Hammer Mill Days

That putty’s too dry. You can’t do anything with it now. What’d you do, leave it out in the sun? Well, that’s your problem right there. Sun, hot. Sun HOT. Oh, hi. Just another summer’s day here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in upstate New York, Big Green’s longtime adopted home (squat house). Truth be known, we don’t always squat here – sometimes we stand bolt upright. I know that breaks with protocol for squat houses, but hell … we’ve got a lot of head room in this mill. Those old nineteenth century hammer-meisters must have been pretty tall; either that or they all worked on horseback. (I seem to remember one promoter we had once who wanted us to play our music on horseback. He also wanted me to change my name to Tex Piadro. Don’t remember why we let him go, but …. we let him go.) Well, as anyone who has ever lived in an old apartment building knows, when it comes to structural flaws or things that leak, you’re basically on your own. If you’re a legit r...

A snapshot from the day’s news – MSNBC is obsessing over Secretary of Defense Mark Esper’s announcement that we’re withdrawing 12,000 troops from Germany. The various former Republicans that populate its talk show panels are lamenting Trump’s undermining of the NATO alliance. In real time, we are seeing the Biden foreign policy take shape. I won’t say it’s a more aggressive posture, as Trump is aggressively pursuing conflict with Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, China, and others. There is, however, a somewhat nostalgic turn to the emerging centrist doctrine Biden will no doubt pursue. It appears we may be in for a slight return of the cold war model, the east-west divide, the Russian menace. If that’s the case, it would be a bitter trade in exchange for the crap show we’re living through now. I am tentative about this observation because it’s hard to be certain what a Biden foreign policy will be when the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has consistently avoided po...

I told you to drop it on Sunday. Did you drop it? No, no …. the PODCAST, not the quart of milk. I KNOW you dropped the milk, for crying out loud. Jesus Christmas. Hah … speaking of Christmas, we had a little present for you this week in the form of a new installment of our long-running podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN . Call it Christmas in July, or call it swiss cheese … whatever you like. The audience is always right, am I right? (Only when I’m in the audience.) Sure, it wasn’t as … um … generously proportioned as many of our previous installments. There was no Ned Trek episode, true. And there was no Matt, but we will do something about that soon, my friends. I just have to pry him away from the falcons and beavers long enough to talk into a mic for half an hour. Should be child’s play. (NOT). Anyway, so what was in this episode, eh? Here’s some of what we inserted, minus the leavening – a veritable audio flatbread of goodness: Put the phone down . I talk a whol...

There’s something the president has been saying repeatedly lately that probably shouldn’t be allowed to pass without challenge, like most of his insane utterances. (It amazes me sometimes how much this reminds me of the Reagan years, when old right-wing Ronny used to say truly bizarre things and journalists would just wanly shrug and move on.) He keeps claiming that, in responding to COVID-19, he saved millions of lives. The claim goes something like this: If I (Trump) had not acted as decisively as I did, more than 2 million people would be dead of COVID. Instead, it’s a measly 140,000. Aren’t I a hero, then? I wish I were making this up, but you’ve heard it, I’m sure. I’m beginning to understand why Trump is so determined to save all of those Confederate monuments. He must have gotten a bunch of loser trophies when he was a kid. Actually, his entire life has been a series of loser trophies and mulligans, starting with the fortune that was dropped into his lap, his va...

Looks pretty moribund to me. Did you kick the tires? Here – take the ignition key and give it a few cranks. Nothing? Right. This will be harder than I thought. Hey, hello. Welcome to the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in central New York state, an out-of-the-way corner of an out-of-the-way place if ever there was one. (And there was one.) Still in the midst of an archive summer – not that much of a novelty around this place. Seems like every summer I find myself diving through boxes and bins of old tapes, moth-eaten notebooks, forgotten scraps of paper, and old biscuit tins filled with souvenirs of a bygone age. You know what they say about idle hands. Don’t you? Hell, I don’t know what they say. I was hoping you’d tell me. Something like, idle hands build false … idols. Who knows? Actually, it was Marvin (my personal robot assistant) who reminded me that we haven’t posted an episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN, our podcast , in over seven months. Something of an oversig...

Here’s a little update on my health crisis from a couple of months ago: I’m still paying the price. Not physically, you understand – nothing noticeable in the way of lingering after-effects of my non-COVID illness. No, I mean I’m literally still paying the price of the hospital stay I experienced in April, the week after my birthday. I think I’ve gone over the numbers before on this blog, but let me just frame it in again so that there’s no mistake: the hospital fee – not the surgeon or anesthesiologist, just the hospital – added up to more than $50,000 for four days. The negotiated rate they charged was more like $37,500, but my portion of it was in excess of $5,000. Once again – I have employer provided health insurance … and the direct cost to me was over $5,000. I am currently garnishing my own wages to cover this massive fee, adhering to a five month payment plan I agreed to with the hospital. Fortunately – and this is important – I am financially able to afford su...

What the hell. Was it THAT long ago? No way! Effing 1986 was … uh … oh, right. I’m leaving out a few decades. Fuck, we’re old. Where’s my porridge? Nothing like a little trip down memory lane to lift your spirits, right? Just be sure not to take a right at the light – that road goes straight to crazy town. Spent the morning listening to recordings from our first year as a band, 1986. Actually, not the WHOLE morning, as there are only a handful of recordings. We did everything on a shoestring back then, and you don’t have to be a recording technology specialist to know that shoestrings are a very low-fidelity substitute for magnetic tape. Fact is, Big Green co-founder Ned Danison had the use of his brother’s recording studio, and we piled in there one weekend and plowed through a four-song demo that got us, well …. exactly nowhere, but it’s a nice conversation piece. (See? I’m talking about it even now, thirty three years later.) That was a hot summer, too. Or m...