Hammer Mill Days

  There, that’s got it. Perfect execution. Couldn’t do another one like that if I tried. Okay, Marvin, you can hit the stop button. Wait, what? YOU DIDN’T HIT RECORD? Hi, everybody. While this seems like the very next moment in my blog post, it’s actually several hours after wrote that intro. It takes me that long to disassemble Marvin (my personal robot assistant) piece by piece and then put him back together. And as I am not particularly mechanically inclined, I usually get something wrong on the assembly side. (Last week I somehow incorporated our toaster into his torso unit.) Okay, so those of you who are musicians (and I know there are a few of you out there) can appreciate what we’re going through these days. Performance venues are flagging, people are afraid of going out, money is scarce – situation normal, right? Our response to this crisis is exactly what you would expect from Big Green – we pull the shades down and get back into bed. Then, first ...

I’m not an avid reader of blockbuster books about the current political moment, whatever that moment might be. On the contrary, I tend to spend my time listening to what others have to say about it. That’s my approach to the new book by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa entitled Peril . As with practically every book about the Trump administration, Peril sounds like a rough mix of the hilarious and the terrifying. In the first category, there’s a supposed transcript of a call between Mike Pence and his fellow Hoosier, former VP Dan Quayle. Quayle reportedly talks Pence down from any thought of giving Trump what he wants, namely the nullification of the 2020 election result. That’s right – Dan Quayle as the savior of democracy. Who would have guessed it? Hands across the water Now, I’m not suggesting that the Quayle call isn’t scary – it is, as we came very close to a coup. More disturbing, though, is the passage about Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair General Mark Milley ...