I’m not one to sit and be part of a captive audience. I will make an exception for Arlo Guthrie and a handful of others, taiko drummers being one. But I hate to sit, especially sandwiched in with a whole bunch of strangers. I did well last night although I had a short period during halftime when I wanted to strangle someone. Probably the woman in the row behind me who was all blah-de-blah-de about how her kids (who sounded older than *my* kids if I was following the conversation) were kind of pooh-poohing Arlo so guess what they were getting for xmas? Arlo CDs, of course. We all spend a good number of years forcing our own personal culture upon our children but I *hope* I am not still doing that. At any rate, my kids have eclectic musical tastes and I’ll bet they wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth if the gift was Arlo Guthrie tickets, given that it was at a time and venue they could reasonably *get* to. They may be relieved to know that they are not getting either Arlo tickets or CDs for xmas. As if I would even try to buy them CDs of any sort. Sheesh. Oh wait! CDs? Huh? We did used to buy those… It was That Woman’s (but not Ms. Lewinsky) word, not mine.

The second half of the concert was the best and I forgot about the ditz behind me and thoroughly enjoyed Arlo being Arlo. My long-time internet buddy Agate Gal brought up an interesting question in the comments yesterday, which was why the movie Alice’s Restaurant had something to do with Thanksgiving. I can answer that only because Arlo played and narrated a couple of clips from the movie and the whole garbage dumping incident happened on Thanksgiving day. Because the regular dump was closed that day, don’tcha know. Maybe we’ll have to watch Alice’s Restaurant here at The Landfill this Thanksgiving.

Today? I began my day (after my shower and walk, of course) by playing a version of Gordon Lightfoot’s ballad “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”. I’m not going to link to it. If y’all haven’t heard about this 1975 Lake Superior shipwreck and the song that followed, you can google it. I’m gonna guess that if you are in any way connected with someone in the Great Lake State, it has been posted on your facebook timeline multiple times today. I’m sorry. I was there that night (in Sault Ste. Siberia at my parents’ house, not on the Fitz, that is). My boat nerd little bro was listening to another boat call the Fitz on a multi-band radio and get no response. I won’t go on and on about that night. Spooky? Yes. 40 years (and my little brother has been dead for 10 of those, alas). Where were you on the night of 11/10/1975? Us Yoopers all remember where we were although we may not remember the details accurately. Gordon Lightfoot spent some time at Whitefish Point yesterday visiting with family members of those who were on the Fitz, which was very cool. A gazillion people probably played his song today. I was one of them. Why did I play it? Because.

P.S. Here’s Arlo singing “City of New Orleans”. A train song. I don’t *think* there’s an ad. (Yes there is…)

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