1. Stu arranged for a lunch summit at the Hilltop Inn in Kingston. Carrie and Rick Parks, Ed, Stu, and I were in attendance. Well, it wasn't much of a summit meeting -- no discussion of nuclear armament reduction or Middle East peace talks -- but it was a good time to get together with lots of serious yakking, especially about life in the Silver Valley in 2022 and looking forward as the population here increases. We also talked about Cincinnati (or Skyline) chili. That was fun. I enjoyed thinking back on the Skyline dinner we had back in December with Patrick and Meagan.
2. Now that I've read more chapters of Kevin Canty's novel, The Underground, it's clear that the unnamed fictional mine in the book is very similar to the Sunshine Mine and that the disaster sections of the book are based on the 1972 fire in the Sunshine. I'm curious to see where the story goes. Unless I'm mistaken, it looks like the novel will be as much about the mine fire's aftermath as the fire itself. I guess I'll find out as progress deeper into it.
3. After I watched the Oregon Ducks defeat Stanford, 68-60 (the Ducks' effort was uneven, but good enough to earn the win), I listened to Dan Mackay's Bob Dylan show and Jeff Harrison's Deadish show at kepw.org.
Tonight's Hard Rain and Slow Trains was a continuation of a focus Dan started in January. This year marks the 60th anniversary of the release of Bob Dylan's first album. Dan is commemorating this diamond anniversary year by giving over an hour each month of 2022 to what Dylan was up to during each month of 1962. Tonight, of course, focused on Feb. of 1962 and the show featured Dylan performing and being interviewed and looked back at the news in February of 1962. This series, which Dan calls "A Highway of Diamonds" is fascinating. It helps listeners experience Bob Dylan's early explorations as a songwriter and performer, his penchant for borrowing tunes and songs and refashioning them, and how he treats his life as a fictional story in process. In tonight's episode, Dan played an excerpt from an interview Dylan gave to folk singer and radio host, Cynthia Gooding. In it Dylan mythologizes his life, claiming that that he'd worked at a carnival off and on over the past six years (since he was 14). In the interview, he creates an alternate reality about where he was born. It's as if the telling of his own story is hardly different from making up stories to tell in his songs.
On his Deadish show, Jeff commemorated Black History Month by playing a wide range of African and African-American music -- and maybe more. It's difficult for me to say exactly what he played without a set list in front of me because, to my delight, he played a lot of music I was unfamiliar with. Yes, I recognized Etta James, Al Green, Miles Davis, and others, but I can't even list the names of other musicians he played because it was all new (and exciting) to me.
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