Another hole in the backyard. R.I.P. representative pigeon feathers.

PS I Love You, Figure It Out—A Collection of EPs and Singles by PS I Love You

I met up with this as a free full-album stream on the PS I Love You Facebook page (For Facebook, shouldn’t they be PS I “Like” You?). Perhaps it’s still there. If not, a vinyl version is due imminently. The comp contains rarities and early versions of not-so-rarities. It’s a remarkably consistent listen for a seeming scattered set of previously released things. (One of the jauntier tunes is actually called “Scattered.”) Even the rhythms and the harmony  attitudes line up pretty neatly, and the occasional lumbering slow tunes like “Actually (I Am a Monster)” don’t really impede the momentum. By the end, with raucous work-outs such as “Where’s the Party?,” the band has shown a range and flair grander than on any single one of their other recordings.

Nobody’s Perfect—Two Men, One Call, and a Game for Baseball History (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2011)

This was released at the beginning of this baseball season, but is a finer read for the end of it, since The Detroit Tigers, who figure strongly in the narrative, have had such an extraordinary year, over a dozen games ahead of their nearest division rival with just a smattering of games to go.

This is a 242-page examination of a split-second call in which pitcher Armando Galarraga was denied the honor of pitching a perfect game because first-base umpire Jim Joyce declared runner Jason Donald to be safe after a hit in the ninth inning with one out left to go.

A description of the event and its immediate aftermath—Joyce releasing that he’d called it wrong—is all dealt with in the book’s first six pages. Then we get the interesting stuff of what was going through the pitcher’s and umpire’s minds at the time. The book celebrates Joyce’s honesty and Galarraga’s magnanimity. It gives these overnight sensations a chance to explain the rest of their lives and how they got to this moment. After the famous non-out, Joyce reflects, then bursts into tears. Galrraga just wants to be with his wife.

Say grace tonight for all the beleaguered Connecticut farmers. Not only were many crops flooded or blown apart by the rampacious Irene, the rainy days since then cast a further damper on the crops.

This week came the frost.

I brew a lot of loose tea, so I guess you could read my leaves. And I have a few bumps on my head, if you’re phrenologically inclined.

But I think the best way to measure my mood, attitude and personality is to see how I assemble the gerbil cage after cleaning it.

It’s a big job, so I only do it every couple of weeks. The two cages– one came from a yard sale, the other from Goodwill– aren’t completely compatible. Only certain tubes foot in certain holes. The are other rules; the cages lounge up a particular way in order to both connect and stay on that small table. I’ve bought enough tubes over the years to allow for some freedoms to counteract the limitations.

The resulting experiments in rodent habitat engineering can be elegant or chaotic. Here’s one from a few weeks ago:

Now here’s Tuesday’s:

“Rock and roll used to be about watching my friends grow up. Then it was about watching my nieces and nephew and their friends grow up.

Now its about my friends again, going through their mid-life crises.”

The Old Soldier, who was doing

Studio sessions in the city at the agree of 14, said that to us a few years ago. We’re reminded odd that wisdom, or folly, constantly in the clubs these days. More bands reunite than form for the first time. We’ve seen ergonomic drum chairs and guitarists in hernia girdles. Jazz shows are even grislier: there was a reunion of a restaurant jazz band where the trumpeter’s mouthpieces included one hooked up to am oxygen tank.

Were beyond the midlife crisis. We’re into mortality music, last gasps of the nearly dead. Tribute music in the memorial sense. End of the world music, as the classical cats at the college on the hill call it.

If we heard a new sound these days, we wouldn’t believe it. We’d have to go look it up.

The Archobolers and Armor Jesters at the Bullfinch… The Carters of Elm Street and The Fabulous Dr. Tweedy at Hamilton’s… Drene Time and House of Myth at D’ollaire’s…

The landlord said he wouldn’t clean up the pigeon, so Gary volunteered as long as we liquored him up first.

Lonnie Ray Atkinson, “HR676: We Want Health Justice.” An earnest rap, released this past May, about the long-dormant HR676 bill (first sponsored several years ago) proposing… well, we’ll let Atkinson explain it:

HR 676, yo, that’s the bill 
we gonna cover each and every, but this time for real
. Some say single-payer, some say medicare for all
. But as long as it’s universal, it don’t matter what you call it
. No more pre-existing conditions
. No more wading through plan restrictions
. No more networks keeping you from physicians
. No holding on the line for a manager’s decision
. No more avoiding the doctor out of fear
. And you won’t lose your coverage if you change careers
. No sweating each charge from your hospital stay. 
I said no more deductibles, no co-pays
. No first rate premiums, third rate plans
. No medical bankruptcies ever again. But it’s more than that, yo, it’s more than that
. A real step toward bringing our economy back
 and put us on the same footing as our global peers
. The biggest job creator in the last fifty years
.

And now imagine recovering the billions lost
 to the excess profits and administrative costs
. Not to mention the loot that providers would save
. When they ain’t fighting with the insurance trying to get paid
. We gonna bargain and negotiate the prices down
. ‘Til every drug lobbyist jaw hit the ground. And you can check the biggest box off that deficit list
. When the medicare shortages cease to exist
.

But it’s more than that, yo, it’s more than that
. This goes out to the loved ones we can’t bring back.

There’s a shout-along chorus of “One nation! One plan!” and some hilarious impersonations of uptight folks parroting misconceptions about the plan. All backed by ominous strings and beats.

Forced at times and politically correct in a way that rap often isn’t, this is nevertheless an intelligent and impassioned plea for common sense.

Just back from the New Haven Public Library book sale at the Westville branch. Five bucks a box in the final hours.

Among the finds:

• The Black Press 1827-1890: The Quest for National Identity, edited by Martin Dann.

• The Man Who Invented Saturday Morning and Other Adventures in American Enterprise, by David Owen.

• A lonely volume of The Complete Works of Frank Norris, consisting of Blix, Moran of the Lady Letty and Essays on Authorship.

• The spooky purple-skeleton trade-paper edition of J.K. Huysman’s hellish novel La-Bas.

• Library-bound copy  of John O’Hara’s Ourselves to Know.

• A couple of Sandburgs: American Songbag and a collection of his poems packaged for young readers

• Norman Spinrad’s Songs from the Stars, in hardcover.

• Two trashy Hollywood mysteries by Stephen J. Cannell. Also some theater and movie mysteries by Simon Brett and Helen Rose.

• Biographies of Chaplin (the Roger Manvell one), Kay Kendall, Keith Moon, Sammy Davis Jr., Edwin Forrest, Houdini and Moss Hart

• Farm Journal’s Country Cookbook (the “revised, enlarged” 1972 edition of the 1959 original)

• Audiobooks (on cassette) of Stephen King’s Blood and Smoke (an audio-only set of the short stories Lunch at the Gotham Café, 1408 and In the Deathroom) and George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman and the Tiger.

..and lots of stuff for the kids.

Total cost: $10 for a good cause.

Warm, breezy fall day supreme, so off we scoot to High Hill Orchards in Meriden to pick apples and purchase squash. On the drive home, we had a revelation about what to make for dinner: Apples stuffed with squash!

(Recipe adapted from Betty Crocker)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Cut round squash in half and spoon out the yucky seedy bits inside.

Mix together a cup of sliced tart apple, four teaspoons of brown sugar, two teaspoons of lemon juice and an quarter-teaspoon of nutmeg. Bake in that very hot oven for about half an hour, until you can thrust a sharp object through the squash without resistance.

We love High Hill. It’s a lovely walk up a (high) country hill, then you get to eat yourself silly because of it.