A Litte Best of

I don't usually even like reading best of lists, but I do sometimes make one up for a mailing list I'm on. This year my best records of 2004 included a lot from 2003--they were new to me in 04 I guess.

In no particular order, some of my favorite records of 2004:

American Music Club - Love Songs for Patriots
Seeing them live in support of this record was amazing. Mr. Eitzel never disappoints me (well, except for once when he got way too agitated on stage).

Bobby Bare, Jr - From the End of Your Leash
Bittersweet alt country or whatever it's called. "I was born at the Ryman Auditorium during the Martha White portion of the Grand Ole Opry/Roy Acuff cut off my umbilical and tied me off with his yo-yo string" makes me so happy.

The Decemberists - Her Magesty The Decemberists (end of 2003)
Really great words.

Iron & Wine - I don't own Our Endless Numbered Days (yet), but have been digging the iTunes Exclusive EP and also the cover of the Postal Service songs from Give Up.

Lucinda Williams - World Without Tears (mid 2003)
Ok it's from last year, but it's a cd I've listened to over & over in 2004.

Richmond Fontaine - Post to Wire
This fella's voice breaks like Richard Buckner's a bit, but with more of a twang and I like that. And yes, they remind me of the Replacements sometimes.

Wilco - A Ghost is Born
It's taken me forever to really listen to enough Wilco to love one of their records & I really dig this one. Kidsmoke is one of my favorites which is surprising since it's a 10min song.

Clem Snide - A Beautiful EP (late 2003)
I adore the Velvet Underground cover, I'll Be Your Mirror.

Richard Buckner - Dents and Shells
I haven't figured out what the hell he's saying yet, but Picture Day is my favorite song off this. Seeing him sing from behind his hair in Somerville this year made me like him even more.

I originally had the Black Eyed Peas album Elephunk here, but if I'm sticking to 10 I have to include Kanye West - College Dropout instead. He deserves all of the press he's getting.

For Christmas I received Loretta Lynn's Van Lear Rose which I'm enjoying. Jack White produced it and you can tell. It's funny to hear Loretta with White Stripes guitars behind her.

Holidays

McKinnons has a sign in their window that reads, "Holiday Pointsetters available." It made me smile enroute to flauta de papa at Picante. Wish I'd had my camera.

Fire

Two horrible fires within the past two weeks.

First, the Al-Baqi Islamic Center in Springfield, MA was set on fire. Last year I participated in a Day of Service through work and spent the day working in the center in Springfield. We winterized windows, scraped and painted walls, and some folks put up a new ceiling in the basement. Last week some young folks broke in to steal candy and money and set the place on fire. It was a complete loss.

Second, I had my last drawing class on Tuesday. The next night I heard my professor's voice coming from the nightly news: her house had burned down. Unbelievable. Another complete loss. I'll have to call the school and see if they're doing anything to help--I hope the other folks in my class will be doing the same. So glad to read that her dog is okay, but so sad that all of her artwork is lost.

Books

I'm currently reading Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex, his 2003 Pulitzer Prize winning novel.

At first I was surprised where the book took me. See, I'd recently taken a break from Peter Balakian's The Burning Tigris because I was having nightmares about the Armenian Genocide. Well, within a few chapters Middlesex had me reading about the burning of Smyrna in 1922. The main characters, Greeks from Asia Minor, encounter an Armenian physician in Smyrna. Luckily I didn't dream about fires and dead bodies, but Eugenides did paint an incredibly clear picture. As the Greeks and Armenians stood on the shore trying to escape the burning city, I realized I was holding my breath while I read.

Middlesex has reminded me how much I loved my 'Classics in Translation' class in high school (Eugenides mentions ancient Greek Lit quite a bit). If I remember correctly there were only 4 of us in the class. We sat in the large office of the Head of the Upper School (our teacher), at a wooden table, by the big leaded bow window overlooking the lower field. Sounds much more preppy than it actually was (maybe). I remember reading Agamemnon by Aeschylus outloud and really digging it.

It's funny the things that end up really grabbing your attention in school--as well as ancient Greek Lit in high school, I got pretty wrapped up in Ralph Waldo Emerson's essays in college. My American Lit prof probably didn't mean it and probably wouldn't remember, but she jokingly said the English Dept needed an Emerson-type and maybe it would be me someday. I was thrilled.

So Middlesex has me thinking about all of this and thankfully not dreaming about the Armenian Genocide.

WDW(2)

9am this morning I was sitting across from the harbor listeing to Kelly Goto talk about redesigning sites and managing workflow. Very helpful. Definitely need a strategic roadmap at work. Maybe it'll happen.

Around 10am this morning I was shaking Jeffrey Zeldman's hand and thanking him for A List Apart. Being the only web person in a nonprofit, A List Apart makes me feel like I have some colleagues to turn to when I can't figure something out.

I've listened to Jason Fried from 37signals talk about defensive design and next is Kelly Goto again with a workshop on web writing.

Seeing so many folks using BBEdit, it reminded me I need to upgrade to 8.0. As an old Bare Bones employee, I should keep up better with updates. I downloaded the demo during one of the workshops and really like the changes I've seen so far.

Time to go grab a good seat.

WDW

Day one at Web Design World. Infact, first 2 hours. Listening to Molly Holzschlag talk about CSS in a room of maybe two hundred folks? I'm bad at crowd estimating.

Started the day with a wonderful talk by Jeffrey Zeldman. Wonder if I'll bump into him so I can thank him for the hundreds of times A List Apart has gotten me out of a web design/development jam at work.

Soon, a talk by Douglas Bowman about building interfaces with CSS.

Very exciting and so far both presentations have been given on Macs -- Zeldman's using Safari and now Molly's using Firefox. Excellent.

Oxford American

The Oxford American is finally back. They've hooked up with the University of Central Arkansas and they sound pretty solid now.

I'm so glad; this is my favorite magazine. I'd pay the subscription fee for the music issue alone. Kaye Gibbons will be writing a column now and there will be a Southern Food issue at some point. I'm thrilled. Where else can you read about slug burgers in Mississippi and obscure art from Alabama?