Stuff I Liked This Week, Seeking Good Things Edition

Seattle recently had its first winter snow. It wasn’t much, about two inches, but it stuck around long enough for me to walk Harley the Dog in it, enough that he had to reconcile with the fact that there was, indeed, snow.

Before we went for our walk, I tossed him out back for a morning pee, like I do every morning. He looked at me like I was out of my damn mind. When he tried to make a beeline for the house, I blocked him, so he gingerly placed one paw, then the other, on the white stuff covering the lawn. He walked a very small circle, looked at me as if to say, “Fuck this,” and raced for the dog door.  I could not stop laughing.

Later, we went on a real walk and he embraced the experience. I intentionally chose a road with very few homes on it. We found one family building a snowman with great determination; after we passed them, Harley began bunny hopping up the hill.  I need to get this guy into real snow, if only because it makes me laugh. There’s an off-leash park in North Bend — field trip anyone?

I write about Harley the Dog these days because the world is so very overwhelming. This is not to suggest that anyone should put their head in the sand, as tempting as it is. Rather, it’s a managed distraction in search of sanity. To find good things in the face of encroaching dystopia is challenging; here’s what the fates gave me this week.

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Notes from the Resistance: A Column on Language and Power: Many of my writer friends are freaking right out saying things like, “Why am I writing about three course meals when the world is unraveling?” As a person who’s spent most of her creative writing time writing about 12 pounds of dog, I understand. So I loved this call to write shit down because cataloguing the world is part of the fight.

“Fascism favors sameness; it represents a desertification of language and thinking. You can fight sameness with diversity. Inside this thought-desert, we must learn to be jungle oases. If you plan to defend nature, write down the names of birds and landscape as a start. Write phoebe, warbler, wren, heron, starling, swift, swallow. Write dale, dell, coppice, coomb, swale, swarth. Let your language soar and spread. Get closer and write root, leaf, stem, stamen, stigma, filament, sepal, pistil, petal. Write down how the world and words around you change.”

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The folks from Bushman sent me a messenger bag and a jacket because sometimes, my name still appears on lists as a good person to review gear. (I miss having a regular gear reviewing gig; I was good at it.) I like the bag quite a lot; it will replace the bag I use for hauling my laptop around to meetings. I’m still getting used to the jacket, I can appreciate that it’s well made, but the fit is a little narrow, and I wish they’d used a two-way zipper. The coat has a button in fleece liner, so it’s one of those three in one things, with a ton of pockets and it’s got kind of a badass cowboy/safari style, but I’ll need to wear it for a bit longer before I decide if it’s the kind thing I’d include in my bag by default. The stuff is heavy treated canvas, so while it’s great for car adventures, I’d go with something else if I’m jumping on a plane. Bushman is new to the US, the closest thing I can compare them to is Carhartt. Carhartt still makes some of their stuff in the US, Bushman is made in the Czech Republic.

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My second cousin from another gene pool entirely, Brad Bordessa, wrote a book about ukulele chords — you want to pick up a copy of this to go with the ukulele you bought that friend/family member/sweetheart for the holidays. Or maybe for that more advanced player who knows a few chords but wants to get some theory in their head. (Not done your holiday uke shopping yet? I have advice here.)

I’m entirely a chart dependent kind of player; I have zero music theory in my pocket and I regret this. Brad’s book helps unravel the basic concepts of chord building — a big help when you’re messing around with jazz standards and can’t figure out what a Dm7dim9 should be. It also helps you learn your damn fretboard, something I’ve been saying I’ll do for years and now, I have very little excuse.

Sidebar note: Don’t let your lack of theory keep you from shredding that uke. We played a real blazer of a show last weekend at Parliament Tavern in West Seattle — that place is helping us miss the Feedback Lounge a little less.

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Because eating and drinking one’s feelings is the new slacktivism (just kidding, dude, I gave money to the ACLU, made a bunch of phone calls to my reps, and signed a metric fuckload of petitions), I found myself again at New Luck Toy on California Ave. If you are not in Seattle, well, you should come just so we can go here to drink their slushee cocktails and eat the duck fat dumplings. Sweet lord, I love this place. I went with some out of towners the first time, super cool women who said, “Oh my god, I am not cool enough for this room.” West Seattle, man. It’s taken a while, but you sure have helped me get over Capitol Hill.

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Oh, and on a more mundane, but important front, my “day job” contract got extended another six months. This is really good news. There are some weird things about working on a project that’s based in cancer medicine, but it’s a great project and I feel very lucky have landed this gig — the people are excellent, the terms could not be more perfect, and at each junction, I get to do more of the things I’m good at. No small thing, this, am I right?

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What worthy distractions have you found this week?