Little Red Trailer

Little Red Trailer review

My friend Josh recently acquired a new website: Commute By Bike and asked me to review a new product for them: a little red, wooden bike utility trailer called the Little Red Trailer (natch).  It's made out of recycled wood and it's pretty darn good for hauling stuff around.  I finished it yesterday and it posted to their website this afternoon.  I think it came out okay.

She's quite handy with that cordless drill

Even if you're not into bike trailers (what?!), the review has some fun pictures of my kid in it; she helped me unbox and assemble it in the living room a few weeks ago.

A Few Borrowed Lines About Our Old Dog Shadow

[UPDATED June 2011 - See below]

There's this great poem, by a writer named Paul Mariani, that I memorized long, long ago, back in college, when I was competing on the Arizona State Forensics Squad.  At the time I used the poem, entitled Lines I Told Myself I Wouldn't Write, as a dramatic-interp piece, and I did pretty well with it.

It's about a guy who loves and then loses a good old dog.

"I promised myself I wouldn't go soft over one fleabag arthritic half gone in the head..."

I can only remember bits and pieces of it by heart now.

But lately, when I watch as my own old dog "limps down to the Sawmill" I think of that poem; it returns to me like scent memory, unexpectedly.  And it returns with increasing regularity. Even though Mariani's poem isn't about watching an old dog age a little more everyday, I nevertheless find myself grateful for his words, which so well-express what it means to love a dog you never really expected to love.

With that in mind, I wanted to write a few words about our dog, Shadow, in what I hope may be ever-so-slightly the style of Paul Mariani's poem. As an homage.  Both to him and his poem, and likewise, to our dog.

---

She came to us already named
like a Barbie
as a Shadow. An obvious, but fitting brand

for a blue-black dog with a cautious, shrinking demeanor
afraid of the wind
and unseen food-thieving curs

Two weeks
a fort-night
she was supposed to be with us.

Just while we're gone,
they said. Dogsit for us.
So we did. While they jetted off to London

Tally-ho.
In that time, like all good fortune
she found us

while we were not seeking her
by gently imploring us for wooden walks
paws crossed in front of her looking into us

for that spark
which she seemed to know she could kindle
curled on the foot of our bed without invitation

and to our surprise
knowing she was welcome there.
They returned but she stayed.

And years later we understood better
that to love a dog (despite the way she can stink-up a room)
or perhaps just this dog, was a harbinger,

a bell-weathered insight
of the affection we might likewise hold for a kid
and so we had one

taught well as we had been
by this Shadow
about how to cherish and find joy and care

for something other
and so much bigger
than me or even us

I know I said
I wouldn't go weepy when it came, and I haven't.
At least not that much

Not yet.  But it's hard to watch her get old
and be troubled by the jump
into and out of the back of the car

growing bony and lumpy
grey around the muzzle
as she slowly rises to her fourteenth year

Her restless creaking snore awakens us both now
and at times we wonder aloud in the night What if...
But her breathing always resumes

steady before she bestirs herself to pace the floor
dig an earnest new nest
and slip off into her dogish dreams again.

Her paws twitch
her lips curl
she is chasing squirrels


UPDATE - June 2011

I shared this blog entry with the guy who wrote the poem that inspired it, Paul Mariani. In an email to him at Boston College I wrote:

Hello Dr. Mariani,

We've never met. But long ago I read and loved a poem you wrote, Lines I Told Myself I Wouldn't Write. Some time ago I was compelled to use it as inspiration for a blog entry and, likewise, to write a kind of homage to it. I am not a poet. Nor much of a writer, in fact. I am an elementary school teacher, truth be told. But the poem has long been special to me. I have shared it, or parts of it, with many people over many years. And I am reminded of it regularly of late. My dog is not lost, but she is getting old. For all of those reasons, I wanted to share what I've written with you. I know that's probably a silly thing. But I wanted to say, "Thanks for your words. You are an excellent writer."

He was kind enough to respond the same day with the following:

Thanks, John, for forwarding your lovely poem about Shadow. I don't think one ever forgets a dog you've had this long. And though my son Mark has lost yet another dog, Bergen, a golden retriever--we still remember Sparky. In fact, about 15 years after I wrote Lines I wrote another poem for him, which I enclose here. The English in particular seem to love this one, for BBC has aired it several times, though I've never heard it. Take care, and may those Arizona fires finally quiet down. Best, Paul Mariani

Here's a link to the poem he forwarded to me. It's very good. Made my wife cry.

Days Like These

Around here, we pretty much get excited whenever it starts to snow.  As in always.  But, we get doubly excited when the first snow of the season begins to fall, as it did today.

While it didn't snow-and-stick much in our neighborhood, and we were disappointed to find the road up the mountain closed on our quest to find real snow, we nevertheless were able to locate a pretty decent stash of a couple-three inches of snow to play in out in the woods near Baderville.

As we've done every year for the past several years, we built a snowgirl, watched the dog(s) run and play, and shot a little home video.  Nothing especially notable, except that today was Rubi(the new puppy)'s first time in the snow.  We're pretty sure she enjoyed herself.

Otherwise, what follows is just another four-minute video of us doing what we do.

Life is good.

Hangover

A lot's been said, and believe it or not, even more's been done, about wildcat trail-building in Sedona, Arizona.

What's a wildcat trail?  A wildcat trail is a trail that somebody made (or sometimes found) without anyone's permission that goes somewhere (usually somewhere cool or essential) where previously there wasn't a trail.  Often they're pretty well-hidden, like any good secret.  And likewise, information about their location often spreads by word-of-mouth.  Nine times out of ten, they're right where you always thought, "Man, it would be so cool if there was a trail there."

Typically they're not especially well-built, sensible, or sustainable.  Often they simply follow the path-of-least resistance to their destination.  But because they receive far less traffic than sanctioned, system trails, this usually isn't that big a deal.

I'll tell you right now: I, for one, am a proponent of this sort of improvised, experimental, nonsanctioned, nonsystem social trail.  And I don't really care how you feel about them... unless, of course, you are a proponent of them as well.  As you should be.  Because pretty much every trail that you love, if it wasn't built by volunteers in the last 10 years probably began as a wildcat trail.  Or a road.

But, as I've already said, typically wildcat trails are not especially well-built or sustainable. However, some are.

Hangover, in Sedona, is one wildcat trail that's definitely in that latter category.  No mere social trail, Hangover is an unbelievably well-scouted, built, and maintained trail.  It is, in a nutshell, someone's life-work, his (or her) crowning achievement.  Hands-down, it's the most solidly constructed, bold, sustainable, challenging, frightening, thrilling, clever wildcat trail I've ever had the pleasure to ride in all my years on a bike.

I got to ride it today, for the very first time, with my friend Joe (aka Rockman).  He's pretty much famous for his knowledge of the Sedona trail-system and many of its denizens, too.  I maybe could have done this ride without him.  But I'm really glad I didn't.

We did an eight mile loop in just under two-and-a-half hours, with one short stop for snacks. It was a blast riding this incredible trail with Joe today.

An absolute, unmitigated, total blast.


Link-to BONUS: Bike Magazine's Morgan Meredith also rode this trail some time ago and took a series of really incredible pictures.

Oaken-Autumn

The annual Leaf-Peeping Madness compels swarms of people to inundate the Peaks looking for special golden stands of quaking aspen.	But aspen, like spotted owl, are a delicate breed, too-sensitive to climactic whims, the ebb and flow of time, and change.
Gambel oak, though perhaps lacking in coloration and stature the majesty and grandeur of quaking aspen, are nevertheless a hardier lot, ready throughout the millennia to withstand drought, fire, harsh climatic change, and rocky, alkaline ground.  For all this, and its many beneficial uses, as well as for its uncommon beauty, the oak merits respect and attention.	It's altogether too easy to overlook the oak.  And yet, the woods all around us, not just those at elevation, are filled with impressive color these days.  This is the height of oaken-Autumn.  This is the week of the year when the oaks turn together.

The Resurrection of Rock Lobster #06

The Rock Lobster is rebuilt (You may recall: it broke).  And it is good!

thirteen

Fridays at school the kids go home early, right after lunch.  And most weeks, after the kids leave, we're given a few solid hours to collaborate with our coworkers and make plans and grade papers.  It's great.  Except for the grading.  I'm not a big fan of grading papers...

While I work on planning and grading I usually fire up Songbird and use it to listen to the new slate of songs posted on my very favorite music website, Cover Lay Down.

Songbird is a multi-platform web-browser built on the same code as Firefox.  But, what's cool and different about Songbird is how it lists all the songs embedded on any given website in a neat little file-index window below the browser window.  All ya gotta do is press the play button to listen to all the music on the site.  I think Songbird's a pretty neat deal.

The blog Cover Lay Down, as the name implies, features mostly cover-songs.  In their own words:

"At Cover Lay Down, we believe that familiarity breeds contentment — that is, that coversongs create an especially powerful comfort zone for fans to discover new artists and composers. As such, all songs included herein are ultimately shared for the purpose of introducing you to new and previously-unappreciated musicians, that you might follow the threads to those artists’ original works, and in doing so, become part of the base of support which allows musicianship to continue to be a fruitful way to make a living, and allows the creation of new music itself to be subsidized."

I think that's a great policy.  And, thanks to Cover Lay Down, I have encountered a bunch of great new folksy artists and composers.  Plus, I'm fascinated by cover songs... the new ways in which a familiar song can be recreated and take on the unique nuances of an artist's voice and musicianship while still maintaining much of its original melodic and lyrical structure.

Some time ago Cover Lay Down featured a cover of one of my favorite songs, Thirteen, by the '70s band Big Star (whose co-founder Alex Chilton died this past March, by the way).  I'm sure you know it.  It's a great song that's probably been covered a gagillion times.  But, this particular cover of Thirteen was done by two artists I was only marginally familiar with: Beth Orton and Sam Amidon.  They do it as a lovely, kinda jangly, down-tempo acoustic duet.  It's nice.  And it got me to thinking about other covers of the same song that I've enjoyed over the years.  So I browsed on over to The Hype Machine and searched around.

BTW: Thanks to this blog, Cover Lay Down, and a few others for having a very similar opinion of this song to my own, and for posting many of these covers online, saving me the trouble (and perhaps the liability, too).

• Wilco does a pretty good rather countrified, fiddle-and-slide version. [wilcoworld.net]
• Elliot Smith's version is good, too. [sweetadeline.net]
• As is Kathryn Williams. [kathrynwilliams.net]
• Mary Lou Lord's take is tender and personal. [myspace.com/maryloulord]
• Evan Dando's live version is great. [evandando.co.uk]
• This one, by a band called Woodpigeon was new to me, and a pleasant surprise. [woodpigeon-songbook.com]
• And, of course, I think this remixed version of Big Star's original is neat, too. [bigstarband.com]
• Metafilter user chococat recorded this rendition in his(?) basement upon the death of Alex Chilton. [fromabasement.com]

Finally, this live version, by one of my favorite bands of all time, Travis, is pretty darn great, too!



Last of all, as a bonus, here's Travis again, this time doing a different and really surprisingly great live cover... of Britney Spears' Baby One More Time.