Is there anything prettier than a flat of fresh Fragaria ananassa, right from the market?

Our farmer informs us that this is probably it, as the berries remaining in his field are getting too ripe to pick, so Saturday is iffy. This is our third flat of the season, so we’ve had our share.  In these parts, strawberry season starts up around Memorial Day, as asparagus season is waning.  Here at the summer solstice, it’s about finished.  Pretty glorious 3 ½ weeks.  Helps that it coincides with the best weather of the year.

But what to do with all those beauties?  Ya gotta hull ‘em*, as that green stem piece adds no flavor to the experience.  Then, ya just pop ‘em in your mouth!  I know, you can only eat so many strawberries at a setting, but it’s a great challenge!  But with a little preparation, some wonderful taste treats are at hand.

Of course, the classic early summer delight is strawberry shortcake: fresh berries in their juice over a warm biscuit with some whipped cream on top.  You can’t get this at Baskin-Robbins.  My wife and I have tinkered with the standard berry prep, which is to douse them with sugar till they give up some juice.   She doesn’t like really sweet things (except me), so we’re always working to reduce sugar.  She came across how you could substitute balsalmic vinegar, no less, and still get the juice extraction.  And, no, you don’t taste the vinegar at all.  This berry prep is useful in other recipes, and freezes well.

Good shortcake is key, and warm fresh out of the oven is even better.   The recipe we use is pretty simple.

If you can’t get your hands on Bisquick, here’s how you can make it.

The coached nutrition program Kathy’s followed since February, which has her slimmed down to the girl I married, avoids high glycemic foods, and flour’s a real bad actor there.  Cauliflower rice, something you make by buzzing florets in the Cuisinart, can substitute – well – for many of those starchy treats (1).  Turns out you can even make biscuits with it.

Can you ever get tired of strawberry shortcake?  Well, if you’re looking for a little variety on the dessert front during strawberry season, there are options.  Both involve bringing in that misunderstood first-of-the-season vegetable, Mr. rhubarb.  Its striking color blends well with the berries, as does its bitter taste. Not one for the kiddos.

For the lazy cook, there’s this one.  A little ice cream on top can help it along.

If you want to get fancy and make an actual crust, there’s nothing like a strawberry-rhubarb pie.

And how about a salad? The late Stuart McLean, CBC raconteur, blessed us with this recipe, something we look forward to making this time of year every year. Who wouldn’t want some sweet nuts with their spinach, especially of there were some strawberries on top?

If you tire of chewing your strawberries, there are a couple ways (that I know) of drinking them.

Frozen daiquiris are always a crowd pleaser.  Wait till you see what you’ve got when you make them with strawberries!  For a dinner party last month, I poured out the whole batch straight from my blender into a glass half-gallon milk bottle, doling the magic red sluice to each guest’s empty glass.  Let us say the crowd was pleased.

Helps if you freeze down the berries first.

The last one requires a little patience, as to make the required strawberry-infused vodka you need to watch it sit there on the shelf for 5 days.  After that, it’s easy peasey.  And the infused vodka is a tasty drink in its own right.  One of the ways we’ll be “preserving” our latest flat of berries.

Well worth the wait.

The alcohol content of the final drink is about 42 proof, about the same as cosmopolitan. Drink up!

When I was writing this yesterday, I totally forgot a great way to “preserve” those berries for a time when you want to taste a little summer but it’s bleak outside.  My Grandma Slater, just like Greg Brown’s, put it all in jars (2).  I love my grandma’s strawberry jam.  I still have some jars of it in my freezer, and Grandma died 35 years ago.  Of course, she taught her daughters the recipe, and it was my Aunt Dorie who made the batch I’ve got.  She’s only been gone 20 years.  With my wife’s absent sweet tooth, we rarely have occasion to spread the stuff we’ve got, let along make more.  When I decided to add jam to the list of strawberry destinations, I went looking for the recipe.  Not in Mom’s box or the oilcloth bond cookbook she put together for the Hamilton Circle of the Grandville Methodist Church in 1960.  Neither of my Aunt Dorie’s crammed boxes contained a jam recipe.   I remember those Slater women kept some of their best recipes in their heads.  Summer after my freshman year, I used to stay with Grandma when I went up to visit my girlfriend Rosie in Grand Rapids.  I got Grandma to tell me how she made it.  It was so simple I had to go and tell Rosie.  As we sat in Grandma’s living room, I told her: ”berries, mash ‘em, add some sugar and voilá”.  Grandma overhead us and shouted from the kitchen “don’t forget the Sure-Jel” (pectin).  Rosie loved the jam, too, but never tried to make me any.

Looking for the recipe, I had to check Joy of Cooking, where a lot of the simpler recipes are very similar to the ones the Slater ladies cooked.  But the jam recipe there was much more complicated than what I remember.  But Dr. Google came through with something that looks mighty close, and here it is:

Technical notes. 

Handling the bounty.  Faced with a fine full flat of berries, that challenge becomes what to do with them all.  A flat holds 8 quarts.  That’s a lotta berries.  Fresh berries will last about a week, even if kept cool.  Kept in sealed containers in the ‘fridge, you might get an extra week.  A tragedy when the little wonders go mushy.  So the estimate is how many we’re gonna eat now and how to protect the rest.  Fortunately, the only thing the berry loses in the freezer it its plump resilience.  Flavor and color survive.  My vacu-sealer does not squoosh the berries when I pack them.  So you can pack them whole or sliced, looking to use them like regular berries when you thaw them later.  We pack a lot of them up as if for strawberry shortcake.  That same prep works for drinks.  As I type this, my wife is out buying a large bottle of vodka so we can infuse some more with our berries.  We bought two flats today and they’ll be safely packed away (or eaten) before sundown.

References

1. How to make cauliflower rice. Minimalist Baker. https://minimalistbaker.com/how-to-make-cauliflower-rice/

2. Greg Brown.  Canned Goods.  YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dv6Q58RLSwc

3. What part of the strawberry is the hull?  Quora. https://www.quora.com/What-part-of-a-strawberry-is-the-hull

4. LIANGKEN Strawberry Huller.  Amazon.com.  https://www.amazon.com/LIANGKEN-Strawberry-Pineapple-Vegetables-Stainless/dp/B08JLDMHNV/ref=sr_1_6?crid=3BKY0C3ILCL34&keywords=strawberry+huller+tool&qid=1687369687&sprefix=huller%2Caps%2C179&sr=8-6

Here’s my Grandpa Slater standing out front of Engine House#10 on Division, sometime in February 1929. He’s the tall handsome guy to the left of the fire truck. How about those bow ties! He’d retire in 1959. He almost died in the line of fire once. That’s what I’m writing about. Tentative title “Grandpa’s close call”.

Yes, that apostrophe’s in the right place.  With those two Moms I told you about (1) came two Dads, each a gem and a blessing.  And both gone.  Yes, I will always miss them both very much.  Curiously, both were named Dick. Common name in their day, I suppose.  Who wouldn’t want a son who is a “brave ruler” (2)?  Or “powerful” and “hardy”(3).  Whether it was the name or coincidence, both my dads wore that robe ably.

I’ve waxed on about my adoptive dad, Dick Ike, several times (4,5,6).  Youngest son of a Dutch immigrant couple, small but competitive, enough to start at offensive guard on the Ottawa High Indians football team.  Business school straight into Fisher Body, who’d employ him his entire 31 year working life.  Married as WWII was starting, posted to Rome for 2 years, manning a desk after the Army brass noticed his glasses, complicating their plans to make him a paratrooper.  When he and my mom couldn’t produce their own child, they went looking for one and found me.  We had 10 happy years till my mom died suddenly, but me and Dad made a go of it, “a single parent before it was fashionable.”   As two headstrong males, we had many clashes, but we learned to appreciate each other as I settled down in my 30s and we had a lot of good times in his later years till he passed at 83.

One of my dad’s last acts was to hand me my adoption papers.  Through them, I gained a whole new family.  Dad had been gone over 5 years when I met my birth parents.  This Dick – Dick Spei – had a lot of wrinkles.  I had to go to Toronto to meet him.  He’d left Detroit in ’69, fed up with the politics and danger.  No, he wasn’t a draft dodger.  Yes, there was a woman involved, and I learned that was a recurring part of his life.  Obviously, I know far less about his life than of Dick Ike’s.  But Dick Spei was a bit of a stud growing up, not just seducing my mother, but playing linebacker for Biggie Munn’s Spartans in the late 40s, but just for a year “I got tired of being a tacking dummy”.  After Mom, he wasted no time, marrying his first wife and siring Nick, my oldest brother, who’s just 10 months younger than me.  Five more would come, a boy and 4 girls.  He was a bon vivant, who taught his children to “approach each meal as if it were your last”.  If I ever need to think where I got my caddish behavior and love for the good life, Mr. Spei’s the dad I need to think of.  He died 8 years ago in a Toronto hospital, at 84, of an infection that got out of control.  I thank him for the good genes, the great stories, and my (no longer so) new brothers and sisters.

I tell people I’ve had the best of both worlds: Nordic (Norwegian/German) genes and a Dutch upbringing.  And I couldn’t have had 2 better dads.

References

1. Behind the Name.  Richard https://www.behindthename.com/name/richard

2. Allen J.  The Bump.  Richard. https://www.thebump.com/b/richard-baby-name

3. Ike B.  Mother’s Day.  WordPress 5/14/23.  https://theviewfromharbal.com/2023/05/14/mothers-day/

4. Ike B.  Sgt. Ike.  WordPress 5/29/23. https://theviewfromharbal.com/2023/05/29/sgt-ike/

5. Ike B.  Mom & Dad.  WordPress 5/27/22. https://theviewfromharbal.com/?p=3162

6. Ike B.  Happy Birthday, Dad!  WordPress 8/7/22.  https://theviewfromharbal.com/2022/08/07/happy-birthday-dad/

Thanks to R. Crumb, who first published these strips in 1971, when I could have posed

A funny thing happened on the way to my stoned retirement.  Come end of this month, it will have started 4 years ago.  In the idle months leading up to that fateful date, I had time to figure what I might do with myself.  Diving back into mind-altering substances (besides alcohol) had some appeal.  While I was never a “head”, I did smoke a lot of weed back in college and enjoyed every minute, especially when music was involved.  Maybe I would have had a higher GPA had I not done it, but I still did o.k.  But I rarely smoked after leaving Ann Arbor, a situation that changed when I had my bike accident December ’14.  I had to take enough Neurontin to make me look like a Parkinson’s patient to keep the brachial plexus injury pain down, so against the advice of my UofM docs, I sought and received certification for “Medical Marijuana”.  Michigan Medical Marihuana Act 2008 Law 1 (1) had passed and with a doctor’s certification, you could walk into any number of pot shops dotting Ann Arbor, hand over a wad of cash, and walk out with an array of cannabis vehicles.  With passage of Marihuana Act in 2018 (2) anyone can now do the same, and the pot shops are now on every corner.  The stuff, in whatever form, never really killed the pain, but made me care less that I had it while the buzz was pleasant, familiar, and welcome.  Edibles became my choice, trading a cough for a slower onset of action.  I guess I became enamored with buying the stuff, as I laid up a stock way more than I could consume once my symptoms settled down toward the end of 2015.  I confess I did eat some for fun now and then, but not often.  I took all the “leaf” I’d bought and made my own magic caramels with the Magical Butter machine (3) we’d bought to make garlic oil on the advice of my nephew’s wife, who used hers to make other potions in addition.  That stock still sits on the top shelf of my bedroom closet, next to a few (tobacco) cigars.

So that stock seemed to be something I’d be dipping into once it didn’t matter to anyone how stoned I got.  As I thought more about it, why stop at pot?  Except for a magic mushroom or two, and some speed from my girlfriend to get a couple term papers done, I didn’t do any other drugs in college.  But what about those other “soft” drugs from my hippie wannabe days, like LSD, psilocybin, PCP’s, ‘shrooms and even ecstasy, molly, and ketamine, not on the scene in the 70s but popular now? While all these drugs emerged in the 60s or before with claimed legitimate medical benefits, hippie recreational use dashed further development by making them all illegal.

I picked up a lovely looking book by Dr. Albert Hofmann, who invented LSD (4).  Legitimate research into use of acid as a psychotherapeutic agent was exploding (5).  Likewise for psilocybin (6), ecstasy (doing a bang -up job on PTSD (7).’shrooms good for lots (8), and now legal in Colorado.  Curiously, all these drugs seem to help with other addictions.  And Timothy Leary’s real favorite – ketamine – is exploding as a treatment of depression so effective people pay cash on the barrelhead for it (9).

So, this was the brave new (for me) world into which I would be venturing.   I wouldn’t be going naively, as besides my reading to guide me, I’d be counting on my little brother-in-law Mertz and high school friend Hooch to guide me personally.  Each had accumulated extensive personal experience in the area, was still fully functional, and had agree to help.

But none of this ever happened.  What did?  I guess you could say life happened.  With my brain power no longer shackled to the job and my time now my own, the two took me to many different places.  Some quite mundane, like looking around my home with eyes to spot things I’d want to change and make better.  That’s why there are over 120 objects hanging on my upstairs walls with leftover hooks going up everywhere to hang what used to flop.  I’ve always enjoyed my time in the kitchen, but now – especially with COVID taking other options away – I could do so much more, and experiment with a willing subject.  Recipe cards got generated that got not only into boxes but into blogs and books.  It took an invite from a “predatory” journal to kick off my scientific writing, but I can now count 19 new peer-reviewed papers published since retiring, as many as I’d put out in the last 19 years of my “active career”.  Just as my first full calendar year of retirement dawned, my good friend Sam died.  I wanted to write something about him, so I looked into blogging.  Getting a site on WordPress was easy-peasey and cheap (10).  I never looked back, and this will be my 359^th blog post.   When I realized my posts coalesced into certain topics, I decided to organize them into books and have self-published 5 related to my blogs plus another about a tragic event from my youth (11).  Two more are close to ready – one possibly going to a “real” publisher – with ideas for several more.  My wife says I pound my laptop keys too hard and my steady “type, type, typing” drives her nuts, but it’s a sound you hear a lot around this place.  Then, there’s the plain old stuff of life: friends, travel, concerts, sports.  Realizing that getting high makes me miss out on this, I just no longer have any desire to go there.  Kathy hopes I may someday come to the same realization about alcohol.

I think the key has been “flow”, a concept first described in 1975 by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a University of Chicago psychologist who would have been on campus same time I was there.  In studying people intensely engaged in their tasks, like surgeons, rock climbers, and fighter jet pilots, he found they felt extreme happiness while engaged in their tasks.  He proposed that this seeking of a “flow” experience was what drew these people back to their tasks.  The phenomenon is now widely accepted and continues to be studied (12).  Here’s a concise definition from the abstract of that paper “Flow is a gratifying state of deep involvement and absorption that individuals report when facing a challenging activity and they perceive adequate abilities to cope with it.”  Csikszentmihalyi (a Croat raised in Hungary, whose unpronounceable name goes “Chuck-sent-me-he”) died in ’21, but he made a TED talk about his baby in 2014 (13).

Neuroscientists say my flow state is just bathing my brain’s locus coeruleus with norepinephrine (14).  So, it’s just about altered brain chemistry after all, and wasn’t that what I was seeking?  So, I had the power all along, just like Dorothy’s ruby slippers.  “There’s no place like home”.

References

1. Michigan Legislature – Section 333.26424.  MICHIGAN MEDICAL MARIHUANA ACT (EXCERPT)
Initiated Law 1 of 2008.  http://www.legislature.mi.gov/(S(vmprn114t4teyyi5ltkmta3l))/mileg.aspx?page=GetObject&objectname=mcl-333-26424

2. Michigan Legislature – Section 333.27955. 
MICHIGAN REGULATION AND TAXATION OF MARIHUANA ACT (EXCERPT)
Initiated Law 1 of 2018.  http://www.legislature.mi.gov/(S(kq0r0claosbcl0fgi4azlxmi))/mileg.aspx?page=getObject&objectName=mcl-333-27955

3. Magical.  https://magicalbutter.com/

4. Hofmann A.  LSD.   My Problem Child.  Reflections on Sacred Drugs, Mysticism, and Science.  Santa Cruz: Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, 2009.  https://maps.org/images/pdf/books/lsdmyproblemchild.pdf

5. Fuentes JJ, Fonseca F, Elices M, Farré M, Torrens M. Therapeutic Use of LSD in Psychiatry: A Systematic Review of Randomized-Controlled Clinical Trials. Front Psychiatry. 2020 Jan 21;10:943. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00943.  https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2020-08270-001

6. Ziff S, Stern B, Lewis G, Majeed M, Gorantla VR. Analysis of Psilocybin-Assisted Therapy in Medicine: A Narrative Review. Cureus. 2022 Feb 5;14(2):e21944. doi: 10.7759/cureus.21944.  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8901083/

7. Mitchell, J.M., Bogenschutz, M., Lilienstein, A. et al. MDMA-assisted therapy for severe PTSD: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled phase 3 study. Nat Med 27, 1025–1033 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-021-01336-3

8. Newberry L.  The ‘gnarly and painful’ therapeutic potential of ‘magic mushrooms’.  LA Times 2/14/23.  https://www.latimes.com/california/newsletter/2023-02-14/the-gnarly-and-painful-therapeutic-potential-of-magic-mushrooms-group-therapy

9. Caron C.   Ketamine Shows Promise for Hard-to-Treat Depression in New Study.  New York Times 5/23/23.  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/26/well/mind/ketamine-ect-treatment-depression.html

10. Bob Ike’s Blog. Welcome to Harbal https://theviewfromharbal.com/

11. Robert Ike.  Amazon Author Page https://www.amazon.com/stores/Robert-Ike/author/B095CPDZGP?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

12. Peifer C, Wolters G, Harmat L, Heutte J, Tan J, Freire T, Tavares D, Fonte C, Andersen FO, van den Hout J, Šimleša M, Pola L, Ceja L, Triberti S. A Scoping Review of Flow Research. Front Psychol. 2022 Apr 7;13:815665. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.815665. https://pubmed-ncbi-nlm-nih-gov.proxy.lib.umich.edu/35465560/

13. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi • TED2004.   Flow: the secret to happiness.  https://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_flow_the_secret_to_happiness?language=

14. van der Linden D, Tops M, Bakker AB. The Neuroscience of the Flow State: Involvement of the Locus Coeruleus Norepinephrine System. Front Psychol. 2021 Apr 14;12:645498. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.645498.   https://pubmed-ncbi-nlm-nih-gov.proxy.lib.umich.edu/33935902/

“Barb was my colleague, relative, patient, fan, and above all a dear friend.  Early in my fellowship, someone asked me if I was married to that tall blonde nurse in the E.R.  I had to make an excuse to get down there to check her out.   From across the room, I could tell she wouldn’t make a half-bad catch!  Of course, Ron had beat me to her.   Barb rose to become head of patient-staff relations for the whole hospital.  A big part of her job was dealing with patients’ complaints about their doctors.  So, if you were a doc, and Barb came lookin’ for you, she usually wasn’t delivering a candygram. 

Fortunately, when Barb came looking for me, she was just curious about this new doc the postman kept getting her mixed up with.  We hit it off right away.  There wasn’t much we disagreed on, except maybe those Buckeyes of hers.  Even that – my maize-and-blue versus her scarlet-and-gray – made for some fun sparks, especially each year when November rolled around.  Her curiosity got her into my dad’s hospital room, where she went after seeing his name on the inpatient roster.  My dad enjoyed the visit, explaining that his 5’6” self was indeed the father of Barb’s young doctor friend.  Dad would ask about Barb every time I visited him thereafter.

Barb had to see the same surgeon as Dad’s later on, her operation revealing a condition that would make her my patient.  Her bowel blockage was due to a rare but benign condition that would affect the rest of her life.  The scarring responsible was like that seen in one of my diseases as a rheumatologist, an autoimmune condition called scleroderma.  Meaning literally “hard skin”, Barb lacked that feature, and the only scarred internal organ was her g.i. tract.  There is no treatment for the condition, just trying to make up for the functions of the damaged organs.  For Barb, that was the intravenous feedings she did in her last few years, something it took some pulling of strings to get.

They say you shouldn’t talk religion or politics, but boy did Barb and I enjoyed batting about the latter.   I won’t go into details, but you couldn’t know Barb and not know what side she swung from.  My wife Kathy, Ron, Barb, and I didn’t play cards or golf, but when that foursome got together, look out!  And while Barb was surely scarlet-and-gray, even more she was red, white, and blue.

Ron still uses Barb’s e-mail.  I guess it was always a joint account, but since I mainly swapped e-mails with Barb, a2ike@aol.com will always be Barb.  Ron’s nearly daily funnies come in as “Barb/Ron”.  So, it’s like she’s still with us.  With 40 years of memories, I guess for me, she still is, in a way.  While I’m sad I’ll no longer see her smile or get that look, I’m grateful for all the times I could.  Thank you, Barb.  I never had a better 6^th cousin.”

I’ve vowed several times to stop blogging about coronavirus. The pandemic is over, just like Uncle Joe said, and I should be bored with it. Mostly I am, but this video from David Martin PhD before the Europe Parliament caught my eye. From my old virologist’s vantage, none of this is implausible, and all of it is quite frightening https://seemorerocks.is/dr-david-e-martin-phds-address-to-the-european-union-parliament-may-2023/

Tickets to Boz Scagg’s concert at Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids were already sold out and got me realizing I’ve got to keep better track of my favorites as other folks seem to like ‘em too.  I’ve been going to concerts since before I could drive, starting with Tiny Tim (1)  in Las Vegas while on a westward car trip with my friend Shorty.  I clearly got over that.  Since then, concerts have been way too numerous to count, ranging from seeing Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen in a basement dive in Ann Arbor to joining 200,000 or so of my hippie friends at Goose Lake to take in a unbelievable ticket that included the likes of Bob Seger, Chicago, Joe Cocker, 10 Years After, Mountain, the James Gang, John Sebastian, Alice Cooper, and others.  15 bucks well spent.  They closed the place down, never to host anther concert, after locals raised concerns about some of the hippies’ behavior, like drugs.  Damned shame.

Over the years, I got to know what I liked, but strayed away from concert going as I eased into the “serious” years of my life.  I’m not sure what triggered it, but about 10 years ago I realized that my favorites were my age or older, and maybe wouldn’t be doing it much longer.  Hell, how are they doing it now, old men that they are?  Our area has abundant venues for music, ranging from the outdoor playgrounds at Pine Knob, Meadowbrook, Freedom Hill, and Comerica Park, to capacious indoor arenas like Joe Louis, Cobo, and Little Caeser’s with old roaring 20s era movie palaces reborn as performance venues like the Fox, Fillmore (a.k.a. State) and the Masonic.  Close to home, we have our incomparable 400 seat Ark, no better place to hear a concert.  And we weren’t above traveling elsewhere in our great state if the act was right.  In fact, the water into which we would dip our toe was in Kalamazoo, at Bell’s Brewery’s Eccentric Café.  We headed there on a July day to see the legendary Johnny Winter.  We’d seen enough pictures and video of this albino wonder to be prepared for his otherworldly appearance.  But when he shuffled onto stage, bent over, half blind, steadied by 2 husky men, Kathy and I wondered if he was on the right side of the pale.  When he sat down and put his hands to his axe, it was clear his fingers were still working just fine.   He put on a rip-roaring show, finally carried off by the same men who’d brought him in.   A few weeks earlier when I was telling my friend Forrest – whose knowledge of music vastly outstrips mine – about our concert plans, he just said “See ‘em before they die!”.  Always a risk when you’re seeing septuagenarians and octogenarians.  I dubbed our exercise the “fogey rock tour”.  Little did I realize we’d claim our first casualty so soon.  A month and 2 days after that July 14 date came news out of Bülach, Switzerland that Johnny had been found dead in his hotel room.  As the next stop on our tour was with Ringo and his All Stars, we were pleased that nothing happened after to start a string.  Indeed, ol’ Ringo’s still at it 9 years later, and going strong.   Not that there haven’t been other losses.  11 musicians of note have passed on some time after we’d seen them in concert: Buddy Cage (New Riders of the Purple Sage), David Crosby, Charlie Daniels, Jim Dapogny (Ann Arbor music professor and jazz legend), George Frayne (a.k.a. Commander Cody), Glen Frey, Merle Haggard, Dan Hicks, Stuart McLean (Canadian raconteur), Tom Petty, and Peter Tork (Monkees).  As we’ve racked up 188 concerts so far since 2014, that’s a pretty low mortality rate.   I put up on my blog my concert list through September 2020, if you care to see what we were seeing (2).

So, what I started to do this morning was jot down a list of artists I’d wanna go see anytime, anyplace.  In this modern age, they all have web sites with their tour schedules, so those took the next column in the spreadsheet.  Looking these over gave me the opportunity to sign up for notifications.  Then, for perspective, the last two columns have details on last concert of theirs we’d seen then the next reasonable chance of seeing them.  One, we already had covered (Robbie Fulks in Three Oaks), but now we can look forward to seeing if Tommy James can jump as high as he did 8 years ago in Meadowbrook and catch Willie Nelson and John Fogerty at Blossom near Kathy’s old stomping grounds.  Hey, as I’ve been working on this, I got a call from a nice lady at Flint’s Whiting, where Boz also has a show, now I’ve got tickets!

I realized this urge to scrutinize schedules should not ignore home field.  The Ark has a way of sneaking acts in, so at least a monthly review is in order.  So, now we’ve got tickets to Tommy Prine (John’s son!), Bill Kirchen and Redd Volkaert, and Tom Paxton, who was apparently kidding about that farewell tour 2 years ago.

So, here’s my spreadsheet.  I intend to consult it regularly.  Should you be unfamiliar with some of these artists, I’ve included at the end links to YouTubes of one of their song’s that I like a lot.  Note the birthdates, placing most of these folks squarely as my peers or beyond.  Oh, sure, I’ve let in some young’uns, like that 60-year-old whippersnapper Robbie, who’s told me I remind him of his father (Robbie’s very tall, too), the 59-year-old (totally bald) Paul, and little 44-year-old (!) wisp of a thing Eilen. Then there’s a few of the extremely advanced, but please no dead pools.  Looking at 90-year-old Willie in action last weekend, there are no safe bets.

As I’ve had to resort to a JPEG to get that table over, I’ve pimped you out of all the URLs. So here they are. Click away!

web site

https://www.asleepatthewheel.com/tour

https://bbbc.net/concerts/

https://www.marychapincarpenter.com/tour

http://marshallcrenshaw.com/

https://www.rodneycrowell.com/tour

http://www.robbiefulks.com/tour-1

https://www.johngorka.com/tour-dates/

https://www.tommyjames.com/tommy-james-concerts.php

https://www.eilenjewell.com/tour

https://www.billyjoel.com/

https://www.billkirchen.com/bill-kirchen-tour-dates

https://www.redlightmanagement.com/artists/leo-kottke/

https://willienelson.com/pages/tour

https://www.tomrush.com/shows/

https://www.bozscaggs.com/tour

https://www.ringostarr.com/tour/#/

http://www.paulthorn.com/tour

https://joewalsh.com/pages/news

http://www.jenniferwarnes.com/

Representative songs.

1. Asleep at the wheel.  Half a hundred years (3).  Big Ray and company recount the band’s history.
2. Karla Bonoff.  Personally (4).  One of the sexiest songs ever.
3. Brass Band of Battle Creek.  They do everything well, but since it’s Benny Goodman’s birthday today, how about their take in “Sing, sing, sing” (5)?
4. Mary Chapin Carpenter.  He thinks he’ll keep her (6).  Mary Chapin’s sardonic take on husbands.
5. Marshall Crenshaw.  Whenever you’re on my mind (7).  When I first heard it, I knew I wanted to have a woman about whom I could fell that way.  For nearly 40 years now, I have.
6. Rodney Crowell.  It ain’t over yet (8).  A great song for our demographic.
7. Robbie Fulks.  I just want to meet the man (9).  How about his creepiest song?
8. John Gorka.  Love is our cross to bear (10).  For those 4 years when Kathy was in DC and I stayed back in AA, this was our theme song.
9. Tommy James and the Shondells.  Crimson and clover (11).  Over and over
10. Eilen Jewell.  Thanks a lot (12).  Not her song, actually first done by Buddy Rich, but can she squeeze the emotion out of it!
11. Billy Joel.  We didn’t start the fire (13).  A joy to history teachers everywhere.
12. Bill Kirchen. Hot Rod Lincoln (14).  Bill’s taken Commander Cody’s only hit and made it his signature tune.
13. Leo Kottke.  Jack gets up (15). Every day in the morning when you get up and crawl out of bed…
14. Sonny & Cindy.  Blues Attack (16).  The guitar nerd and the blonde beauty rip it up.
15. Willie Nelson.  It’s hard to be humble (17).   As I heard him do this as an encore, I knew he’d written me a new theme song!
16. Tom Rush.  The remember song (18).  Tom never ignored the deepest issues of the day.
17. Boz Scaggs.  Loan me a dime (19).  It took up the whole second side of his first solo album and was worth every minute.  Still is.
18. Ringo Starr and his All Star Band.  With a little help from my friends (20).  Always a rousing time in every outstanding Ringo concert.
19. Paul Thorn.  Viagra (21).  Paul knows love.
20. Joe Walsh. Analog Man (22).  Joe feels our pain.
21. Jennifer Warnes.  Joan of Arc (23).  Everything she sings is so impossibly beautiful, but this duet with the author of the song is so moving.  Today is St.Joan’s feast day in the Catholic church, 592^nd anniversary of her execution, burned at the stake at Rouen in English-controlled Normandy

References

1.   Tiny Tim – Tiptoe Through The Tulips.  YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcSlcNfThUA

2. Ike B.  concerts.  WordPress 9/16/20.  https://wp.me/sbBaof-concerts

3. Asleep at the Wheel – ‘Half a Hundred Years’.  YouTube.

4. Karla Bonoff – Personally.  YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CAXCJlIoY0

5. Sing, sing, sing.  YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6wvVUc_yb4

6. He Thinks He’ll Keep Her.  YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVL4mDFX3rY

7. ”Whenever you’re on my mind”(1983) Marshall Crenshaw (HQ).  YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-or2AET9L4

8. Rodney Crowell – “It Ain’t Over Yet (feat. Rosanne Cash & John Paul     White)” [Official Video]. YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFrpzPR6TLY

9. Robbie Fulks – I just want to meet the man.  YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPnGt2isRJ8

10. John Gorka – Love is Our Cross to Bear. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oq-QJiNFS_U

11. Tommy James and the Shondells – Crimson and Clover.  YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XS0niyiKlcw

12. Eilen Jewell sings “Thanks a Lot”.  YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl4Zt5kqJPA

13. Billy Joel – We Didn’t Start the Fire (Official Video). YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFTLKWw542g

14. Bill Kirchen – “Hot Rod Lincon”in Washington D.D. *UPGRADED*. YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsLdufJePz0

15. Leo Kottke -Jack gets up (Live). YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghHhRklLQzE

16. Sonny Landreth & Cindy Cashdollar.  Blues Attack 9-22-16.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qpe30ew0g70

17. Willie Nelson – It’s Hard to be Humble (Official Video). YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdZ5wY9XxdA

18.     The Remember Song Redux Performed by Tom Rush, Written by Steve Walters.  YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kg__ykHM3A

19.     Loan Me a Dime Boz Scaggs.  YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RTh5t8yEqI

20. Ringo Starr and His All Starr Band – With A Little Help From My Friends – 5/19/23.  YouTube.    

21.     Paul Thorn “Viagra”.  YouTube.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4YepLZ7I9M

22.     Joe Walsh – Analog Man (Live).  YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=il1Byvn_vMA

23.     Joan of Arc – Jennifer Warnes & Leonard Cohen.  YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtwUyDPXROQ

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Memorial Day is a time to remember and respect those who made the ultimate sacrifice for our country.  Fortunately, my dear dad emerged from World War II unscathed, living a long and happy life until leaving 20 years ago in March.  But he considered his time in the service as the best thing he ever did in his life.  See him here in Rome, May 10, 1945, 2 days after V-E day. 

He’d come to Rome in 1943, an eager draftee who had his hernia fixed so he could serve.  His Fisher Body plant had geared up for defense production, and he was the sole remaining of 3 sons at home, the 2 others already off to war.  That’s 3 excuses he ignored to join the effort.  The Army thought this athletic sparkplug would make a good paratrooper, till someone noticed his glasses.  So they leaned on his other talents, Haney’s Business School honed already in a couple years at GM.  He flew a desk, running the Military Mission to the Italian Army, seeing that that outfit was well supplied.  He says no one ever shot at him, and he came home with a new taste for Italian food if not for opera. 

Here he is 53 years later, standing in front of a mural at the American cemetery in Naples, pointing out the movements of the Allies’ campaign to retake Italy, which preceded his arrival there by several months.

Per his request, he had a military funeral – complete with a flag draped casket, 3 rifle volleys over his grave as he was lowered down, and taps from a real bugle – and his highest rank – T-Sgt (Technical Sergeant: 3 up, 2 down) – is inscribed on his tombstone, by which a flag placed by the local VFW is flying now.  Thanks, Sergeant Ike.  Thanks Dad.

I’ve missed the anniversary  of the canonization of Joan of Arc, who entered sainthood thanks to Pope Benedict XV on May 16, 1920.  That’s a long time to serve as a martyr, leading the French to victory over the English at Orleans in 1429 and in effect securing the coronation of King Charles VII , to have saved a nation only to be burned at the stake.  A model for virtuous women everywhere. Her feast day is comingup: May 30th, anniversary of her execution,

She’s inspired many, including Leonard Cohen and Jennifer Warnes (1).

References

1. Joan of Arc – Jennifer Warnes & Leonard Cohen.  YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtwUyDPXROQ

A friend offered such nice condolences for my mom’s recent passing (1), I felt compelled to offer her some information about this person she never knew.  Here’s what I wrote:

Mom was a spitfire.  Chose to carry me when she got knocked up at 19 even though cad-Dad offered to pay to “take care of it”.  Went on to raise 4 more of her own when she and her Italian electrician husband bolted Dee-troit to live among the Amish in Stanwood by Big Rapids.  It wasn’t a farm, but it had a barn and they had horses and other animals for the kids.  All got college degrees (3 with 4 from MSU!) and thrived except for baby sister Amy, who chose to become a Colorado ski bum – still happy in her own way – and died of a vaxx heart thing at 56 last May.  Mom’s mom made it past 104 (see them on the beach at Anna Maria Island in FL a couple years before I came along), just like my own Grandpa Ike, so I expected to have her around.  Heart issues got her, and she became very frail her last few years, though her mind remained sharp, sharp enough to get zingers to her oldest son regularly.  Her maternal grandparents worked the copper mines in the Keweenaw after coming over from Cornwall before buying cut-over farmland in the thumb, so I can say I have Yooper blood, something of which I’m very proud.   My favorite picture of her is one we took very early in our relationship, back in May ‘09.  We arranged a meet up by her house after the PI had found her.  Kathy rented a plane and flew me and her to the nearby Canadian Lakes airstrip.  Mom drove up in her red convertible, so we both made an entrance.  After that came a visit where Kathy’s jaw dropped to see the similarities in our mannerisms. It was never distant or awkward with Mom. Words between us just flowed. We could talk for hours, but didn’t do so often enough. Mom spent winters in Mazatlán, and we always threw her a party when she pushed off.  See us in October 2020, when Amy was still alive.  There’s a missing son, living down in the “other peninsula”, but we love him too. The last is me, Mom, Kathy, my tall sisters, and some cousins at a restaurant in little Beaufort, County Kerry, last July.  Mom had hinted to her daughters for several years she’d like to celebrate her 90th birthday in Ireland, so we did.  At one point she said she’d had such a good time she wanted to have her hundredth there.  I wouldn’t doubt that her spawn will end up there in July 2032 to summon her spirit.  And to honor her wishes, we’ll have a great time doing it. 

Marlene and Violet Gilbert on the beach at Anna Maria Island, sometime in 1949

Mom meets her first born for the first time (as an adult) on the grass field of Canadian Lakes airstrip, May 2009.

Mom’s girls (and one boy) wish her well as she pushes off to Mazatlán for the winter, October 2020. Front row: Di (a.k.a. Jack, CPA for the State and also MSU volunteer women’s rowing coach), Amy (Amelia, a.k.a.Madge, driving FedEx truck), Mom. Back: Jolene (a.k.a. Ish, became pharmacist after her dream of veterinary was dashed), me.

Mom’s testosterone laden offspring, tempered by their dear wives. On our porch at Madeira Beach January 2023. Spartoon John (B.A., LL.B), Karen, Kathy, me. Yes, John and I smoked cigars beforehand (2). As you can see, John did get some of our mother’s good looks. I trust he’s used them to good purposes.

Gathered at Dunloe Hotel & Gardens in Beaufort, Killarney, County Kerry, near Kilkenny, after Mom’s second or third 90th birthday party. First row: cousin Krissy, Mom, Kathy, Di, Krissy’s mom Laura. Back: Jolene, me. The hats were Jolene’s idea.

References

1. Ike B. Mother’s day. WordPress 5/14/23 https://theviewfromharbal.com/2023/05/14/mothers-day/
2. Ike B. Tobacco Road. WordPress 1/21/23. https://theviewfromharbal.com/2023/01/21/tobacco-road/