What I'm Listening To

Time to switch it up a bit. I can't say my music horizon has been infinitely widened since leaving the cities, but some new material has found its way to my ears. Tom Waits continues to bow me away on a regular basis. Having only found his music in the last year, I am still working my way through his massive back catalog. My most recent finds, his cover of "Somewhere" from "West Side Story." Instrumentally, it is a pretty traditional, straight-forward take on the song. Vocally, however, is anything but traditional, Waits' rough, gravelly crooning brings a whole new element to the love song. I highly recommend it if you can get your hands on it.

In other exciting music news, Peter & the Wolf has released a new EP. For those of you not familiar, Peter & the Wolf is the name of Red Hunter's band of pieced together musicians from Austin, TX. "The Ivori Palms" was recorded while Red was living as a vagabond in Canada and recorded on a four track. I have yet to hear the whole thing, but the tracks I have heard are wonderful. It is a bit of a step aside from the country/folk of "Lightness," but it is by no means a misstep. It is more experiemental, varied in instrumentation and it has slightly more layered vocals. If you ever get the chance to hear any of their work, do it. You won't be dissapointed.

One of these days I will post the tracks from my first Ithaca mix.

Sidenote: Bri and I will be in MN from next Thursday night through Sunday morning for a wedding (the 11-14). We are attempting to find a time to get together with a group of people, but are still not exactly sure if it will be Thursday after we get in, or at another time. Let me know if you are going to be around and want to get together.

Cascadilla Creek

Being that I have been unemployed for about two months now, I am getting a little stir crazy in the apartment. So, I have been trying to make an extra effort to get out of the house while the weather is still decent. Over the weekend I got out in the evening to walk around the neighborhood and smoke my pipe. Ithaca is an incredibly quiet place at night and very peaceful to walk around.
Yesterday I decided to go for a bit longer walk. I thought I would follow the creek that runs through town a block south of our house. The creek runs east-west through town and is pretty much a cement drainage ditch through the city. The fun starts at the base of the Cornell hill though, the creek comes out of a gorge that forms the southern end of the Cornell campus. I hiked the mile or so up the gorge to where the path ends in a stairwell that leads to the Cornell/Collegetown bridge. It was funny to realize that several of the people I passed on the trail were actually walking to their classes from town. It is funny to see a guy dressed in business casual, rocking to his ipod, and carrying a briefcase walking through what feels like the middle of nowhere. Anyways, here are some pictures I took. Enjoy

As Promised...An Update

I think I am starting to get used to this place. I know, scary thought. I will admit that I stop in my tracks at the absurdity at times, but more often, I just stop, nod my head and realize, it's just Ithaca.
For instance, I went to an informal get together/informational meeting for the Vineyard Church's worship team a little while back. The email that I recieved with the information about the meeting said that there would be lunch, featuring vegan, organic, gluten free chili. Now don't get me wrong, I have no problem with being health concious and all, but this is verging on the absurd. Needless to say, I ate ahead of time. The meeting was pretty much a bust as well, it looks like I won't be playing at the Vineyard church any time soon.
Speaking of church, Bri and I branched out and tried a new one. We attended the Tabernacle Baptist church a few blocks up the road from our house. After checking out the website, we really didn't have that great of an idea of what we were getting ourselves into, but we wanted to check out a church that was within walking distance. I will say that I enjoyed the fact that the hymn book was the good old Chapel Hymnal that I spent so many wonderful hours with in Hymnology, Theory, Instrumentation, and who knows how many other music classes at Bethel. For those of you wondering at this point, no, this was not a BGC church. I am pretty sure if this congregation encountered a BGC church, they would cry heathen. Never before have I heard the term Fundamentalism thrown around as a badge of honor in quite the way they did. Also, I have never before heard a church's constitution quoted as justification for a sermon point. The plus side of going, we no longer have to wonder if we should check it out again.

In adventuring news, Bri and I took a trip up the east side of the lake last week Sunday. Now if you recall my review of the west side of the lake, you will remember it is filled with vineyards and tourist stops. Not so much on the east side. It is primarily farming country until you reach Aurora about 30 miles north of Ithaca. Home of Wells College (as in Wells Fargo), Aurora is a pretty quaint New England town. I would definitely enjoy spending time there in the future. Past Aurora, we just kept going and found ourselves at the North end of the Lake.
We decided to venture into Seneca Falls. For those of you who aren't intimately educated with all the history and geography of Upstate NY, Seneca Falls was the home of the great women's rights convention of 1848 (thank you wikipedia). It is considered by some to be the birthplace of feminism. Now don't get me wrong, that is cool and all, but my favorite Seneca Falls fact is that it was the filming location for my favorite Christmas movie of all time, "It's a Wonderful Life." Sadly, in our travels around town, I didn't recognize anything from the movie, but we did get to see the city park named after the 1848 convention.
Upon leaving Seneca Falls, we took an out of the way path back down to Ithaca and got to see a lot of the little towns along the way. It is eerily similar to driving through southwest MN or NW Iowa. Corn, soybeans and lots of little farmhouses. Good times.
I will end here for now. I have some pictures to add from a walk I just took up Cascadilla Creek, but I will make you all anxiously await those.

My Nephew

A lot of you had the chance to meet my nephew Tristan at the wedding in June. If you need a reminder, he was the one holding my hand at the front of the church and walking around from time to time. Tristan has been through a lot in life so far. He has been diagnosed ADHD, and has had many of his developmental issues blamed on a fairly mysterious virus that attacked his brain when he was very young.
Tristan began hallucinating on Tuesday and after being taken to the ER, he was transferred to a children's hospital in Des Moines, IA. Most of us thought it was a symptom of new medication that he had been placed on to help counteract his ADHD, but the docters thought it wasn't related. After several days of observation at the children's hospital, Tristan has been diagnosed with a Pervasive Developmental Disorder. Tristan's particular disorder is autism, a specific PDD. This combined with the lingering affects of the virus make it difficult for doctors to know how to treat him. They think that when the virus attacked his brain, it caused it to rewire to compensate, thus he reacts to medication in ways that most people wouldn't. In the little bit of research that Bri has done tonight, it looks as though the Autism itself could be a result of the virus as well.
Long story short, this is kinda scary. On the plus side, we finally have an answer to many of the difficulties that Tristan has faced so far, on the down side, this is a diagnosis that isn't really easily treatable. I am not really sure where that leaves us now, but I thought I would share this with you all so you can keep him in your prayers.
I apologize for my lack of updates lately, there are some things I will try to get up in the next few days.
As a short update, I still don't have a job, but there have been some improvements. Bri and I have our plane tickets to return to MN the 11-14 of October. We will be pretty busy, but there should be at least one time during the weekend when we will try to get a group together at Barley John's.

The BQE

For anyone who really knows me, it is understood that I have basically no desire to go to New York City. Only a couple reasons have come to mind that have made me remotely interested in making the now much shorter trek down to that frightening. Mainly those have been the chace to see a taping of The Daily Show or The Colbert Report. The fact that Colbert is going to be at Cornell later this fall made me think that I might be able to rid myself of any reason to ever visit the city. That was before I decided to visit the Asthmatic Kitty website to see what Sufjan Stevens is up to these days. Lo and behold, I find out that he is doing a three night concert at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Now, this is not just some regular, run of the mill Sufjan concert, which would be something in and of itself, no, this is a performance of an avant garde, slightly programatic, I am not quite sure, nor is anyone else, how to describe it piece. I mean, c'mon, it includes video and pictures of Brooklyn, Queens and a freeway accompanied by music composed based on those places. I know many people are sick of Sufjan and think he has got a little full of himself, but I am transfixed. The fact that he describes the piece as being somewhere between Impressionist, Copeland or John Williams increases my interest exponentially.
So, maybe it is good I am poor. That way my excuse is made easy. I can't afford to go, thus, my greatest motivation to ever visit the city is negated by the fact that I need a job.

http://asthmatickitty.com/news.php?newsID=203

Welcome to September

I am a little late on this one, but apparantly summer ended a few days ago. I can't say the Labor Day weekend was terribly exciting. Bri and I did drive up the west side of the lake on Saturday. We decided to stop at Sheldrake Point Winery. We picked up a bottle of their dry Riesling the first week we were out here and it was fairly impressive. They have a nice bistro at the winery, so we stayed for lunch. I am proud/ashamed to say that I ate my first salad in over 3 years and I kind of liked it. I also had an organic bbq pulled chicked sandwich and a flight of red wine. All in all I was really impressed with the food and the wine.
That was pretty much the story of the weekend. Summer just kinda snuck out the door when no one was looking. I guess when you get married and move a 1000 miles, you kinda lose track of how much time is going by. It is also strange to realize that even though I am no longer taking classes or working at Bethel, my life is still directly affected by a new school year. Bri is in the full swing of classes and this quiet, peaceful town has been invaded by a huge number of undergrads who don't really pay attention to where they are walking. I am not kidding, every time I drive Bri to class I nearly hit one of them, it's kind of incredible.
I am still job searching and not coming up with much. I applied for a custodial position at Cornell this week. It was a little odd realizing that I am absurdly overqualified for what they are looking for, but oh well.
Tonight will be spent mini-golfing with the church small group. Hopefully it treats me better than disc. I lost my 2nd to last driver during a round on Saturday night, thus, disc may be going on an extended hiatus till next spring when I have some money to get some new drivers.