Ladies and gentlemen, a project weeks in the making. My…home office:
Please, ignore the laundry basket.
Now that I look at it, I realize it’s not too different from before, but believe me, it is. We got rid of the double bed that had been there; Kate’s room is now the official guest room. An entire bookcase, outta there. Several cartons offloaded at John King Books for store credit — I believe we have $100 worth now, and I’ll probably donate it to a teacher or school or something. The desk has one-third less crap gathering dust on it, and I’m still not done.
My office cleanings rarely take place quickly, because I have to think about everything I pitch, and sometimes write about it. We hold on to so much in our lives, and so much of it is just garbage, but it makes us feel good to know it’s sitting on a shelf somewhere. In that closet I have a number of Kate’s baby toys, and Alan’s childhood teddy bear, which was given to us by his mother the last time she cleaned out a space. I just can’t bear to see them go into a garbage bag just yet, although I know that’s where they’ll end up, because everything ends up there.
I threw out so much. All my clips, all my career stuff, awards, everything. I figure if I absolutely positively have to have some clip, it exists somewhere. It would be an excuse to come down to Fort Wayne and sit among the microfilm readers, so win-win. I recall once reading a James Lileks blog where he revealed he was doing a project where he was compiling every word he’d ever written on his site, printing it out and putting it in bound volumes. I’m sure the University of Minnesota library will be pleased to get these treasures when he dies, but I have a much more Buddhist sand-painting view of my work. Do it, put it into the world, then forget it. And I must have forgotten it, because it’s in these boxes I’ve been dragging through my life without opening for years and years.
So: All of this is preface to me taking a few days out of my life for a walkabout. I realized, mid-January, that I was getting very sludgey in the head, and decided I needed a change of scenery. (Big talk for someone whose shampoo and facial moisturizer, purchased during a monthlong trip to France, haven’t run out yet.) So I’m starting out, tomorrow, on a few day’s loop of the Ol’ Souf’, as I’m calling it. First stop, North Carolina, where I have friends I haven’t seen in years living in the Outer Banks. I’ve been given a particular time to arrive, i.e., low tide on Saturday. Otherwise the unpaved road might not be passable. Well, that’s different, I thought, agreeing to every detail. Then on to Atlanta to crash with John and Sammy for a couple days, then home. I’d tried to loop in Nashville, but my friends there are going on their own brief walkabout, so no go. There will be stops along the way — Columbus, Pittsburgh, somewhere between Pennsylvania and the Atlantic Ocean, somewhere between Atlanta and Detroit. I like that much of this is unplanned, because I want to be unplanned, just for a week.
It’s a working trip, in that I’ll have my laptop and still be contributing to Deadline, but at rest stops and Waffle Houses and the like. I’ll be Chris Arnade, only probably not at McDonald’s. (I see he’s walking now. Oh.)
And also posting here, needless to say. Maybe with some more interesting pictures. John informs me the Obama portraits are at the High Museum in Atlanta, so I really want to see those.
OK, so, bloggage? Just a bit:
How do we Elmore Leonard fans feel about this? About Raylan Givens being surgically inserted into “City Primeval” and made into a miniseries? I’ll tell you how I feel: NOT GOOD. A bad idea. Let me drive for a few days and I’ll tell you how I feel about it.
Deborah Beckett said on February 16, 2022 at 6:20 pm
The Obama portraits are fantastic, saw them at the Art Institute in Chicago. It was so heartwarming to see so many families posing their kids in front of the portraits and snapping photos for posterity.
Snow in the early morning hours tomorrow around here, after 55 degrees a couple of days ago it’s kind of a bummer but precipitation is so important now.
Our kitchen sink is inoperable because of a major leak in the pipes under it. The plumber can’t be here until Friday so we’ve been eating out, ordering out, buying prepared foods and using paper and plastic ware. Can’t use the dishwasher until it’s all fixed of course, and it has been like this for a few days already. All of the stuff usually stored under the sink is on the counter so it’s cluttered and messy.
Our window replacement project is scheduled to be installed on March 1st and 2nd, we’ve been waiting since early September for this to actually happen. We’ll see if it really will, I have my doubts.
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Scout said on February 16, 2022 at 6:21 pm
That sounds fabulous. I’d love to do a walkabout like that. Just jump in the car and drive. Enjoy. Looking forward to hearing all about it, or at least what you want to share!
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Dorothy said on February 16, 2022 at 7:55 pm
I’m confident you have LOTS of people to see/stay with in Columbus but if you run into any snags, we have a brand new house with clean sheets on the bed in the guest room in Grove City! Nestle will only bark a little bit and once you pet her, she’ll be your friend for life. Have a fun and safe trip.
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Julie Robinson said on February 16, 2022 at 8:03 pm
Big storm brewing in much of your travel area, Nance. Hope it holds off.
Dealing with it leak here too, in the pool filter casing. We tried a DIY repair but it didn’t hold, and a new one is on backorder. This after another leak in the system elsewhere was fixed. It’s always something.
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Deborah Beckett said on February 16, 2022 at 8:26 pm
Speaking of travel we have some coming up too. First we’re going back to Chicago in early March, depending on the window replacement timing in Santa Fe. Then in May we’re going to a wedding in St. Louis, then back to Santa Fe, then we turn right around and drive to Seattle from Santa Fe through the mountains of Utah, Nevada and Idaho on the way out there and down the west coast on the way back to Santa Fe. Then in September back to Chicago and from there we fly to Boston to celebrate 50 years since my husband started his masters in architecture program at Harvard. Then in October we go to France, hopefully. Of course this all depends upon what happens with Covid and the situation in Europe etc.
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Jeff Gill said on February 16, 2022 at 10:04 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_au5RCor55M
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Mark P said on February 17, 2022 at 12:39 am
I have some stuff from my parents, like my father’s Army cap and uniform that I cannot get rid of. I have decided to let my nephews deal with it. They may trash it all, but I’ll be dead and won’t know.
Wave when you get to Atlanta, or somewhere around Calhoun if you take 75 north. We won’t be too far away.
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Dexter Friend said on February 17, 2022 at 2:01 am
A young man with a dream of owning a recording studio hit a huge lotto win. He resided in the home he grew up in, in a tough Philadelphia North End house. After securing a new mansion in the Chestnut Hill area, he scheduled a wrecking crew to demolish the old North End dump. He and some friends brought some Schmidt’s bottles and some pretzels to watch the old place be destroyed…the giant shovel worked its lot, smashing over and over as the place flew apart. A flying something caught the man’s eye…his long lost Teddy emerged from years of lostness. The man retrieved his lost toy bear. His recording studio ended up a very expensive hobby, but he had fun, and millions left over.
And that rug ties the room together. The Dude would approve. The Dude abides.
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basset said on February 17, 2022 at 9:06 am
Google “Hatfield Knob elk” of you’re gonna be on I-75 north of Knoxville, it’s a nice break from urbanity.
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JodiP said on February 17, 2022 at 9:07 am
The office looks great–I love the sunshine and the rug. I did a similar thing with our home office when it became clear I’m going to be working there for a long time. Both Nancy’s trip and Deborah’s many travels sound so fun.
It’s been busy in our neck of the woods too. We spent 10 days in Puerto Rico, re-connecting with friends we meet there and our guesthouse owners. We were at the tail end of a bathroom reno which was finished yesterday. We love how it turned out. We used very fancy wallpaper on the top part of the walls. It’s based on a design by William Morris called Strawberry Thief. I’ve been working in our finished basement, as the office is right next door to the bathroom. This weekend will involve lots of cleaning now that the project is done. Hopefully I will get in some XC skiing this weekend.
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kv450 said on February 17, 2022 at 9:13 am
3 things:
1) it feels good to get rid of stuff – I keep a scrap of paper that says “Sentiment is the enemy of order”. A little cold, perhaps, but it keeps things in perspective;
2) your walkabout sounds fun;
3) I’m not an Elmore Leonard expert, but I loved “Justified”, so I’ll cross my fingers on “City Primeval”.
3.5) “Justified” introduced me to the marvelous Margo Martindale.
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basset said on February 17, 2022 at 9:35 am
That home office does look nice, no way I could keep it that neat though. Mine looks like a clutter bomb went off.
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LAMary said on February 17, 2022 at 9:56 am
I wish I had a few things from my family. When my father died two of my brothers inherited our houses. We had a house in NJ and a house at the beach on Long Island. Some things were tossed out that I wish I had: pottery my mother made before she was married, a signed letter and photo that I got from Helen Keller, a baby quilt my great aunt made for me when I was born, my great grandmother’s tea pot she brought from Denmark and some tatted and embroidered tea towels the same great aunt made for me. Most of this stuff was in a box labeled FOR MARY. It wasn’t a big box. I was a 19 at the time and pretty much homeless. One brother kept the pottery and quilt, the other stuff, including the Helen Keller letter got thrown away.
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alex said on February 17, 2022 at 10:21 am
“Sentiment is the enemy of order.”
I’ll bear that in mind next time I do a cleanout. Just recently I did a major purge on my closets and donated multiple enormous contractor-size garbage bags full of clothing to the Goodwill. However I pulled some vintage suits from the ’40s and ’50s that I wore in college in the ’80s when that was popular. They’re special outfits and very well made and I want them to go to a good home where they’ll be appreciated. They’re in a big pile on my living room sofa where they’ve laid for the last two months and will probably remain until I can find a worthy beneficiary. I’m not looking for money for them, just a good home.
I’ll eventually have to reckon with my parents’ house which is brimming with stuff. My dad has an enormous collection of photos and films that mean nothing to anyone but me and my brother, and yet it’s such a trove of interesting material that I don’t know what to do with it, except maybe serve as its steward for a while until younger family members take an interest in it.
And that’s only the tip of the iceberg. I could very well spend my entire retirement sifting through everything.
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Deborah said on February 17, 2022 at 11:38 am
I’m not sure why my full name turned up on some of my comments, my laptop seems to have outed me and I didn’t realize it when I clicked the submit button.
Clutter makes me twitch, I can’t wait until the plumber comes tomorrow so I can get the stuff that normally goes under the kitchen sink off of the counter. It’s going to drive me crazy when we have to move all of the furniture under the windows away when the replacement windows are installed in a couple of weeks. It’s going to be the end of me if we move all of the furniture and then they don’t actually come to do the work when expected. They require everything be 3 feet away from the windows and our rooms are very small so there will be piles in the middle and no place to sit. We have lots of plants inside now that we put outside in late spring until mid fall and of course they’re all near the windows. This is not going to be fun.
Jodi, I love William Morris, we went to see his house turned into a museum north of London a few years ago, I had no idea until then that his whole family was artistic.
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basset said on February 17, 2022 at 12:56 pm
Pictures alone are gonna be enough to drown me, I have storage tubs full of prints and slides and negatives. Just set up a scanning station, we’ll see how that goes… been looking at b&w negatives from 70s concerts, if you need pics of Gentle Giant in 1977 I have you covered.
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Deborah said on February 17, 2022 at 2:17 pm
We have a moving box full of slides mostly of my husband’s architecture projects from before computers. Since the mid 80s they’re all digital. I have no idea why we’re saving the slides except they’re the only record he has from 1976-1986. I doubt that he’ll ever use them for anything, they’re in slide sleeves and all very organized but that box is taking up space in our very limited storage space in Chicago. I suppose we could have them all scanned, but that would probably be expensive and for what? We have a box of print travel photos too (not slides), but we’ll hang on to those until we die I suppose. We also have some plastic bins of office supplies like bulldog clips and staples etc, again what are we saving those for? Sure we need a few of those things but not bins full. I periodically paw through bins of out of season clothes/shoes and take bags to goodwill, I’m usually pretty good about not hanging on to those things if I never or rarely wear them anymore. Books are our downfall, we have many that we will never look at again, but there they sit on our shelves collecting dust.
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Jeff Gill said on February 17, 2022 at 2:18 pm
Well, I’ve got a basement full of sentiment then.
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Julie Robinson said on February 17, 2022 at 2:55 pm
The pictures are going to drown us too. We purged mercilessly on everything else before we came to Orlando, but haven’t had time to work on digitization. I’m confused by how to organize them digitally–the labeling process seems tedious. Oh yes, we also have thousands of hours of videos, too. We had those made into DVDs, with digital access online. Of course you can guess what happened; the company went out of business and the digital access is gone, so they’re one more headache.
Jeff @6, years ago some monks made a mandala at our library. Same deal, they spent all week building it then swept it up. No word on how long it took to separate the different colors of sand afterword. 🙂
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tajalli said on February 17, 2022 at 3:51 pm
Thanks, Jeff, for the mandala video. I sat with monks in the early 1990s while they were constructing a mandala in the de Young Museum in GG Park. Incredibly powerful concentration on an after-death realm, with the destruction emphasizing the impermanence of everything in life. The sand is wrapped up and disposed of in running water so it disperses, as do all experiences.
The walkabout is what I’d love to do – just drive off and watch the scenery, visit all the local homemade amusements. While driving from Florida back to California, I took state highway detours around major cities to avoid getting lost on the freeways and was struck by the outright bizarre creativity – old convertibles with mannequins posed on front lawns etc. I’d want to take several months, but what to do with my apartment. Sometimes I feel like just throwing everything out and being done with it.
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Deborah said on February 17, 2022 at 4:32 pm
So the good news is the plumbing company called and sent a plumber out sooner, he’s here now instead of having to wait until tomorrow. The bad news is I dropped my phone on the tile floor and now have to replace the shattered screen. Arggghhhh! It still works but it’s hard to see through the cracks. I have to wait until Tuesday to get the screen replaced.
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Dave said on February 17, 2022 at 6:26 pm
Safe travels, if you left on your adventure today, the weather doesn’t seem to be the best.
We have my father-in-law’s dress Navy jersey hanging in the closet, he was a WWII Navy veteran, having served on the USS New Jersey. My wife knows hanging onto it serves no real purpose but she keeps it.
When we made this move back to Indiana, we bagged up a lot of clothing that we no longer wear and some that we’d even forgotten about and took it to Goodwill. It took more than one trip. We got rid of a lot of other things we thought we no longer need but we still seem to have arrived here with a lot of stuff.
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Dexter Friend said on February 17, 2022 at 7:23 pm
My aunt died 8 years ago at age 99. The last time I saw her in her home, she gave me a simple piece of cloth. It was a remnant from her aunt’s time in a bassinet when she rode in a wagon train from Kirksville , Missouri, to Waterloo, Indiana, in 1885. Yeah, a reverse west-to-east wagon train. I had thought train travel had usurped wagon trains by 1885, but there is documentation with this piece of cloth. The cloth meant a lot to my aunt, so how could I just toss it?
My paternal grandmother gave me an 1884 Morgan silver dollar 60 years ago, also. It was only worth $38 when I checked, 20 years ago. I could never sell it. And my late uncle returned my long-lost baseball mitt from 1957 to me a few years ago. I think I had neglected to take it home after a visit to the family farm and Uncle had found it, hid it to punish me, and forgotten about it for 58 years. It’s like new. I had burned my name into it with my cousin’s woodburning set, a common toy for kids back then. I can’t throw stuff out. At least I don’t save toenail clippings and other nasty stuff in jars like some fucking weirdos.
The weather is just nasty, snow atop ice, dangerous for septuagenarians to walk on. I am in for the night. Dinner was Nachos Bell Grande from you-know-where. Cheap, but the kid in the window forgot my sauce packets. Damn it. 🙁
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Julie Robinson said on February 17, 2022 at 8:01 pm
Between our two moves we’ve purged at least 80% of our possessions . Wish we could get the other occupants to get with the program. After Mom goes it’ll be dumpster time.
More first world problems with our icemakers. D thinks he should be able to fix anything so he kept trying and tinkering. It turned out one needed two different parts and the second one has to be replaced. Consumer Reports is right about icemakers, they do break constantly. We’ve got five people using ice and we’d need a gazillion trays so I do appreciate them.
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Deborah said on February 17, 2022 at 9:14 pm
Sink is fine, did a load in the dishwasher and everything worked. We use ice trays, no ice makers in our fridges here or in Chicago. I guess we don’t use that much ice to make it seem like a necessity. We have smallish fridges compared to many, our freezers are above which may be antiquated by now.
I’m very paranoid about putting stuff down the sink now, I’ll be like this for a while, hopefully for a long while. We had a fatburg in our sink drain that was disgusting, not sure how that made a leak but it did.
Dexter, my grandfather took a wagon train back to the midwest from Oregon with his family when he was a teenager, I don’t know what year that would have been, he was born in 1875 I think, but anyway it’s an example of a west to east wagon train. I don’t know how they went from the midwest to Oregon to begin with but according to legend it wasn’t a wagon train, probably train (?).
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ROGirl said on February 18, 2022 at 6:13 am
I cull out old clothes for donation to a thrift shop and take old books to the library, have given old towels and blankets to an animal rescue place, but I still have a houseful of stuff. There’s a recycling center near my house, good for old electronics and broken equipment, and they have really good shredders.
The wild weather dumped hours of heavy rain on the area yesterday, which gradually switched from sleet to snow in the afternoon. I had to scrape ice off my car windows when I left work, but the snow had already started and got heavier. I was on my way to the cardiologist’s office for a stress test, I finally got there, and I passed the test. I’ll be working remotely today.
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Jeff Borden said on February 18, 2022 at 12:30 pm
When I moved into my first apartment in Columbus, Ohio in June 1974 as a young bachelor, I used a one-axle U-Haul trailer. Two friends and I loaded and unloaded it in well less than a half hour. And I was happy.
When we moved into our current home as a married couple in February 1993, it took a crew of four a half-day to load and a half-day to unload. Our possessions have only multiplied in the intervening years. My stomach hurts when I think of how much shit we have and how little we use so much of it. Yet it burns my soul to think of giving away all my LPs, which number about 1,200, even though I play them just a couple of times per year in the basement.
As a childless couple, we won’t burden another generation with our junk. My father’s World War II uniform and the folded flag from his funeral will go to my nephew in Ohio, who is quite a history buff. But, otherwise, I imagine most of the stuff will fall to one of those “Junk Genie” companies who promise to make things disappear.
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David C said on February 18, 2022 at 1:51 pm
I recently sold the rest of my vinyl collection. It was down to only about 200 albums. We’d moved them twice and I never listened to them since CDs came out. I was surprised how much the used record store paid me for them. I left with almost $700. I’ve talked with a couple of people who have stopped collecting vinyl because it’s getting so expensive. If you have a mind to sell, Jeff, you’re probably at the top of the market.
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Icarus said on February 18, 2022 at 2:13 pm
Happy 29th Anniversary Jeff Borden (assuming I did the math right).
Tell me, do you and your wife plan to die at the same time? Because one of you will have to deal with all that clutter. Definitely should sell those vinyls…there’s a generation of hipsters waiting patiently to obtain them ironically.
My mom is a hoarder. Someday I’m gonna have to fly back to Chicago and engage one of those Junk Genie services because she won’t throw anything away. I’ll also have to wait out probate because she doesn’t believe in wills or trusts. I mean she believes in them but stubbornly also believes that because I’m her only heir, everything goes to me quickly and smoothly, because that’s how the world works. Ugh.
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Julie Robinson said on February 18, 2022 at 3:29 pm
Icarus, you might ask mom if she’s fine with attorneys getting huge fees from her estate because she had no will or trust. That’s what happened with my sister, who had a small estate but no will, so probate and attorneys took over half the amount. My mom learned from that and got a will as well as added my name to all her accounts.
The problem with hoarders, well, one of many problems, is finding the important papers. They’re mixed up with all the junk and you’re forced to reinvent the wheel. My mom did not learn that one from my sis.
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Jeff Borden said on February 18, 2022 at 3:43 pm
David C., your point is well taken. I’ve added a couple of slabs recently –a 45 rpm master of a Patricia Barber jazz album and Asleep at the Wheel’s homage to Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys– but mostly I’m downloading. Maybe it’s time to start culling the herd.
Icarus, it will be 33 years in November. (We lived in an apartment in Lakeview for more than three years after relocating to Chicago. It was just four blocks from Wrigley Field, which was great.) My wife is generally averse to discussing the darker elements looming in the future, but it’s a conversation that must be had. The first of my high school peer group just sold his house and property in Northeast Ohio and moved with his wife into a condo. He’s sick and tired of mowing lawns, shoveling snow, dealing with plumbers and carpenters, etc. They spent a year preparing for the move and jettisoned most of their stuff.
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Icarus said on February 18, 2022 at 3:48 pm
Thanks, Julie Robinson. If my mom were a well-adjusted, sane adult, that might work. But considering we are in this situation in the first place because she isn’t a well-adjusted, sane adult, your recommendation would likely fall on deaf ears. I’ll pitch it anyway.
A few posts ago, someone asked: Why do too many people have to be so awful? Is it really so hard to be a decent person?
Apparently, it is. I’m working this contract job where I’m doing one repeatable task over and over. Think electronic assembly line. There shouldn’t be any drama, and yet the Project Manager has managed to create a full supply.
Every time there is a Firm Holiday they wait until late the night before to email us telling us that the office is closed.
It’s not absent-mindedness either. on the 23rd of Dec, They informed the other consultant and I, hours after we logged off, that the office was closed on Dec 24th, so naturally we didn’t see it until we logged in the next morning (as external temps, we don’t have access via our phones).
I emailed back that Monday “thank you for letting us know, are we also closed this Friday” for NYE. They waited until Thursday morning to reply.
And just to be clear that this was obviously done intentionally, they also waited until late Friday evening to tell us that the firm was closed for MLK Day.
Mind you I confirmed through other contacts at the office we were off but this is part of a larger batch of Dysfunction and Micro-aggressions.
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nancy said on February 18, 2022 at 6:01 pm
Hello from Newport News, Va. I was going to shoot for Norfolk, but there was some insane backup at both the bridge and tunnel into town, and I asked, what do I really want to do tonight? And decided: Check into a no-drama lodging, then read for hours. So here I am.
A friend of mine’s mother-in-law wasn’t a hoarder, but she distrusted banks, etc., and secreted cash *everywhere.* When she died, her children had to go through every scrap of paper in her place. I believe they found twenties and fifties wadded into stuff like M&M wrappers. Maddening. Imagine how much ended up in a landfill, despite their best efforts.
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Joe Kobiela said on February 18, 2022 at 7:36 pm
Going to see Asleep at the wheel next month up in Shipshewana, small venue maybe 2000 seats, saw the Mavericks up there a few months ago, amazingly good show.
Pilot Joe
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Julie Robinson said on February 18, 2022 at 7:38 pm
Daughter’s roommate’s grandma was the same, and when they finished searching her apartment they used the cash to buy a new car. We already know we’ll lose 10% cashing in one of mom’s investments because she lost the original paperwork proving its basis. Which is pretty crappy, but what can you do.
Her own mother lived through Depression bank failures and didn’t trust the FDIC, so she had accounts in 20 or so small-town Iowa banks. All without mentioning them to hubby; what a fun estate that must have been to settle.
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Deborah said on February 18, 2022 at 7:44 pm
a couple of decades ago when my mother-in-law’s alcoholic brother died she and my husband’s younger sister went to Virginia Beach to go through his stuff, he was divorced from his wife who had died before he did and he only had an estranged stepson, so no one else was available to do it. It was a nightmare of trash and sometimes valuable stock certificates, stashes of cash, mountains of shirts still in their packaging, never worn etc etc. He had been a decorated Navy pilot and even dated Rita Hayworth as a young man, or so the story goes, he had a long, hard fall.
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carter cleland said on February 18, 2022 at 9:53 pm
Hey Jeff Borden, I’d love to talk to you about buying some, or all, of your vinyl. I buy/sell records in Chicago, and am considering tapping my personal inventory since I sold a shit-ton of vinyl at Pitchfork last fall, and am in need of more stock. You too, Icarus, if you’ve got any platters left. Carter
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Andrea said on February 18, 2022 at 10:41 pm
When my grandma died, we went through her apartment and found rosaries everywhere. There was not a place in the apartment where you couldn’t reach out your arm and touch a rosary. Under the couch cushions. In a sugar bowl. Under each side of the mattress on a twin bed.
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Kim said on February 19, 2022 at 12:35 am
Well, hell, Nancy. You are probably 10 minutes from me and my house of somewhat empty bedrooms. It would have been a pleasure to host (& meet) you, and save you a couple bucks on a hotel.
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Dexter Friend said on February 19, 2022 at 3:25 am
The Warwick Hotel https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/VRQAAOSwU9xUOPim/s-l300.jpg
in Newport News was one of our hub hotels when I played baseball 54 years ago. I walked down to the James River for a swim, later to be chastised for such foolish behavior because of powerful currents. The Newport News-Virginia Beach area was one our favorites; it was a lively place to stay. That long-ass bridge across the James River freaked out our business manager, Dero Austin, who was a Pygmy Dwarf and a funny-as-hell clown. 🙂 https://www.tcdb.com/Images/Cards/Baseball/147714/147714-9534029Fr.jpg
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alex said on February 19, 2022 at 10:24 am
My mom jettisoned all my vinyl many years ago. She made a half-hearted attempt at cleaning the basement one time and told me to get my records out of there or they’d be history. Living in a small space in Chicago at the time, and no longer having a turntable, I wasn’t eager to take and store them. Too bad she started there. She was too tuckered out after carrying all of my records up the stairs to ever attempt cleaning the basement again, and it remains full of all the crap it had then plus another 30 years’ worth of accumulation.
I have numerous milk crates and totes full of CDs that haven’t been touched in two decades. I’ve tried in the past to make a project of copying the CDs to my computer hard drive but it’s tedious and time-consuming and I suspect it’s just not gonna happen. Also, it appears that Apple discontinued iTunes and took all of my copied music along with it.
For music anymore I do satellite or internet streaming, and if there’s something I’m dying to hear I can google it on YouTube.
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jcburns said on February 19, 2022 at 11:16 am
Apple did discontinue the iTunes app, alex, but did NOT take your copied music anywhere. It’s still on your hard drive, quite playable.
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alex said on February 19, 2022 at 12:15 pm
JC, I’ll have to figure out where to look for it. I used to rely on the iTunes icon to be able to find my music. On my year-old Mini with the new Apple processor it seems that I came across some song titles in one of my photos folders or some such a while back and didn’t have time to investigate and now I’m at a loss.
Just read that the Capitol Steps comedy troupe is no more. Bummer. They were hilarious and I was so hoping I’d get to see them again. I first saw them in the 1990s in a show that parodied songs from the contemporary gospel playlist. They turned “He Touched Me” into a raucous skit about sexual harassment.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/02/16/capitol-steps-comedy-troupe-folds/
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Deborah said on February 19, 2022 at 7:36 pm
Today was a glorious day in Santa Fe, sunny, a high of 48°. We walked to the farmers market which we haven’t done for a while because of the weather. We found a booth at the market that had local, premium ground beef for $25 for 6lbs. The lbs were packaged individually so we jumped on it. I mean where can you buy beef for that cost today? I’m not buying meat/poultry anywhere except the farmers market anywhere else anymore.
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Deborah said on February 19, 2022 at 11:40 pm
Have any of you watched the documentary “The Family” on Netflix? Yikes that was scary. I started the 5 episode series last night with LB. she bailed about halfway through the first episode. I can totally relate to that, I tried to watch the Leni Riefenstahl film “ “Triumph of the Will” a couple of years ago and it was so upsetting I couldn’t get past about 15 minutes of it. Anyway, the Family is frightening.
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Dexter Friend said on February 20, 2022 at 3:38 am
These dating app shows bore me. “Attempting Anna” is the latest following “Love Hard” and “The Tinder Swindler”.
Of course my time for dating apps was over years before they appeared. I have no respect for cheaters who are married and use them for “strange” ,as was the vernacular of my time. Struggling to find something to watch,I took a chance on a Laura Linney oldie from 17 years back called “P.S.” about a divorced woman who falls for a dead ringer of her old high school boyfriend…yeah, you can imagine where it goes from there. I have been a Linney fan for years, and since Marcia Gay Harden was in the film, I stayed with it, that mushy goofy love story. Gabriel Byrne was in it too.
Putin is ready to put the boots to Ukraine. Finally I found out some reasons, one being Ukraine’s crackdown on Russian language, it being discouraged in parts of Ukraine, and a whole lotta other stuff, way to complicated to even start with.
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Deborah said on February 20, 2022 at 10:41 am
Oh my, the queen has Covid. Apparently she just has cold like symptoms but obviously, she’s old.
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tajalli said on February 20, 2022 at 1:59 pm
Alex, the Apple support forums can be quite helpful. Of course, you have to be quite specific about the provenance of your hardware, the OS and and only Apple apps can be discussed, but it sounds like you have that available. Just ask where the files reside, which apps can access it. My hardware maxed out at El Capitan, iTunes is still available for me, so I can’t share any direct experience. You might find the question already answered or some maven will give suggestions.
https://discussions.apple.com/community/desktop_computers/mac_mini
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Suzanne said on February 20, 2022 at 3:28 pm
Yes, I saw The Family. The book goes into more detail and is even scarier. If you can stand it, it’s worth watching.
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jcburns said on February 20, 2022 at 6:04 pm
Alex (and Tajalli):
Go to the finder, hold down the command key and spacebar. Type “Music” in there. One of the folders will have all your music in there. Other things you can type: PDF file, MP3 file, email from Nancy, email from 2016, URL from Norway (and so on and so on.)
Actually, you don’t even have to go to the Finder to do this. It’s a Spotlight search!
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