll let you know what happens. Above is one of Sam's paintings,
Cafe Big Band, 2003.
My friend David from Confluent Forms and I were IMing last week about how to use Twitter for business, specifically promoting music. He linked me to this post from his CF blog about the subject. I highly recommend reading it if you're in a business or any venture that wants to better understand what this tweeting is all about and take advantage of the latest unprecedented developments in online communication.
Okay, that said, what jumped out at me in his article was his descriptions of his initial reactions to some previous innovations. David has a skeptical mind which serves him well. He doesn't succumb to the hype on a YouTube, Facebook, etc. but watches them develop and tinkers with them. His initial feeling about blogs: "why should I care what some nutjob thinks about whether his cat has dreams, how to garden in your basement, or any slightly less ridiculous topics."
This seemed almost directed at me specifically! I suddenly felt like my blog was frivolous and a waste of time, especially compared to David's more purposeful and goal oriented work with the internet via Confluent Forms. He's innovating and I'm flagellating! David has a trait that doesn't come naturally to me. Talking to him, I can sense that his thoughts actually connect to each other and lead to a logical discovery or a useful conclusion. My thoughts (and words) are like a bullet ricocheting around a room. Peeyowww! ZiiiiDIP! Bing! Eventually they lodge in something but it's pretty random.
Obviously the difference is I do mine for fun, and his company is a business. But I always get the nagging suspicion that I'm wasting my potential by not jumping into his world. That I should be learning how to use the internet to generate income while also doing something creative instead of goofing around. I should be monetizing! Let's go monetize!
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