Forever considering new stones to flip in jazz, I found myself pursuing the rather morbid pathway of performers who’d recently died of COVID-19. Last week, cleared out the day for Lee Konitz, the bop saxophonist, whose playing I’ve long been familiar with and always liked, but didn’t love and tried to consider his remarkable oeuvre, anew. Today the New York times was profiling the passing of Henry Grimes, and the bassist and Giuseppi Logan, another alto player. I hadn’t been familiar with either of their work and found them both there on Spotify, playing along with the luminaries I’ve long adored.
As I made my way through “The American Pageant” textbook which I’d procured to teach through to the girls during this indefinite quarantine, I’ve taken to writing the names down and throwing into my “cart” on Amazon. If I’m fortunate enough to go to Israel, Russia, loyal readers know I do what I can to jam my head full of history and literature before I go. Given this prolonged stay in my native land, it’s long occurred to me that I ought to make the time to double-down on a determined reconsideration of the United States of America.
There are thirty or forty titles in there, so I’ll have to chip away at this. Ordering supplies, board games, puzzles I’ll always put at least a few book titles in and today my copies of: “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” by Harriet Beecher Stowe, “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave” by Mssr. Douglas, and “Twelve Years as a Slave” by Solomon Northrup, all arrived. Considering the first few pates, of the Northrup book, for example it is impossible to consider the all-consuming horror of enslavement, after having lived part of one’s life as a free person. I’ve a few other reading commitments in front of me, but I look forward to digging in.
My wife consistently seems to ask me if I’d like to take a walk the moment I’m out the door to commence with a bike ride. Who do you love more, me or yourself? Today I capitulated. “You dear, of course.” And we walked down on to the trail and ended up having a remarkable walk. Defined this way, as it was the first time I decided to really use this “Seek” app I’d downloaded on my brother’s recommendation which allows you to take a photo of a plant or animal and have it definitively identified. It seems to do best with small, otherwise overlooked weeds of the ground. Trees don’t have their leaves yet and the app is all but useless, for example with mere bark.
Once you snap the first one and have it identified, you get a ‘badge’ and an announcement with an exclamation point telling you, you’ve found a new species, it becomes, as designed, somewhat addictive. How many more then, can I find? For a first day’s effort I did pretty well: Here are the species that are and always have been right around me, though I never knew how to name them: Winged Euonymus, Bloodroot, Red Trillium, Field Horsetail, Multiflora Rose, Japanese Barberry, Rue Anemone, Marginal Wood Fern, Garlic Mustard, Narrow Leaved Bittercress, Eastern Skunk Cabbage, American Tree Moss, Dwarf Cinquefoil, Eastern Redcedar, Common Cinquefoil, White Avens, Wild Daffodil, Red Deadnettle, Broad-leaved Dock, Morrow’s Honeysuckle, Orange, Day-lily, Small White Leek, Japanese Spiraea, Japanese Spindle Tree, Japanese Pachysandra, Garden Tulip, Garden Pansy, Formosa Lily, Silver Ragwort.
Tuesday 4/21/20
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