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thebrewstorian · 3 years

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Collection Report: McMenamins Brewery Collection, 1983-2015

Oh my gosh, this collection has been in my backlog for YEARS! It has been so long that when my daughter helped with the inventory on the brew sheets she was 11 years-old and couldn't check herself out of summer camp [now she can drive and has taken the SAT], but she could talk with John Richen (brewing manager at the time) about her favorite beer names and things she'd noticed about ingredients.

Go straight to the guide: http://bit.ly/mss_mcmenamins

Learn more about the Oregon brewing industry in my Oregon Encyclopedia article

The McMenamins Brewery Collection is, truly, a gem. We scanned thousands of brew sheets, which is a part of the magic, but I'm also delighted by all the fun ephemera, including a full run of their coasters. I'll also add that the company biography included in this guide is really a love letter to the company, and I thank Fred Eckhardt, John Foyston, and all the other journalists over the past 30 years for recording all the fun quirks about this company.

SUMMARY McMenamins is a family-owned chain of brewpubs, breweries, historic hotels, and theater pubs in the Pacific Northwest.

The McMenamins Brewery Collection includes digitized brew sheets, digital images, brochures, coasters, decals, event programs, flyers, newspaper clippings, tap handles, posters, labels, a wooden cask, and a six-pack of Hammerhead beer.

COMPANY BIO

McMenamins is a family-owned chain of brewpubs, breweries, historic hotels, and theater pubs in the Pacific Northwest. It was founded by brothers Mike and Brian McMenamin, who grew up in Northeast Portland. In 2021, they operated 56 properties, with twelve hotels; dozens of breweries, pubs, and restaurants; movie theaters; spas; music venues; and a coffee roaster, winery, cidery and distillery. Many locations are rehabilitated historical buildings and at least nine are on the National Register of Historic Places. McMenamins only sells its beer in its own pubs, restaurants, hotels, and movie theaters.

Early businesses

Mike and Brian McMenamin both graduated from Oregon State University, Mike with a Political Science degree (1974) and Brian with a Business degree (1980). Mike and two college friends purchased the Produce Row Café, a bar known for all-night, high-stakes poker games, in Portland's warehouse district in 1974 and sold more than 100 types of beer. The building was built in 1951 and opened as a breakfast café for produce dockworkers in 1953; in later years, it was a barbershop. Mike and Brian bought Bogart's Joint, another Portland-area pub on 14th and Flanders. At various points in history, many beer-related activities occurred in this building: Kurt and Rob Widmer brewed in this location, and it was later space occupied by Portland Brewing and Rogue Ales Public House. By 1980, they'd sold Produce Row, Bogart's Joint, and a third tavern, the Stockyard Café.

Mike opened a wine distributorship and Brian opened the McMenamins Pub in Hillsboro. By 1983, Mike’s distributorship had failed, and the brothers decided to try the bar business again. Rather than the smoky, male-dominated taverns common in Portland, they were inspired by the community hubs they’d seen in Europe. They bought the Fat Little Rooster tavern on Southeast Hawthorne and renamed it the Barley Mill Pub; in addition to a varied beer selection, the pub was known for Grateful Dead memorabilia and anniversary parties. The namesake “barley mill,” which can still be found onsite, was used by Chuck Coury at Cartwright Brewing Co., Portland’s first post-Prohibition brewery. It was originally a kitty litter grinder but is now used annually to grind the grain for anniversary ales.

One major event that impacted the trajectory of the beer industry in Oregon in the 1980s was legislation that married production and sales. Fred Bowman and Art Larrance (Portland Brewing), Dick and Nancy Ponzis (BridgePort Brewing) and their brewer Karl Ockert, Kurt and Rob Widmer (Widmer Brothers Brewing), and the McMenamins lobbied to legalize on-site sales. On July 13, 1985, Governor Vic Atiyeh signed Senate Bill 813, the “Brewpub Bill,” into law. It allowed brewers to make and sell beer on the same premises, key for increasing revenue and gaining new customers.

First brewpubs

The McMenamins took advantage of the new law, and by the early 1990s had opened several brewpubs, each with its own small brewing system attached. They opened the Hillsdale Brewery and Public House October 31, 1985 in the Southwest Portland neighborhood of Hillsdale. Not only was it their first brewery, it was also the first brewpub in Oregon since Prohibition. Known as “Captain Neon's Fermentation Chamber,” a nod to Mike McMenamin’s nickname, the first several batches of beer were brewed with old Tillamook dairy equipment. On October 25, 1985, Hillsdale's first brewer Ron Wolf, who had previously worked at Anchor Steam, brewed the first beer in a small copper kettle and called it "Hillsdale Ale.” It fell loosely into the “Special Bitter” classification of beer styles and was a malt extract brew. Hillsdale Ale was brewed 29 times at the Hillsdale location and 14 times at Cornelius Pass Roadhouse between 10/25/1985 and 11/28/1986. In the first year, several brewers moved through the facility and made Hillsdale Ale, including Ron Wolf (who only brewed 13 batches before leaving), Conrad Santos (who replaced Wolf as brew master), Mike McMenamin, Brian McMenamin, John Harris, Scott Barrow, and Alex Farnham (the company’s first female brewer).

In 1986, they purchased a 125-year-old farmhouse in Hillsboro, Oregon, and turned it into the Cornelius Pass Roadhouse. Later that same year, they opened the Lighthouse Brewpub in Lincoln City. The Fulton Pub and Brewery opened in Portland in June 1988 and the Highland Pub and Brewery opened in Gresham in July 1988.

Eventually, 27 breweries would operate under the McMenamins umbrella and they became a training ground for new brewers, many of whom have gone on to found breweries of their own. Alumni include John Harris (Hillsdale, Cornelius Pass Roadhouse), Jack Harris (Cornelius Pass Roadhouse, Lighthouse Brewery), Jason McAdam (Edgefield, Hillsdale, Crystal Ballroom), Alex McGaw (Fulton, Crystal Ballroom), Ben Nehrling and Kevin Lee (Edgefield, Highland, Kennedy School), and Mark Goodwin (Old Church, Crystal Ballroom).

In addition to serving beer at their brewpubs, the company also hosted festivals, concerts, and other public programming events at their properties, including Dad Watson’s Brew Fest, Edgefield Brew Fest, Highland Pub and Brewery Eurofest, Hillsdale Brew Fest, Lighthouse Brew Fest, Mid-Valley Brew Fest, and the Thompson Barley Cup.

Beer and Other Beverages

The McMenamins’ beers could be unsettling to brewing traditionalists; they used ingredients like apples, spices, and candy bars, as well as lesser used malts like Chocolate and Crystal. They introduced fruit beers to Oregon and early batches featured blackberries from the Hillsdale brewpub parking lot. Hand in hand with their experimentation, McMenamins developed three core beers that are brewed at all their breweries. Terminator Stout (1985) is a dark, English-style brew; Ruby (1986) is a light, raspberry-flavored beer; and Hammer Head (1986) is a classic Northwest Pale Ale. Ruby and Hammerhead are iconic company characters as well; artist Lyle Hehn created Ruby Witch and Hammerhead, and both are staples of murals, posters, and coasters.

Terminator Stout made its debut in 1985 at the Hillsdale Brewery & Public House as the 12th beer brewed. Old Hammerhead, as the strong ale was first called, was brewed January 25, 1986 and was the 37th brew and made with malt extract. John Harris, who later created Mirror Pond for Deschutes Brewery, was the first to make Hammerhead an “all-grain” beer. Harris was hired in 1987, and when they transitioned away from extract brewing, he decided to rewrite the Hammerhead recipe; besides changed the grain, he also added more hops. Ruby, originally called “Ruby Tuesday” before the food chain objected, was first brewed in 1986 and used 42 pounds of pureed Oregon raspberries.

The company made more than beer. They planted 3 acres of Pinot Gris fruit in 1990 and looked to regional vineyards for additional grapes; McMenamins Edgefield Winery was established in 1992 and began by making Rhone-style wines, including grenache and viognier. The Edgefield Winery produces 20 different white, rosé, dessert, and sparkling wines and supplies 350 tons of wine to McMenamins pubs. Also in 1992, and predating the boom by more than 20 years, McMenamins started making cider at the winery and in 2018 sold as much cider by volume as wine.

In 1995, they began experiments with distillation and made brandy under contract by Carneros Alembic, a California distillery owned by Remy-Martin. In 1997, they built their first distillery in an old root vegetable storage barn on the Edgefield property. Their most popular whiskey is Hogshead, but they make several others, including Money Puzzle, which is dry hopped with Teamaker hops (which has 0 IBUs) and is sweetened with blackberry honey harvest from hives on their property.

Historic preservation

The brothers’ love of historic structures directed business growth and community involvement, and preserving important historical buildings is integral to their business. When the McMenamins started, they couldn’t afford new construction, so they purchased old buildings, which came with stories. They employ a small staff of historians to research and document the history, and those are in turn incorporated into each property’s art, murals, menus, place names, and architectural details.

In 1987, the company opened its first theater, the Mission Theater Pub, in downtown Portland. The converted 1890s Swedish Tabernacle, a church-turned-union hall, was also the state's first theater pub. In 1991, McMenamins turned a 1927 art deco theater that was slated for demolition into a second pub and movie house. These businesses were significant and ushered in a new way to watch movies with beer and food.

In 1987, the brothers purchased Edgefield, which was built in 1911 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. They paid $560,000 and invested another $2.5 million to transform the farm's 80-year-old buildings into a multi-utility complex. Edgefield was once the Multnomah County Poor Farm, a self-sufficient facility with a meatpacking plant, power station, large rooming house, and infirmary. When the remodeled Edgefield Manor opened in 1991, the meatpacking plant was a brewery, power station a pub with a movie theater, infirmary a winery, and rooming house a 100-room hotel. There was also a meeting space, catering operation, restaurant called the Black Rabbit, herb and flower gardens, four liquor and cigar bars, distillery, golf course, and amphitheater. One of the more outstanding features of Edgefield, and something that would become the McMenamins' signature, was the extensive art installations created by local artists. Art popped up in surprising places throughout the complex (on ceilings, exposed heating pipes, eaves, fuse boxes) and showed local subjects (former residents, Northwest Indians, 19th-century brewers, the Columbia River Gorge). Within a few years, the company had a set of 12 freelance artists ready to work on new property acquisitions. Edgefield brewery is still the company's largest property.

In 1997, they purchased the Crystal Ballroom in Portland, which had been vacant for 30 years, and ﬁlled it with murals depicting the building's history, a brewpub, and a bar. The building was famous for its swaying dance ﬂoor, which sat on ball bearings. The Crystal Hotel was built in 1911 and became a dance hall and concert facility that hosted national music acts. Around the same time, they partnered with the Portland Development Commission and invested $4.5 million to remodel the Kennedy Elementary School. What was once a boarded-up building was transformed into a 35-room multi-use hotel with an onsite brewery, restaurant and four bars, a movie theater, a jazz hall, cigar bar, and soaking pool.

In 1999, the McMenamins opened McMenamins Hotel Oregon in downtown McMinnville, Oregon. The building was listed in the National Register of Historic Places and had been a hotel since its ﬁrst two stories were erected in 1905; five years later, two more ﬂoors were added. In 1932, the hotel was renamed Hotel Oregon. In addition to renovating guest rooms, the McMenamins renovation added two bars and an art gallery with old photographs and new paintings that showed the history of the hotel and McMinnville.

Many property renovations followed. In 2000, they opened the Grand Lodge in Forest Grove, Oregon, which was formerly a Masonic home built in 1922. In 2001, they opened the 27 room Olympic Club Hotel and Theater, which was an expansion of the McMenamins Olympic Club Pub in downtown Centralia, Washington. The original Oxford Hotel was built in 1908 and Olympic Club was built in 1913. In 2003, they reopened the Rock Creek Tavern in Hillsboro, Oregon, which they had purchased in 1995 when the original tavern burned down. In 2016, the Anderson School in Bothell, Washington opened. The original Anderson School was built in 1931 and opened in 1936. In April of 2018, McMenamins opened their latest project, the Kalama Harbor Lodge in Kalama, Washington. Other properties include the White Eagle Saloon & Hotel in Portland, which was built in 1905; Boon’s Treasury in Salem, built in the 1860s; and Old St. Francis School in Bend, which opened in 1936.

ARCHIVAL COLLECTION INFORMATION The brew sheets and some event materials were provided to the Special Collections & Archives Research Center in 2015 and 2016 for digitization. The original items have been retained by McMenamins.

In addition to the brewery activity and the various beers released by McMenamins, this collection also contains information on events organized by the company, such as homebrew competitions and festivals. The cask held in the collection was used at the Oak Hills Pub and is decorated with a pen drawing created by brewer Chris Haslett. The photographs show art installation, artists, and property renovation.

The brew sheets and some event materials were provided to the Special Collections & Archives Research Center in 2015 and 2016 for digitization. The original items were retained by McMenamins.

Physical and electronic records are available for use in the Special Collections and Archives Research Center reading room.

#oregon beer #beer history #mcmenamins

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sportsintersections · 4 years

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16 Awesome Queer Sports Books: Books with LGBTQIA+ Athlete Representation

Image: Daniela Porcelli/Getty Images.

In some ways, the last few years has been a golden time for LGBTQIA+ athletes. The 2019 Women’s World Cup was a record tournament for LGBTQ+ visibility, with at least five players on the U.S. women’s national soccer team being openly queer (Ali Krieger and her now-wife Ashlyn Harris, Megan Rapinoe, A.D. Franch, and Tierna Davidson), as well as coach Jill Ellis, and another player coming out in the moment captured in the photo above, kissing her girlfriend in celebration. Rapinoe’s girlfriend, Sue Bird, another out lesbian athlete who plays in the WNBA, wrote an open letter to the President of the United States. A blockbuster movie told the story of iconic out lesbian tennis star Billie Jean King. Jason Paul Collins came out in 2013 (but retired the following year). Michael Sam was the first openly gay man to be drafted into the NFL in 2014 (but he has since retired).

But, according to the Human Rights Campaign, 70% of LGBTQIA+ people don’t come out to their teammates while still playing a sport, and 82% of athletes have witnessed homophobic and/or transphobic language in their sport. It is still more common, especially for male athletes, to come out after they have already left their sport (TW for homophobic slurs/statements and suicidal ideation), and many athletes who are still playing face backlash (TW for misgendering & general transphobia).

These books, from memoirs by professional queer athletes to YA romances with LGBTQIA+ athlete protagonists, explore these issues and more.

Books are YA fiction unless otherwise noted.

Spinning, by Tillie Walden (graphic memoir)

This beautiful graphic novel memoir captures Tillie’s experience with figure skating and why she eventually decided to give it up. Full review here.

Girl Crushed, by Katie Heaney

Quinn thought her senior year would be perfect: college scouts recruiting her to her dream school for D1 soccer and her best-friend-turned-girlfriend at her side. But then Jamie dumps her, a month before the school year begins, and it’s getting a little late to have heard back from schools, if she’s going to end up on one of the top teams. Over the course of the school year, Quinn learns that her binary black-and-white, gay-and-straight, success-and-failure ways of seeing her world could stand to be a little more complicated. This book is about identity, self-esteem, friendship, crushes, and soccer. There are also many fun USWNT references! TW for some (challenged) bisexual erasure.

The Reappearing Act: Coming Out on a College Basketball Team Led by Born-Again Christians, by Kate Fagan (adult memoir)

Kate was thrilled to be playing basketball for a nationally-ranked school and to have a close-knit group of teammates. Her best friends were part of Colorado’s Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and she tried to join them and learn about their church, but she started to realize that she might be one of those people whose “sinful lifestyles” they talked about. She had to figure out how to come out without losing her friends, and her team.

Check, Please! Volume 1, by Ngozi Ukazu (graphic novel)

This adorable graphic novel (which was originally published as a popular webcomic) follows Bitty, a former junior figure skating champion and enthusiastic baker, who somehow ended up on the Samwell University hockey team. He’s terrified of checking (what if he gets hurt??), trying to figure out if he can win over the guys with pies, and also feeling some kind of way about the hot but grumpy captain.

Keeper of the Dawn, by Dianna Gunn

Lai wants to become a priestess, like her mother and grandmother were before her, but first she must prove herself in the trials she’s been training for her whole life. Nothing goes according to plan, but she can still depend on herself and her skill as a fighter and a horseback rider and take matters into her own hands. This fantasy novel features an asexual protagonist and a f/f romance.

The Passing Playbook, by Isaac Fitzsimmons (2020/2021 release)

This book hasn’t been released yet, but there are so few (if any) own voices YA sports books with trans characters that I decided to include it anyway. A queer, biracial, trans soccer player is benched, and has to decide whether to fight the ruling, even though that would mean coming out to everyone…including the Christian teammate he’s falling for.

Running with Lions, by Julian Winters

This coming-of-age novel follows Sebastian, a bisexual rising senior who’s excited for his last summer at soccer camp, where his teammates are great and the coach doesn’t expect anyone to stay in the closet. But then Emir Shah, a Muslim British-Pakistani new recruit, shows up. He also happens to be Sebastian’s former best friend, and they left things on pretty bad terms. So why is he finding himself attracted to Emir all of the sudden?

None of the Above, by I.W. Gregorio

I am hesitant to recommend this non-ownvoices intersex representation, but it’s the only book I know of about an intersex teen athlete, and, while it is imperfect and seems geared towards a non-intersex audience, there are certainly some good things to be said about it. It is informative, well-researched, and moving. Kristin, a homecoming queen and champion hurdler with a cute boyfriend, seems to be having a great high school experience. But a doctor’s visit reveals that she’s intersex, and, while she’s still coming to terms with what that might mean for her and her identity, her diagnosis is leaked to the whole school. TW for transphobic/anti-intersex slurs and bullying.

Forward: My Story, Young Readers’ Edition, by Abby Wambach (memoir)

U.S. Women’s National Team soccer star Abby Wambach tells her story with honesty and vulnerability, sharing how she came to lead her team to a World Cup win in 2015. She is open about her sexuality and romantic life (including a named mention of a certain pink-haired teammate, who also happens to be her ex-girlfriend) and how it affected her career.

We Ride Upon Sticks, by Quan Barry (adult fiction, with teen protagonists)

The 1989 Danvers high field hockey team finds themselves winning…a lot. Is it because they all wrote their names in a mysterious notebook with Emilio Estevez on the cover, and pledged themselves to dark forces so they could make the state championships? This darkly funny story explores friendship, sportsmanship, and what means to find power and sense of self as a teen girl.

Beautiful on the Outside, by Adam Rippon (adult non-fiction)

In his comedic memoir, Olympic figure skater Adam Rippon shares his journey from poverty and uncertainty to success and becoming a self-professed American sweetheart. He opens up about anxiety attacks, coming to terms with his sexuality and coming out, and some enjoyable behind-the-scenes gossip. He also narrates the audiobook.

Ana on the Edge, by A.J. Sass (middle-grade, fall 2020 release)

Twelve-year-old Ana-Marie is the reigning U.S. Juvenile figure skating champion, but that doesn’t mean everything feels easy or figured out. When Ana meets Hayden, a transgender boy, at the rink, Hayden mistakes Ana for a boy…and Ana doesn’t bother to correct him. In fact, it feels good to be seen as a boy. Now Ana must decide which identity feels the most right, in time for a big competition coming up. This book isn’t out yet, but it’s due to be released in fall 2020, and it is written by a non-binary (and autistic) author, who is also a figure skater.

Heartstopper, Volume 1, by Alice Oseman (graphic novel)

Charlie is neurotic and openly gay (after he was outed last year and bullied for months), and hoping that Year 10 at the British all-boys grammar school will be better. He meets Nick, an upbeat, sweet rugby player, and they become friends. Soon he finds himself hoping that their friendship turns into something more.

Fearless: Portraits of LGBT Student Athletes, by Jeff Sheng (non-fiction)

This is a memoir of an American artist who uses his story as a closeted high school athlete in the 1990s as a jumping-off-point to depict hundreds of photos of other LGBTQ+ high school and college athletes in the U.S. and Canada between 2003 and 2015.

Amateur, by Thomas McBee (adult memoir/non-fiction)

In this memoir, Thomas McBee describes grappling with the meaning of masculinity, violence, and sports. As a trans man, he has noticed since his transition that the world treats him completely differently and expects different things from him. But what does he want, and how does he want to define masculinity and strength for himself? He decides to train for a charity boxing match at Madison Square Garden as a way to find out.

Dryland, by Sara Jaffe

Julie is a cynical teen in Portland at the height of the grunge movement, struggling to define herself and her sexuality. No one in her family is willing to talk about her older brother, who at one point seemed destined for the Olympics but then fell off the map. Julie has never considered swimming herself, but then the swim team captain convinces her to join. Is this what she’s been looking for -- a way to get closer to her brother and maybe herself?

[All book covers belong to their respective publishers].

#books #yabooks #sportsbooks #booksaboutsports #sports #queer books #queerathletes #lgbtqia #gay athletes #gay books #lesbian athletes #wlw books #intersex athletes #trans athletes #asexual #comics #graphic novels

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orlandomckane-blog · 5 years

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Alleged sexual harassment granted amnesty

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dwightkschrute · 6 years

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In 2014 and 2015 I did a my year in review kind of thing where I, of course, reviewed it and accompanied it with a picture from that month. I somehow forgot to post 2016 (until now) and forgot to do it at all for 2017 but unfortunately, I am back with a really disappointing year. I was debating not putting myself through the legit pain of “reviewing” this year but I think of how I love going through my 2009-2010 posts and seeing how much I’ve grown so this is for you, successful and cooler future me.

2016 and 2017 were amazing but 2018 was my most promising year. My boyfriend and I were going to move in, I was going to start my dream job; everything was perfect. It definitely started out as one of the best years of my life! Then exactly halfway through the year everything changed and I was left having to pick up the pieces and completely restart, making it one of the worst years of my life.

I started January in Mexico, which was the best, but my family and I got home early in the month. I had quit my job the month before so I dedicated the entirety of this month to job hunting. Our friend (my bf’s bff who became mine and my brother’s bff early on)’s dad got a boat so it was like we got a boat too because despite the cold, we lived on it. (My boyfriend couldn’t go on the trip with us, which he was super bummed about (and that we had to spend like 10 days apart which was killer then), so he was the one to pick us up at the airport and he greeted me with a bouquet of flowers. Out of the many gifts/gestures he gave me, that was one of my favorites.)

February I started my amazing new job so life was back to 40 hour work weeks and not having much time for much else. I was always attached to the hip to my bf so almost every day after work entailed going out with him or having dinner with my family or his. That was my month. My favorite part of every February is Valentine’s Day and this one was as amazing as the rest. I don’t even have enough space (of the allotted space I give myself for each entry at least!) to describe that day. (My bf at our Valentine’s Day dinner. We finished our long day at this restaurant (so, so cool, once popular with Old Hollywood stars) on Hollywood Blvd and it was dreamy and romantic and amazing.) Oh man, I don’t have a lot of interesting things to say about March. Oh, my parents got Influenza (A/B/idk tbh), so it was two weeks of my brother, bf, and I taking care of them. My dad has a serious chronic disease so it was especially dangerous for him so it was a stressful time. Once we weren’t in hazmat suits anymore (no but really, we were gloved and double masked around them and kept them quarantined), I’d be at work or with my bf. I also started to get close with a co-worker, who I quickly became close friends with! (My bf’s two huskies. I’ve just loved that picture since I took it! I’ve never been loved by a dog more than the one in the back of this pic. Not even by my own! He has a special place in my heart.)

April was barbecues at my house or my bf’s, trying every brewery and bar around, hikes, bike rides, beach visits, baseball games, boat rides, late night cooking and baking. It was lots and lots of love and happiness and I would give absolutely anything to go back to those days. (My brother and bf grilling on Easter. This was a familiar scene, I have so many pictures of this exact scenario, yet looking at it just now made me so emotional! Stop! They’re just grilling!) May was so exciting! Very first day I got a new car! I was so happy! It was long overdue because my finicky, expensive Volkswagen had to go and I’d fallen in love with the new Honda Civic (I’ll admit I have basic taste but I don’t care!) so I finally bit the bullet and did it. This month my bf and I, after a long time of “oh wouldn’t it be nice!”, bit the bullet as well and decided to finally get serious about finding a place together. So the apartment search started, but we soon realized our home, Orange County, was super expensive. My bf, in that “ha ha jk but I’m down if you are” way, suggested we pick up and move to Oregon and I immediately agreed. It just felt right and despite us being the most careful and non-spontaneous people ever, we decided to do it! So we began to research, look for apartments but most importantly, jobs. (My car the day I took it home!)

Uhhhhhh, well, June hurts to think about! We went to visit Portland, where we decided we’d want to live because that’s where the jobs were, on a quick trip since it was strictly “business.” Portland was everything I imagined and more. We loved it and I think we loved playing house in our airbnb more than anything about the city. Back in LAX we came to the easy conclusion that though we lived Portland, that’d require a lot and for our first time moving out we’d like to stay close to home and above anything else, we just wanted to live together as soon as possible. We immediately started to look for places in LA, we spent the month apartment hunting, and towards the end of it, decided on one we really liked, one he begged me to please say yes to so we can move in already. I was so, so, so happy this month but what made me happier was seeing my bf, I swear, even happier than me. I seriously felt unstoppable and was beyond excited for our future. (I had a lot of Portland pictures to choose from but my bf and I liked this one because it reminded us of Always Sunny for some reason.)

In July, everything changed. To start, I left my job. I thought, new chapter in my life, new job coming, I’ll live really far, I should leave now. So I did. My last day was an emotional day because I loved my job so much and every single person I worked with. That very same day, my bf and I broke up. For unrelated reasons to my last day, to our moving in, to our relationship, etc. We had an amazing, amazing relationship but he has a lot of demons and issues/insecurities he has to deal with and conquer, and though I was aware and was there for him and would continue to be by his side no matter what, he decided that this was a battle he had to handle by himself and I figure before he got into a more committed situation. It didn’t have to happen, though. I hadn’t talked about the specifics of the breakup on my blog so sorry for changing the mood of the post, but yeah, July happened and it felt like my world stopped. Really regret quitting my job now, huh? I was hit by two huge losses and changes right at the same time. (I took this on my friend’s boat 20 tequila shots in, drunk and sad as fuck. Not to get fake deep but how sad. Literally on a boat, beautiful sunset, would rather die.)

August was a blur and I’m still not convinced I didn’t just dream it. God, alright, here we go, the rest of the year is a mess so get ready. I fell into a deep depression fast. It also didn’t help that my dad had to start getting radiation/infusions for his illness shortly after the breakup. I couldn’t believe how much my life had changed. I started dating someone else and then I dated another guy shortly after. I wanted to replace and/or forget and I really thought that’d be the solution. I was miserable when I was with them. I took absolutely any opportunity to get really drunk or high, and the opportunity came often so I spent most of my days desperately trying to not feel anything. The only time I’d feel okay was when I was extremely high and I couldn’t even think. Since I had a lot of savings for my out of state move, I had a lot of money to blow, which I did. I realized I even liked the feeling of the temporary “high” of spending a lot and receiving the stuff. I’d hang out with any friend who offered (out of boredom? loneliness?) and even ended up on a mess of a Vegas trip. Worst month ever. Maybe. (Here’s a positive! I like that bathing suit and my tiddie looks so round!)

When September came I realized two months had passed and all I had done was be a huge depressed mess. I no joke forgot about work. I just straight up forgot. I started to look for a new job, which hurt me so bad because I had to face the fact that it wouldn’t be my Cool LA Dream Job anymore. I stopped dating. Most importantly, I completely stopped drinking and smoking because it’d almost always make me sadder but also it scared me that I had no self control nor did I care. I saw a whole lot of my close friends and they, along with my immediate family, kept me afloat this month because time felt like it was going so fast. I couldn’t believe that at a blink of an eye it was night again and then a new day. Time had no mercy for me, please let me hold on. (Me at a baseball game. Tbh I’m looking at this thinking, did this really happen?)

October started out nice because my best friend of years, who I unfortunately had a falling out with three years ago, reached out to me. I’ll always give her all of the credit for doing that. I can’t begin to explain what this meant to me. It was a nice, bright shine of light that managed to shine through the dark clouds. Having my best friend is exactly what I needed. I’m a big believer in the universe acting in mysterious ways and though I had grown disappointed in its little surprise for me lately, this was the kind I always appreciate. I spent a good part of that month with her, catching up and doing things just like we did back then. It was like nothing had changed. That’s all I remember about this month, and a super fun Halloween! That day was probably one of the best days in months. (My best friend Rylee and me the first time seeing each other in 3 years. We’ve had our blogs for 8-9 years so please follow her for quality content)

November was rough. I was frustrated because surely things should had been better by then. I was still feeling so low, I was going to job interviews to no avail, I “relapsed” and had a high/drunk off my ass on a boat messy moment.. To make matters worse, I accidentally drove up on a cement divider in a parking lot and my airbags deploy, which is so expensive to fix, so my car was out of commission for a month. Then I got so sick and I rarely ever get a small cold. I seriously felt like I was cursed, even the smallest thing felt like an insult towards me. The one good thing is that since July I had been forcing myself to go to the gym five times a week. My mom said exercising was the only thing that’d help her feel that sweet release of seretonin, endorphins, dopamine, and all that good stuff when she was depressed so, though I enjoyed going to the gym before, I did it just for that reason alone. It worked and as another result I got like pretty fucking fit. Revenge body, you’re one of the few good things in my life right now. (I literally had no idea what to choose so I said fine, here’s a pic of the scene of the crime. Whatever.)

In December I turned 26. Which I hate, naturally. I went to a million more job interviews. I’m seriously so embarrassed to admit that but whatever, it’s the truth. (I have a degree, experience, and an awesome cover letter..I’ll keep blaming the curse!) What kept me sane was that we had different family members visiting from the very beginning of the month. Playing with an energetic, adorable baby kept me distracted and happy. Having so much company around also distracted me (slightly, but it helped!) from the fact that the holidays and my birthday would be quite different now. I’m one of those annoying Christmas lovers, usually at least. This year everything just happened and I didn’t care. But I survived December! (I don’t care. This is the appropriate representation of 2018 and how I feel at the end of it.)

Jesus if you’ve read all of this.. I’m sorry you had to read about the mess of my year but really more like the mess that is ME. Yknow those like “people my age I went to HS with vs me” memes? I seriously went from being that bitch with a good paying job, brand new car, a serious, great relationship with a promising future together (Like. We would color coordinate outfits! LMAO. We would have dinners with both of our families together. We were obsessed with each other. You’d roll your eyes if you saw any of this. I can’t get over how perfect we were, it’s hilarious what happened to us.) and then at the blink of an eye I went to not having absolutely any of that, casually dating (something I’d NEVER done) anyone who resembled my ex and sadly and drunkenly puking off the side of a pier. Who is she? I don’t know, I got whiplash. (Queen of parentheses and side notes, I know. But another thing about me is... I’ve never been affected by people leaving my life. I’m used to it. I’ve never been anywhere as affected as I was when my ex and I broke up. This isn’t normal for me, my ENTJ/Capricorn ass doesn’t know what this feeling is.)

Please curse that has been put on me, release me. Whoever is attacking my voodoo doll, calm down! Please! I’ve gone through enough sadness and loss. If 2019 is even slightly as bad, I’m going to be like that pigeon I reblogged the other day that’s like “fuck this I’m just going to sit here.” I can’t even make a cute but corny, hopeful “hope 2019 is great!” comment. I’m literally begging you...pleading you... I don’t believe in karma but after all of this shit, I better have something much better in stock for me. “Good things are coming!” I fucking hope so. Like, I’ll be even more annoying right now and say that it’s not fair that I didn’t get to have the future I was about to have. I don’t care about any cliche you may have for me. One door closes, everything happens for a reason, God has a plan, etc. No. Why did all of this have to happen? What can be better than the future I was going to have? I felt so unlucky. It all feels like a nightmare and I’m just waiting to feel whole again. Oh shit I got really intense. I know I’ll get over it and life will be good again eventually but for now, I am still so mad. I would have never in a million years guessed this is how my 2018 would go.

So fine, I’ve accepted things now, so now I’m impatient and say please prove me wrong, 2019. I’m THREATENING you to be amazing!

#2018 #OMFG MESSSSS of a year..#and i acted so embarrassingly sigh but that was 2018

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my-drowning-in-time · 6 years

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holy chips & guac long post

I was tagged by the wonderful @stardustheartbeats to share 10 facts about myself (oh jeez, here we go *finger guns into the shadows*)

I’ve got a pretty moderate-ish (???) fear of heights. I think it might be situational though, like it’s a big NOPE to put me on a 10′ ladder or in one of those gondolas coming down a mountain side (I was a mere seconds away from passing out, no joke) but I’m 100% A-ok with flying. But I’m working on it bc fear is useless and temporary.

The top grad schools I’m looking at for an MFA in Sculpture are: Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MassArt), and Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). I’m aiming for Fall 2019 but we’ll see where life takes me.

My sophomore year of college I got a really serious sinus infection that I lost my sense of taste for a month. The health center at school recommended that I go to an ENT but I was like mmm no thanks, I don’t have time for that, I have class. My friends were curious/thought I was bullshitting them so we played ‘Masterchef’ in the dining hall--it was basically them throwing together literally EVERYTHING in a bowl for me to eat. The texture of it was horrendous (but I’ve always had a thing about texture) but it tasted like nothing. The no-taste thing got real old real fast. Meals became a chore, like I know I have to eat bc this body fuckin needs sustenance to function properly but I could be eating sand rn and not know the difference. But lord almighty, when my sense of taste slowly started coming back I remember crying at the dinner table bc I could finally taste the spices in my grilled chicken. So don’t take that shit for granted bc it can mess with your head.

BatE and I have a shared note in our group chat of a list of places & events we want to go to. A few of them are: SDCC, Bali, ghost tours in Gettysburg, Mendenhall Glacier Caves in Alaska, a Chris Angel show in Vegas, and Portland are just a few. We’ve already been on a few trips together: OTH convention in Chicago, Boston for spring break, and 3/5 of us went to Ireland, England, and Wales in 2015.

I love going to book sales even though I have absolutely NO MORE ROOM FOR BOOKS. But that doesn’t stop me. Seriously tho, it’s turning into a problem. But like most of my problems, I’m just gonna shove that shit in a box, throw it on a shelf, and deal with it at a later date.

I’m allergic to kiwi and peppermint oil. My sophomore year roommate once surprised me with a coffee run while I was studying for midterms. She must’ve spaced that I’m allergic to peppermint so as she’s telling me about her day etc. I’ve already drunk half the damn thing when my mouth and throat starts to feel funny. So I casually interrupt her like ‘Is there peppermint in this??’ and she was like ‘...well yeah! It’s their new holiday special. It’s a pepperm-OH SHIT’. I then spent the next 45mins puking my brains out while she rubbed my back and cried how she’s sorry. I thought it fuckin hilarious then and I still do. Sometimes I still like to tease her about that one time she tried to kill me & she’s a good sport about it so it’s gucci (note-both food allergies aren’t to the extent of using an epi pen but they’re still pretty shitty).

I changed my major 3 times in college: American Sign Language English Interpreting to Psychology to Art and Design. I don’t regret a single moment of it because I’ve learned a lot about myself through that journey as well as made some of the most incredible and supportive friends.

I’ve got a list of names on my phone for future doggos and children. Pretty sure it’s just gonna end up being for dogs but most of them sound better as human names in my head but it’s whatevs, I’ll name my dogs whatever tf I want. And who knows? Maybe I’ll end up an old spinster with only my books as company (and tbhonest that sounds like a pretty sweet deal).

I’ve always been a summer camp kid for as long as I can remember. I’ve been to YMCA day camps, Tiffany Roberts soccer camp, environmental camps, camps through the Boys and Girls Club, and religious sleep away camp. I’ve heard people say that summer camps are “lazy parenting” which I think is a crock of shit. My mum never forced me to go to camp bc she needed “easy childcare”. She worked hard so I could expand my knowledge and grow in new environments. Going to camp helped shape me into the person I am today and who wouldn’t want to give back and make a difference in a child’s life? I’ve worked as a junior counselor/counselor in training, camp counselor, female bunk staff/ceramics instructor and this summer I’ll be the associate director of the visual arts program at my fav camp in NH.

Fall semester during my sophomore year, my biological sister found me through Facebook. She and our brother wanted to surprise our mom for her birthday so we set up a phone call. It was surreal. Even though my adoption was never a secret, it’s still mind boggling to think that they found me through social media. Emotions were everywhere. I was crying, my mom was crying, the roommates were crying, and hell even our RA was crying. It wasn’t my birthday but I had secretly wished on birthday candles for that moment for a very long time. I can’t even begin to imagine how emotional it would be when we reunite in person. We’re still working up to that point but we continue to keep in contact. Just writing this, I’m getting choked up and overwhelmed with emotion.

okay so obvs 10 facts turned out to be 10 dissertations about my life but it’s fine, my dudes. If you don’t overshare on the internet to people you most likely haven’t met in person every once in a while, are you even doing it right? Also I just realized how sophomore yr was a wild time: found the birth fam, peppermint fun, sinus infection from hell, switched my major(s), got hired as an RA for the upcoming year, oH AND I CAME OUT. So definite s/o to 13′-14′ for being a good and transformative year to me even if I didn’t know it yet. Aaaanyways, thanks for coming to my TEDtalk

I’ll tag: @spookybreen, @sutherlins, @danicalicalifornia, @onlinedragon

#shut up kmorgs #honestly wtf the fuck #srsly what it this??#there's so much going on here #bless #about me #personal #soz i don't ever shut up #¯\_(ツ)_/¯#thanks for the tag caroline!!#tagged

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thecollegefootballguy · 4 years

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The Real 2020 Season: Week 1

Hey everybody, welcome to Week 1 of The Real 2020 Season! We’re imagining how things would have gone in the 2020 football season if COVID hadn’t ruined everything.

Week 0 was fun just because football was back on but it didn’t offer a whole lot. Week 1 is when things really get going. We have a big matchups featuring some blue bloods right off the bat. Of course this is balanced out by most other teams hosting bodybag games against scrub opponents from the G5 or the FCS. But hey, let’s look at the fun parts. There aren’t as many ranked games as other past Week 1′s, but football is being played so it’s all good.

If you want to check out my Week 0 post first click here.

The Rankings

Preseason AP Poll

1. Clemson 0-0 (0-0) 2. Ohio State 0-0 (0-0) 3. Alabama 0-0 (0-0) 4. Georgia 0-0 (0-0) 5. Oklahoma 0-0 (0-0) 6. LSU 0-0 (0-0) 7. Penn State 0-0 (0-0) 8. Florida 0-0 (0-0) 9. Oregon 0-0 (0-0) 10. Notre Dame 1-0 11. Auburn 0-0 (0-0) 12. Wisconsin 0-0 (0-0) 13. Texas A&M 0-0 (0-0) 14. Texas 0-0 (0-0) 15. Oklahoma State 0-0 (0-0) 16. Michigan 0-0 (0-0) 17. USC 0-0 (0-0) 18. North Carolina 0-0 (0-0) 19. Minnesota 0-0 (0-0) 20. Cincinnati 0-0 (0-0) 21. UCF 0-0 (0-0) 22. Utah 0-0 (0-0) 23. Iowa State 0-0 (0-0) 24. Iowa 0-0 (0-0) 25. Tennessee 0-0 (0-0)

We’re still working with the preseason AP poll so nothing changed since last week. The SEC and Big Ten are still well represented in the polls, and are followed by the Big 12. The ACC and PAC-12 only managed to fit in three teams each although Clemson being the #1 team certainly helps the ACC’s image. Notre Dame claims the #10 spot which feels pretty spot on for the Irish coming out of 2019.

The G5 is represented only by Cincinnati and UCF of the AAC. Pretty standard stuff for a preseason poll.

The Narrative

I wrote out a much more in-depth preseason 2020 narrative last week so check it out to get the big scoop. The short version is that the usual suspects are once again the most serious contenders. Alabama and Georgia are favored to win their divisions and once again and then duke it out for the SEC title. Ohio State is favored for the Big Ten ahead of PSU, Michigan, and Wisconsin, Oklahoma is the favorite in the Big 12, and Clemson winning the ACC shouldn’t even be a question. These five favorites from these four conferences will most likely make up the Playoff field, or at least 3 of the 4 spots. What can I say? We’ve been in a bit of a rut regarding putting new teams in the Playoff since that first 2014 season.

The PAC-12 is the only Power conference without a clear favorite and without a real clear path to the Playoff. The G5 of course will probably never be let into the Playoff but the AAC champ is once again favored to snag the auto-bid for the NY6. UCF is the money favorite based on the past several seasons but Cincinnati had a good showing in 2019 and is set to challenge the Knights.

The Games

Week 1 features several high profile matchups and a bunch of uninteresting bodybag games. I’ll list all of the games and then break down the big matchups.

Winning teams are highlighted in bold.

Austin Peay at #20 Cincinnati Rice at Houston Arkansas State at Memphis SMU at Texas State South Florida at #14 Texas Temple at Miami FL Southeastern Louisiana at Tulane Toledo at Tulsa #18 North Carolina at #21 UCF Syracuse at Boston College #1 Clemson at Georgia Tech Florida State vs West Virginia (Atlanta, GA) NC State at Louisville Wake Forest at Old Dominion Middle Tennessee at Duke Miami OH at Pittsburgh #4 Georgia vs Virginia (Atlanta, GA) Liberty at Virginia Tech Baylor vs Ole Miss (Houston, TX) South Dakota at #23 Iowa State New Hampshire at Kansas Buffalo at Kansas State Missouri State at #5 Oklahoma Oregon State at #15 Oklahoma State TCU at California Texas Tech at UTEP Indiana at #12 Wisconsin Towson at Maryland #16 Michigan at Washington Michigan State at Northwestern Bowling Green at #2 Ohio State Kent State at #7 Penn State Monmouth at Rutgers Illinois State at Illinois Northern Iowa at #24 Iowa Florida Atlantic at #19 Minnesota Purdue at Nebraska Charlotte at #25 Tennessee Jacksonville State at FIU Chattanooga at Western Kentucky Louisiana Tech at UNLV Houston Baptist at North Texas South Alabama at Southern Miss New Mexico State at UAB UTSA at #6 LSU Youngstown State at Akron North Carolina Central at Ohio Maine at Ball State San Jose State at Central Michigan Eastern Michigan at Kentucky Rhode Island at Northern Illinois Colgate at Western Michigan Duquesne at Air Force Georgia Southern at Boise State Colorado at Colorado State New Mexico at Mississippi State Washington State at Utah State Weber State at Wyoming UCLA at Hawaii Nevada at Arkansas Sacramento State at San Diego State North Dakota State at #9 Oregon William & Mary at Stanford Portland State at Arizona Northern Arizona at Arizona State #3 Alabama vs #17 USC (Arlington, TX) BYU at #22 Utah Eastern Washington at #8 Florida Central Arkansas at Missouri Coastal Carolina at South Carolina Mercer at Vanderbilt Nevada at Arkansas Alcorn State at #11 Auburn Abilene Christian at #13 Texas A&M Morgan State at Appalachian State Murray State at Georgia State Arkansas Pine-Bluff at Troy McNeese State at Louisiana Cal Poly at Louisiana-Monroe Bucknell at Army Massachusetts at Connecticut

Nobody came close to upsetting the Top 5, though the games weren’t all severe beatdowns either. #1 Clemson of course stomped rival Georgia Tech in Atlanta and #2 Ohio State and #5 Oklahoma handled their business against patsy opponents. #3 Alabama once again thoroughly torched #17 USC in Dallas. #4 Georgia beat Virginia in Atlanta but the Bulldogs’ offense didn’t exactly look promising.

The other kickoff games saw West Virginia defeating Florida State in the other Chick-fil-A matchup and Ole Miss edged out Baylor in Houston. Boy, don’t you wish both of those games were being played in 2015 and not 2020? The other ranked vs ranked game of the week featured #21 UCF outpacing #18 North Carolina in Orlando, it wasn’t unexpected but it’s still an important symbolic win for the Knights and for the AAC.

A few other games had consequential results for the Big Ten in particular. Indiana pulled off a shocking upset of #12 Wisconsin, a crippling blow for the Badgers who were once again the favorites to win the Big Ten West. Out West, #16 Michigan lost handily to Washington, likely ruining the Wolverines’ Playoff hopes.

More than a fair share of home teams won against easy opponents, it’s more or less a Week 1 tradition, but there is always intrigue and surprising results on a chalky week like this. Liberty scraped past Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, embarrassing the Hokies in their home opener. Buffalo beat Kansas State with surprising efficiency while Coastal Carolina gutted out a win over South Carolina in Columbia. As usual, a few FCS teams were able to dish out some damage. Jacksonville State beat FIU while Youngstown State was able to down rival Akron and keep their old travelling trophy, the Steel Tire.

A couple other rivalry games to note before moving on. #22 Utah was able to fend off rival BYU in another fierce chapter in the Holy War. AAC squads Houston and Memphis were able to shut down Rice and Arkansas State respectively in their regional rivalry matchups. Colorado travelled to Fort Collins for the first time since 1996 and beat their little brothers in the 92nd Rocky Mountain Showdown. Finally, a bad UConn team eked out a win against a worse UMass squad.

The Standings

There were only a few conference games played in Week 1, mostly in the ACC and Big Ten. We won’t see full conferences playing until at least Week 4 when the Big Ten, Big 12, and PAC-12 begin their 9-game league schedules. There isn’t much to say about the standings this early in the season, but then again it’s fun to see Nebraska leading the Big Ten West.

The Big Picture

Week 1 sometimes sees a few earth-shattering outcomes with all of the Kickoff Games and the odd crucial upset. That didn’t happen this year with so few high profile games. It’s not like Alabama curb-stomping USC was unexpected. Probably the most significant events were Michigan and Wisconsin losing to Washington and Indiana. That leaves Ohio State and Penn State as the only real Big Ten teams with a serious shot at the Playoff only a week into the season.

The New Rankings

Following Week 1 the AP Poll didn’t change a whole lot in the top 15 thanks to a very chalky week. Alabama’s win over USC helps the Tide leap over Ohio State into 2nd place but not yet to first because Clemson did of course completely humiliate their own P5 opponent. Wisconsin and North Carolina fall out of the rankings. USC’s loss to Alabama is more or less forgiven because, hey, basically everybody loses to the Tide so the Trojans only fall a few spots. Michigan nearly tumbled out of the poll but just barely cling on after falling 9 spots to #25. Washington and Indiana both climb into the polls, though of course the Huskies are treated with a bit more respect than the Hoosiers, whose presence is treated more like a novelty.

1. Clemson 1-0 (1-0) 2. Alabama 1-0 (0-0) 3. Ohio State 1-0 (0-0) 4. Georgia 1-0 (0-0) 5. Oklahoma 1-0 (0-0) 6. LSU 1-0 (0-0) 7. Penn State 1-0 (0-0) 8. Florida 1-0 (0-0) 9. Oregon 1-0 (0-0) 10. Notre Dame 1-0 11. Auburn 1-0 (0-0) 12. Texas A&M 1-0 (0-0) 13. Texas 1-0 (0-0) 14. Oklahoma State 1-0 (0-0) 15. Washington 1-0 (0-0) 16. UCF 1-0 (0-0) 17. Minnesota 1-0 (0-0) 18. Utah 1-0 (0-0) 19. Indiana 1-0 (1-0) 20. USC 0-1 (0-0) 21. Cincinnati 1-0 (0-0) 22. Iowa State 1-0 (0-0) 23. Iowa 1-0 (0-0) 24. Tennessee 1-0 (0-0) 25. Michigan 0-1 (0-0)

Week 1 is in the books. The 2020 college football season is finally under way! And don’t worry if this is somewhat less interesting than you expected one week in, Week 2 will be much more interesting! Stay tuned!

#college football #Clemson Tigers #Alabama Crimson Tide #Ohio State Buckeyes #Georgia Bulldogs #Oklahoma Sooners #LSU Tigers #Penn State Nittany Lions #Florida Gators #Oregon Ducks #Notre Dame Fighting Irish #West Virginia Mountaineers #Ole Miss Rebels #UCF Knights #Indiana Hoosiers #Washington Huskies #Utah Utes

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northcountryprimitive · 5 years

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“Up Close and Personal - That’s What Sharing Music is All About.” An Interview with Dennis Taylor

An Interview With Dennis Taylor, North Country Primitive, 20th April 2015

New age music is a much maligned beast. By and large, it has still to receive the critical reappraisal given to other styles and genres that developed in the 1970s. Maybe this is because its peak followed the year zero swagger of punk, and its expansive, meditative soundscape was the diametric opposite of punk’s short, sharp shock; or maybe because it was seen as the final swansong of the old hippies and baby boomers – mellow music for mellow people; or maybe because at its most soporific, it always contained within it the risk of moving a little too close to elevator music. Of course, such sweeping statements are patently unfair – the new age movement contained within its ranks many questing, exploratory musicians who were willing to incorporate the influences of Indian and world music, folk and minimalist composition into their sonic palettes. And by the early 80s, the new age movement was the natural home – in many ways, the only home - for fingerstyle guitarists influenced by Fahey, Kottke, Basho and the Takoma school of players.

Whilst John Fahey noisily denounced any attempts to include him as part of the new age movement, Robbie Basho found a home on Windham Hill, the leading new age label. The label’s founder, William Ackerman, was a fingerstyle guitarist whose debut album, In Search of the Turtle’s Navel, slyly acknowledges Fahey’s influence in its title. By the early 80s, American Primitive guitar was part of the new age pantheon, even if, as another Takoma alumnus, Peter Lang, has observed, the style was too folk for new age and too new age for folk. In any case, you only need to listen to the 2008 Numero Group compilation, Wayfaring Strangers: Guitar Soli, where many of the featured artist were associated with or influenced by Windham Hill, to understand that the new age movement, or at the very least the acoustic guitar aspect of it, is ripe for re-evaluation.

All of which brings us to Dennis Taylor, whose sole album, 1983’s Dayspring, was released on CD for the first time earlier this year by Grass Top Recording, who have also brought us new editions of two of Robbie Basho’s later albums, as well as showcasing contemporary players with their roots in the American Primitive tradition. Dennis is unabashedly a graduate of the new age movement and over the years his music has incorporated many of the diverse strands that make up the new age sound, which is, after all, less a genre and more a statement of intent – he has incorporated fingerstyle guitar, wind synths, looping, Indian classical music and world fusion into his oeuvre. Dayspring, however, is a solo acoustic guitar album, and although it is clearly at one with the new age, it is also steeped in the Takoma tradition Dennis had been drawn to at the start of the 70s.

Dennis’s musical journey began in typical fashion for many young Americans growing up in the late 50s and early 60s, even in such far-flung corners of the States as small town Nebraska. “Like a lot of kids my age,” he recalls, “I first became aware of the guitar through the singing cowboys on TV and the early rock ‘n’ rollers. The Everly Brothers, with their twin acoustics, come to mind. I also saw Johnny Cash at my first big time concert when I was 8 years old. I think it was about that time that I asked my folks for a guitar and lessons.” By the time he was entering his teenage years, The Beach Boys and The Beatles were riding high, and he was caught up in the swell of excitement they generated. He adds, “I also had a love of pop guitar instrumentals, which meant The Ventures and surf guitar music were big for me. My friend and I taught ourselves to play with the help of a record and book set, Play Guitar with The Ventures. We learned the popular surf guitar tunes and moved on from there to starting a band and learning the rock songs of the era. I was also taking drum lessons, so I started in the band on drums, but then switched to rhythm guitar when we got a drummer with a full drum set. My main function throughout most of the eight years we had the band was lead vocalist. Instrumentally, I switched between guitar and bass, as members came and went.”

By the time Dennis was starting college, he was developing what was to become an enduring interest in acoustic guitar. “I became aware of the acoustic side of artists like Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Paul Simon, Crosby, Stills and Nash and the newer artists like James Taylor and Cat Stevens. So by now, I was splitting my time between playing electric music with the rock band and acoustic rock with my trio or sometimes solo.”

A pivotal moment came when he became involved in sing-a-longs at a local church youth group. He remembers, “It was there that an older friend taught me the basic ‘Travis-picking’ that got me started on fingerstyle guitar, although at this stage it was still as an accompaniment to vocals. I also had started listening to the acoustic guitar soloists I had discovered at a local record store, the Takoma guitarists - John Fahey, Leo Kottke and Robbie Basho. I learned a couple of their instrumental songs and started writing my own first guitar instrumental, the song that evolved into Reflection of the Dayspring. But mostly I was still writing singer-songwriter acoustic music with vocals.”

His rock band, The People, had folded by the time Dennis finished college. By now, he was married and had a child on the way. In order make enough of a living to support his new family, he began to seek restaurant gigs as a solo singer and guitarist, whilst playing in Top 40 club bands and teaching guitar at a local music store. “As it was, the only real steady money to be made was by going on the road with a band every weekend. I ended up doing that full time for the next few years. At the same time, I continued to pursue my acoustic music on the side and did occasional park and downtown outdoor concerts, keeping a hand in on the acoustic side, both solo and with a couple of friends.”

Life on the road became increasingly incompatible with family life. ”I quit the road band business in the mid-late 70s to be able to stay at home. I tried to do this by taking on guitar students at home and also teaching and working at music store. By now, I was seriously writing solo guitar instrumentals and I was starting to get enough original guitar pieces to perform solo at a few coffeehouses and concerts.”

Around this time, Dennis and his family moved out of the city for a quieter life in a small Nebraskan town, where he continued to teach guitar and work in a music store. It was whilst living in this community that several of the pieces that found their way onto Dayspring first emerged. “We had a small artist’s community,” Dennis recalls, “And I lived right across the street from a good friend, Ernie Ochsner, who was a visual artist. He was painting giant murals for a local museum and other landscape pieces, as he was getting pretty well known across the country through art shows and such. Ernie and I would hang out every day in his studio on the third floor of a downtown building in the town square - he would paint, while I would play the guitar. Many of the early Dayspring pieces evolved from those sessions. Before I moved back to Lincoln, I played my first official solo guitar concerts at the local art museum and the following year, I played my guitar pieces live on the radio for the first time.”

By 1979, following a spell developing his fretless bass chops with a jazz-rock band and by now living back in Lincoln and still working at a music store, Dennis joined The Spencer Ward Quintet, a band playing a hybrid of jazz fusion, world music, folk and semi-classical music. “It was all original music, written primarily by the leader, who was a nylon-string guitarist. The band consisted of classical guitar, vibes, flute, violin and drums. I sat in with them on fretless bass and convinced them that it would really fill out the sound of the music. At the same time, I was still pursuing my now all-instrumental solo guitar music, doing solo guitar gigs in many of the same clubs in Lincoln where the band would play. I was also still doing park concerts and outdoor downtown lunchtime concerts as a solo guitarist.”

The bandleader had visited Portland, Oregon in the Pacific Northwest, where some of the local musicians convinced him that their acoustic/electric fusion would find an appreciative audience. As they had already built a large and loyal following in Lincoln, the move seemed like the next logical step in the band’s evolution. “The band moved to Oregon in the spring of 1980. A couple of months later, in the summer, I joined them out there, but I was uncomfortable with the big city aspect. The other members all had day jobs, but so far, gigs were not happening. I made a quick decision to move down to Eugene, Oregon, a small college town that was more the size of city I was used to. As it turned out, there were a lot good musicians in Eugene, but work was very scarce, both musically and even for day jobs. Within a few months, my money had run out and I was not even close to gaining any kind of musical foothold. So, I packed up and headed back to Lincoln, a place where I had already established my self as a solo guitarist through clubs concerts and doing live radio at a local station. I came home to Nebraska determined to not get distracted musically again from my solo guitar work and to make a record of my solo guitar music before I turned 30 years old.”

“I started putting the music of Dayspring together, started teaching guitar at a music store again, played my solo gigs and also took the opportunity to put a jazz piano trio together with two friends, with me on fretless bass, working a lot of the same clubs and concerts I was playing as an acoustic guitarist.”

Encouraged by Terry Moore, the owner of Dirt Cheap Records, the foremost independent record store in Lincoln, Dennis went into the studio to record Dayspring. “Terry was an alternative icon in Lincoln,” he recalls. “He had also helped to start and mostly funded our local whole food co-op store and KZUM, our listener-owned, volunteer programmed radio station. He so loved and believed in the music I was doing for Dayspring, that after it was recorded and I had got to the point where I’d decided to release it independently, he offered to pay for a small pressing of LPs himself, which I would repay through sales. As it turned out, I was able to pay for the records on my own, but he helped promote Dayspring through his record shop and in fact had me do a release debut by playing live all afternoon in the front window of the store - a truly fun event for everyone!”

Spectrum, the studio Dennis used, turned out to be owned by musicians he knew from his garage band days, one of whom, his childhood friend Tommy Alesio, engineered the recordings. “They’d just opened the studio and because they were competing with the older established studios, their rates were very reasonable. I believe it was something like $30 an hour for recording, mixing and master tapes. Since I was doing a fairly simple project recording-wise and I was totally ready by the time I got into the studio, we were able to do the whole record in one session, mostly first takes. Once the session was set up, I had rehearsed and polished the songs at home non-stop for weeks, using my home cassette recorder to make sure the songs were ready to record, with the arrangements and song orders pretty much planned out. In the studio, we basically set up the mikes and let the tape roll. It was a long day, but we got the songs down in just one long afternoon session. The total cost was $150 and I had ready to press quarter-inch master tapes.”

Initially, Dennis attempted to get his music out by following the tried and tested route of sending a demo to the record company he felt was most likely to want to produce the album; in this case, William Ackerman’s Windham Hill, which by this time was the pre-eminent record label for new age and solo acoustic guitar releases. However, as he recalls, “It took several months for Windham to receive the tape, then it was lost for a while, then it was found, then it was listened to. I wasn’t that patient or that hopeful after reading about the glut of demos they had been receiving – up to 200 a month.”

Dennis decided the way forward was to put the album out himself in a limited local edition, with the help of How to Make and Sell Your Own Record, an illustrated step-by-step guide from Guitar Player Magazine. “I got so impatient, not getting a response on my demo tape, that by the time I finally got a ‘thanks, but no thanks and good luck’ letter back from Windham Hill, it was August of 1983, my own pressing had arrived five months earlier and was already selling in the local record stores and playing on local radio. I’m glad I didn’t wait to hear back before I went ahead on my own!”

Dennis called upon the talents of his friends in Lincoln to bring the album to fruition. The photos for the album cover were shot at a local park concert by his friend Lisa Paulsen, who was a photographer for the University newspaper. Another friend, Lauren Weisberg-Norris, worked as a commercial artist and took Dennis’s basic layout ideas for the cover and made them camera ready. He also took note of the experience of local musician friends who had pressed records of their bands. “I looked into the cost of using the same standard national pressing plants they had used. I was not happy with what I saw. Most of those plants were very expensive, wanted at least a thousand copies to get a decent price and the vinyl they were using was that cheap, thin, floppy vinyl: snap, crackle and pop. This was not at all what I wanted. I had audiophile pressings from Germany and Japan in my own record collection and I knew what good, quiet, heavy vinyl sounded like.”

Poring through the small ads in the back of music magazines, he came across a tiny advert for a small pressing plant in Cheyenne, Wyoming, Rocky Mt. Recording. “I thought, what the heck and I gave them a call. They were really nice people and they were really excited about the idea. Even better, their prices were half what the nationals wanted, with a very small minimum of 300 records. So I said sure, send me some samples. The album cover artwork sample was a little antiquated and hokey looking, but the cardboard quality was good. My artwork was camera ready, so no worries there. The music they sent was local country bands and not all that impressive musically, but the quality of the vinyl… heavy, virgin vinyl, like I hadn’t seen since the sixties. It seemed about three times the weight of what the other pressing plants were putting out and it was quiet, like a good audiophile pressing. Their little pressing machines were from the sixties. I had found my answer. The whole ticket for the 300 records, covers and even cardboard mailers and shipping was going to be $794.75. I would be bringing the whole project in for around $950.”

“The couple that ran the pressing plant loved my high quality masters and the artwork,” Dennis continues. “They said, ‘The tapes sounded so good, we didn’t have to do anything with them!’ They were used to local country bands in Cheyenne bringing cassette tapes, usually recorded live at a bar and then wanting the Rocky Mt. folks to make hit sounding records out of them.”

He reflects: “Comparatively, it’s a breeze to put out your own music these days, but of course there are also many more people with that easy access, so it’s a flooded market. A guy playing solo acoustic guitar, while there were quite a few of us, at least nationwide, was still a fairly unique entity in the recording world back in the early 80s. You just had to somehow get that music out there to the people who loved it. And for me that was on a local level, without huge life changing investments and with lots of immediate feedback from the fans of the music. For me, that was a better way to go.”

The local reaction to Dayspring led to an unexpected new venture for Dennis. “Shortly after it was released, I walked into a Radio Shack to buy a part for a speaker. As I was writing the cheque, the cashier’s eyes got big and he asked me, ‘Are you the Dennis Taylor? The guitar player?’ 'Uh, yeah. I guess so.’ 'Wow! I play your record on my radio show all the time!’ He then asked me to come and play live on the show, Green Fields, which featured new age and jazz-fusion music. After I played, my new friend, Clyde Adams, who was also a drummer and like me was into Indian classical and fusion music, asked me if I wanted to come back and co-host the weekly program. I ended up doing this for the next six years. We were the only program in Lincoln at the time playing those kinds of music and the show was very well received.”

Around the same time, Dennis was also working on a local public access TV talk show, for which he had provided the theme music. The director, Doug Boyd, invited him to play some live performances of the Dayspring music for public access viewing. “I said sure, so using our same crew, we created two half hour programmes, Dennis Taylor Guitar Solos I & II. At the time, these were the only public access programs that were all music and no talk, the opposite of most of what was on the air on that channel. The shows were so popular, that they ran almost daily from 1984 to 1988. All of these things, along with downtown gigs, my yearly park concerts, various appearances at the University of Nebraska and sales at local record stores helped the original pressing of Dayspring to sell out locally in just the first few years. I couldn’t afford to repress the album, so essentially it became a limited edition. I was one of only two solo acoustic guitarists in the Lincoln and Omaha area that I know of, along with my friend Chris Griffith, who was pretty strictly a non-writer and a Leo Kottke 12-string disciple. It was pretty much me if you wanted that kind of music either for your club or park concert or wedding or whatever.”

The reception to Dayspring locally and the steady rise in stock of new age music nationally left Dennis with high hopes. “Being invited to the steady onslaught of Windham Hill and other new age artists coming to perform in Lincoln and Omaha, it seemed like the golden era for our kind of music had come. In our small group of musician, DJs, store owners and so on, we started to feel like we were definitely the happening thing in music. We thought that with the flood of national recognition, with major labels jumping on the bandwagon and signing new age artists and the emergence of the new age Grammy and even our local rock and oldies station, KLMS, switching to a new age and smooth jazz format, our time had come. That we were about to become the new rock 'n’ roll - the mainstream pop music. I became the go-to guy for downtown outdoor concerts, park concerts, the new separate quiet new age and folk area at annual Holmes Lake 4th of July event…a safe distance away from the main stage, where the classic rock acts were playing.”

As early as 1984, Dennis had intended to make a follow up to Dayspring. His idea was to expand the scope of the music – 6 & 12 string guitar pieces with the addition of fretless bass and tabla and percussion. He even started demoing new material, but the project never came to fruition. In the late 80s, he started working on a solo guitar album made up of a few new pieces and some of the Dayspring material slowed down to a meditative level. This project was abandoned when he concluded he didn’t really like the results of changing the mood of the Dayspring pieces.

Meanwhile, by the mid 80s, in order to make ends meet Dennis returned to playing in top 40 house bands churning out the classic rock anthems of the day, despite not being particularly attached to what was happening in the rock and pop worlds. In terms of his own musical interests, he had dived head-first into the new age. He explains, “I had already made my personal leap from popular music to what I liked to call un-pop music by the mid 70s. On the electric side, jazz-fusion… Takoma and Indian and world-based acoustic fusion on the acoustic side. When the 80s hit, I discovered labels like Windham Hill, Narada and Private Music and I jumped into the new age movement with both feet. I’d found the music that I most resonated with of all the genres I had been involved in or listened to up to then, whilst also maintaining a kinship with the funkier and less experimental end of jazz-fusion. I was in a world where new age was really starting to happen on a local level, with myself and a friend doing a new age and jazz fusion weekly radio program and my old rock band mate and childhood friend, opening a new age record and bookstore and doing a Hearts of Space type radio show on our local NPR affiliated University radio station.”

The high watermark of the new age began to recede by the start of the 90s. The major labels had oversold the movement: they had come to realise that the new age artists were generally not going to sell at the levels of major pop acts and had started dropping those artists from their labels. What remained, however, was a solid niche audience, both nationally and locally, which for a while kept Dennis and his musical fellow travellers working a few times a year at local concerts. He recalls, “In the end, the park and downtown concerts started to drop off. By a stroke of luck for my tabla playing musical partner, Dave Novak and myself, we came across the owners of the two Indian restaurants, one in Lincoln and then a second one that opened a couple years later in Omaha. Those owners loved the new age world fusion music Dave and I were doing and felt it was exactly right for the ambience of their 'classy’ dining establishments. It ended up that we were playing every Sunday in one restaurant or the other from 1992 until the Omaha restaurant changed hands and ended live music in 2003. Then it went back to once a month at the one in Lincoln until they ended live music at the end of 2013.”

He continues: “I actually did some live recordings at the restaurant, although these were not concise album-type pieces. Our job there was to stretch out and jam for three hours and many of the pieces stretched to ten, fifteen or twenty minutes each. Also whenever it was with Dave, he was miked, which allowed all the restaurant noise to come into the recordings. We joked about Kenny the Bartender doing his famous ice dump solo at the exact moment when the music got very quiet and meditative. Or the inevitable singing baby who would go on and on and never stop!”

From the mid 90s, Dennis began pursuing a new direction in his writing and instrumentation, acquiring a keyboard synthesizer/sequencer workstation, electronic hand drums, a midi-bass guitar synth controller and an electronic wind synth. The result of this new palette of sounds was a short series of concerts of pre-programmed synthesizer pieces around 1996-1997, where he used the bass synth controller for the melody and improvised element of the performances. When an inheritance from his parents meant he was finally able to give up the top 40 house band gig at the turn of the century, Dennis began to focus on melding his older acoustic guitar and tabla based approach with the newer electronic sounds he had been experimenting with. This in turn led him into the writing of new songs, using the acoustic guitar as the centre-point, but augmented with electronics and fretless bass, using live looping and on some pieces, Dave Novak’s tablas and percussion.

In 2006, the same Doug Boyd who had directed Dennis Taylor Guitar Solos I & II was asked to produce a feature length documentary of a five year Lincoln Arts Council programme he had been filming. He turned to Dennis to write and perform the soundtrack for the film, which was premiered at Lincoln University Movie Theatre in January 2007. Stories of Home paired twelve families in Lincoln with twelve visual artists, who created artworks based on each family’s story. Denis explains: “It involved families who had come to Lincoln from Africa, Vietnam and Mexico; a Native American family; a woman who had grown up in cattle country and was now marketing vegetarian desserts; a lesbian couple and a family that had escaped Iraq. All of them were families with a background story different to the usual home-grown families in Lincoln. I did the soundtrack with acoustic guitar, wind synth and electronic hand drum and recorded it in my home studio. The project was intended to be a model for other city’s arts councils, bringing diverse peoples together by sharing there personal stories of home and getting to know each other on a one to one basis, through art and music. It was a project I am incredibly proud to have been a part of.”

Dennis admits he was getting ready to call time on the more complex approach he had been taking to music making. “Around 2011-2012, I got the strong urge to quit doing the new set up. There was always a lot of preparation involved. I constantly felt like mission control - time to push this button, time to step on this pedal, time to switch to this instrument. I decided to just go back to where I started – live acoustic guitar, with or without Dave on tabla and percussion, as the occasion required. It was so relaxing, after all that experimentation and brain work, to just be able to float away in the sound of the acoustic guitar for the evening. And although people liked the new music, some of the fans and friends from the Dayspring era used to say 'That’s really nice, but do you still play the guitar?’ Or in the guitar and looping era, 'Do you still play any of the old guitar songs?’ Don’t get me wrong. A lot of people loved the combination of the guitar and looped instruments - it was not all that electronic. The wind synth was mainly used for melodies and improvisations, with very close to real sounding flute, sax, oboe and cello samples and the electronic hand drums were mainly used to get ethnic drum and percussion sounds. The Handsonic drum pads - essentially advanced steering wheel tapping - gave me access to nearly 600 wind and drums samples, without having to spend the many years Dave had spent learning real tabla technique. With all the sounds I wanted, several lifetimes of learning would have been needed to learn the real instrumental techniques for each instrument. Anyway, I eventually put those aside, except for the rare occasion, and went back to the simplicity of getting lost in the sound of the acoustic guitar.”

With Dennis rediscovering his solo guitar approach of thirty years before, the series of fortunate events leading to the reissue of Dayspring were as serendipitous as any new age musician worth his salt could desire. Record collector Michael Klausman found an old vinyl copy of the album in a record store in Denver and loved it. Dennis takes up the story: “I had no idea Dayspring had travelled out of state, other than to friends and family. Michael contacted me via Facebook for permission to post about it and use some of the Soundcloud clips I’d put up the previous year for the 30th Anniversary of its release. He told some friends about the album, who told some more friends, who brought it the attention of Kyle Fosburgh, guitarist and owner of Grass-Tops Recording in Minneapolis. Just two days after Michael posted about the record, Kyle contacted me wanting to know if I would be interested in having him release the album on CD. That happened the last week in July 2014 and it has now been reissued in a new deluxe package, remastered from the 1981 master tapes in high-resolution digital for CD and download. The tapes had been stored in my closet, sealed in vinyl bags, since 1981! The album was released on March 3rd this year. It really is a miracle rediscovery for me and my music.”

He continues, “Coincidently, my friend Benjy, from Lincoln group The Millions, messaged me that his nephew in Brooklyn was a big fan of my record and he knew someone there who would be interested in reissuing it! What a weekend! I had already started negotiations with Kyle at Grass-Tops and was very happy with what we were working out, so I had to say to Benjy, 'Man, had you told me this a few days ago, I would been on my knees bowing to you for such incredible news, but as it is, I’m already in negotiations to do just that with a company in Minneapolis, so I’m going to have go with that offer.’ Benjy was cool with that and very happy for me.”

It seems the relationship with Grass-Tops is far from over. “Nothing is set in stone, but Kyle and I have discussed the possibility of making a new record. At the time it we discussed it, we were both pretty excited about doing the simplest thing first - a solo guitar follow-up to Dayspring. It would focus more on the quieter, newer pieces I’ve written since then, and would tentatively be entitled Nightfall. Dayspring was a brighter, daytime type of record – Nightfall would be its late evening companion. There are no solid plans as yet, but what swayed me towards a solo guitar album, after all these years of promising a new record, was a combination of my recent rediscovery of the joys of the solo guitar as a complete entity in itself and the chance to give the fans what I’ve been promising them since Dayspring came out - more of the same thing they came for in the first place.”

He adds, “We’ve also had lots of requests from our vinyl-oriented fans for a new vinyl edition of Dayspring. There is also the possibly a DVD of my two half-hour solo guitar concerts that I taped for access television back in 1983-84, Dennis Taylor - Guitar Solos I & II: Music from the Dayspring Album. Kyle has copies of those shows, which I transferred to DVD from the old, almost gone, big videotape masters 10 years ago with great fragile babying of the old tapes. With weeks of meticulous work the shows were saved pretty much intact, with good quality video and decent quality sound. Anyway, these are all tentative future plans at this time.”

Dennis has given some thought to the place where Dayspring sits in his musical journey. “It’s an odd time trip for me, listening to this record by this 28 year old guy, thirty some years ago. I’ve noticed that my writing style hasn’t really changed that much over the years – melodically and harmonically, at least. I’ve changed more rhythmically - away from the 4/4 double-thumbing style of Fahey and Kottke and more towards the 6/8 ambient, floating style of classical North Indian music or the softer, jazzier styles of Ralph Towner, Pat Metheny and the European ECM jazz guys. The Windham Hill/new age guitar styles of Will Ackerman, Alex de Grassi and Michael Hedges had an impact on me, too. Dayspring was actually sort of a transitional record for me. The older songs were more in that traditional, folky style and the new songs were more influenced by Windham Hill guitarists, acoustic fusion like Oregon, Shakti and Ancient Future and the minimalist music of Steve Reich and Philip Glass.”

Reflecting back on his life in music so far, Dennis is contented with how things have turned out. “I never really tried for the big time with the record or with my career. From my road band days, I didn’t particularly like endless driving and staying in big cities. I was much more comfortable at home, working on a local level where I actually knew the people who loved and appreciated the music and were happy to come see me play and buy my record at a coffeehouse or a restaurant or a park concert. I really don’t think it gets any better than that. The artist and the listener on a real person, one-to-one basis. That’s really what the music is all about to me - that one-to-one communication. I’ve said before, but music cuts through all the crap and brings people together in a meaningful way. And it’s so much easier and enjoyable for all involved when you can do that on a small, personal level.”

He emphasises his perspective with an example. “In 1973, at our local auditorium, opening for Fleetwood Mac and Wishbone Ash, I sat on that big stage, the stage where I had seen most of my heroes perform, the stage that was my childhood dream to play a big-time concert on. I sat on that stage and when the lights went down, all I could see of the 3,000 people out there were the few that were hanging on the stage and all I could hear was the sound of my own voice and guitar whooshing through the huge auditorium. It was the most isolated sensation I had ever felt in my life, as if I was on some faraway planet playing into an empty void in space. It was a once in a lifetime experience that I’ll always remember fondly and a childhood dream come true, but give me the small audience and the personal sharing of the music every time. I knew that after that first night - and I was only twenty years old then. Forty years have gone by and I’ve never regretted not trying to go big-time once. Up close and personal - that’s what sharing music is all about.”

A big thank you to Dennis Taylor for the time, energy and enthusiasm he put into this interview. Dayspring is available now from Grass-Tops Recording.

#dennis taylor #fingerstyle #new age #american primitive

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effectguitar6-blog · 5 years

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Wet & Reckless, and the Stories of Their Lives

With the follow-up to 2015's self-titled debut album (which our own Falling James called "one of the better, albeit underrated, releases by a local band in the past few years") on its way soon, the gloriously moody and melodic Wet & Reckless perform at the Hi-Hat this week. We grabbed the chance to speak to singer-guitarist Emily Wilder in advance.

L.A. WEEKLY: When did the band form, where and why — what was the mission?

EMILY WILDER: I grew up tagging along to my mother’s jazz gigs. I always refused to sit in the audience, so I would just sit quietly on her piano bench onstage while she performed with her band since I was about 3 years old. I guess that gave me the bug. Poetry was always my passion, and after I realized I didn’t want to be in a coffee shop reciting, it only made sense to turn them into songs.

I had known Jessica Gelt, who played bass in The Movies, for years, since the Northeast coast. We both ended up in L.A. and had a late-night discussion about starting an all-girl band called Wet & Reckless, which is a short step down from a full DUI, after she got one and spent the night in jail.

That was how the first version of the band formed about nine years ago. We later turned into Last in Class with Charlie Wadhams and Chris Watson, then reinvented Wet & Reckless with drummer Jalise Woodward. I spent one year in Portland, Oregon, a couple years ago and got offered a couple solo gigs up there, so I began playing with my longtime friend Ashley Berry on bass and lead guitar. Ashley and I moved back down to L.A., and we became a four-piece outfit.

Describe your sound.

I guess we are a little bit of an urgent, intentionally ragged rock band. Lyrics definitely drive the ship and begin as folk songs but when the girls get involved, they bring on the grit and guts. I am very fortunate to have these girls in my life.

How has the style changed over the years?

They are stories of our lives. So I guess lives and perspectives change with time. Some songs are about very personal experiences and some are about people close to us.

What recorded output have you put out so far, and how does it differ?

We’ve recorded four albums over the years and only released one with producer Kristofer Sampson out of Atlanta on cassette with Lolipop Records in 2016. Before that we released a single on vinyl on Fort Lowell Records. We are currently recording our second album on 2-inch to be pressed to vinyl.

Who were your main influences when you started, and now?

As a kid, I was lucky to have a little indie-rock club on Jacksonville Beach called Einsteins A-Go-Go. Also, my older brother would have garage practices every Friday with his band and storms of older kids would barrel through to watch. Then, my influences were Sebadoh, Pavement, Archers of Loaf, Built to Spill and Neil Young. Right now I can't stop listening to Marlon Williams.

What influences your songwriting — what excites you, and what grinds your gears?

Heartbreak, the women in my life and the kind of basic human condition. I started off directing music videos in London for Virgin U.K., working mostly with men. I always felt I was trying to shout louder to get heard. It’s good to have a voice, regardless of who you are singing to. A lot of my lyrics are a bit self-deprecating, and I think most people can relate to that.

What do you think of the current state of the L.A. rock & roll scene, and how has it changed since you started?

I know I can always go to Starbucks and hear a friend singing over the speakers, but really I prefer the more off-the-rails type of artists — that’s why we prefer a talk-singer more than a vocal gymnast type thing.

When we first started as an all-girl group, we'd get put on bills with other girl singers regardless of how our sound worked together. It was kind of like promoters were thinking, "Hey, she's a girl with a guitar, let's put another girl with a guitar on the bill." Now, in L.A. there are so many badass girls playing music that the divide between the male/female bands has dissipated and it's more about the sound than the sex of the people playing the music.

This show at the Hi-Hat — what can we expect?

Something geared more toward new material that we haven’t played live yet. Singing old songs is like reliving a part of the past. It feels good to bring new life into the set. The benefit is for writegirl.org, which is a program to inspire young female writers. We couldn’t be happier to play for such a good cause.

When it's over, what's next for the band for the rest of this year and going into 2019?

We are really excited to be recording a new album to release early 2019 and always writing new songs. It’s the best therapy to get through these days.

Wet and Reckless perform with Holiday Sidewinder, Mack, Slugs and Superbloom at 8 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 24, at the Hi-Hat.

Source: https://www.laweekly.com/music/wet-and-reckless-and-the-stories-of-their-lives-10056592

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thebrewstorian · 4 years

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“Maybe you’ve heard of her husband? Finding Louisa Weinhard.” The Zoom 2020 PCB-AHA presentation.

Last week I was supposed to give a presentation for the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association conference. That didn't work out... For the COVID-19 reasons. But we did make it work a week later on Zoom and it was terrific!

My talk focused on Louisa Weinhard. Here’s what I said.

I started OHBA in 2013, the first of its kind in the country. 2013 is also when I met Peter Kopp [see photo above left bottom - Kopp is the author of Hoptopia: A World of Agriculture and Beer in Oregon's Willamette Valley] and we’re old hats at presenting together. Though usually we are in the same room. This talk, “Maybe you’ve heard of her husband? Finding Louisa Weinhard,” is based on an article for the Oregon Historical Quarterly I’m working on revisions for right now. I’m going to talk about women in brewing in Oregon, but first I want to talk about silence.

Archives and records repositories are filled with voices. We visit them to learn about our families, past actions of governments, and the activities of private organizations. But they are also spaces that reflect power and document the dominant narrative. Decisions are made by creators, by archivists, and by researchers about what to include and who to exclude – the result can be distortion, omission, and erasure. And so, for all the voices recorded in an archive, there are also many that have been silenced.

As anyone who has done historical research on women knows, their stories weren’t actually hidden, more often they were simply not recorded. The history of nineteenth century women’s work is often told through the story of husbands and sons. They were categorized as wives and mothers rather than business partners or owners. One issue I always cite when talking about researching women is the complications surrounding names: if their first name was recorded in newspapers (not just “Mrs.”), actually finding a maiden name to track genealogy often feels like luck.

Most (all) brewers in nineteenth century Oregon were men, but as I explored beer history more, I found the stories of early Oregon women and their work in brewing fascinating. In my research I found most women linked to breweries weren’t making beer, but I suspected they played an essential role in the businesses success (for example in running the household, child-minding, doing the books, participating in community events, etc.), and I knew that several ran the brewery for a time after their husband died.

I was preparing for an oral history in 2016 with Dana Garves, owner of BrewLab and former brewing chemist at Ninkasi, and I found a blog post she’d written called “Oregon’s First Women Brewers [1879-1908],” which included names and locations. I have since found photos of three of these women: Left to right is Fredericka Wetterer from Jacksonville, Mary Allen from Monument, and Marie Kienlen from southern Oregon. Garves also wrote about Theresa O’Brien from the north coast and Mary Mehl from the south coast. I added names of own, including Catherine Stahl and Frances Kastner from eastern Oregon; Margaret Beck from Capital Brewing in Salem, and Louisa Kiefer from Albany – she’s also Fredericka Wetterer’s sister.

But is there a way to determine the jobs they did or the role they played? I did a lot of online newspaper searching and onsite research in the places these women lived, and the short answer is no. Variables in terms of family structure, geographic location, brewery size, and available documentation make generalizations and specifics quite difficult.

But Henry Weinhard? His is a pretty familiar name and his business was extremely successful. And I was certain researching his wife would be a snap. An easy win and good practice for future work on the other women I’d identified.

I was wrong.

It turned out records for the Weinhards are scant, mostly limited to newspaper articles and ads, government records, lawsuits, and, for Henry, glowing biographies in “books about great men.”

And so I dug.

This is Louisa, who had that very famous husband. Although she was famous in her own right for generosity, as well as her involvement in local church and aid societies, her legacy is marked by both details and silences.

Not to jump to the end of the story first, but the fact that I have this picture is a true testament to my Googling superpowers. I scoured archival collections, newspapers, and books looking for a picture of her, only to fail. Finally, using a string of search terms I can’t remember, I found a 2015 reference to a portrait in an article about the Portland Community College remodel. Days before I finished the first draft of my article, I emailed their Community Relations manager and she sent me a picture of the portrait. It sat on my desk and I saved it on my phone to show people who I was writing about. We have signed the paperwork to have this transferred to the collections at OSU – I was due to pick it up the week everything closed…

Luise Wagenblast was born in Germany in 1832. She lost her mother when she was four, traveled to Missouri at fifteen, arrived in the Northwest at twenty-three, and married a man who would become famous when she was twenty-seven. By the time she died at aged eighty-five, she’d buried her husband and four of her five children.

Through online genealogy sites and local history sources, I pieced together details about Louisa’s family’s move from Waldrems, Germany, a small town about 300 miles southwest of Berlin, to Missouri to Oregon. Although she travelled to Oregon by ship, her brother Gottlieb journeyed with the 1855 wagon train led by Dr. Wilhelm Keil, founder of Christian communal settlements in Bethel (Missouri) and Aurora (Oregon) – thanks to Peter’s dad James for his work on utopian communities in Oregon because it helped me tease out whether they were part of the colony or not. They weren’t.

Through government records, I learned when she was married to Henry and when her children were born. Census records and newspapers documented the family’s moves back and forth across the Oregon / Washington border. Through the census, I also learned about her neighbors, the ages of her children, and if she had servants living in her home. While dates and names are recorded, what isn’t is the scope of her loss, which feels immense. Her son Christian Henry died in 1863 at two years old and daughter Emma Augusta in 1864 at 18 months. Her daughter Bertha Carolina (Bettie) died in 1882 of acute appendicitis at 13. Henry died in 1904 of kidney disease. Just over a year later, daughter Louise Wagner died of heart disease at thirty-two. Only daughter Anna Wessinger, who lived to 87, survived Louisa.

However, mentions in newspaper articles gave me a significant, and somewhat intimate, glimpse into her life through her community activities. She sent roses to the 1903 Portland Rose Society annual rose show and thirty pounds of sugar to support unemployed men at the Gipsy Smith Tabernacle. She donated $100 to a benefit fund to purchase artificial legs for Marjorie Mahr, an actress who lost both legs in a railway accident. When thirteen-year-old Ervilla Smith arrived at the Weinhard house in the middle of the night in 1905 after being assaulted near the Lewis & Clark Exposition fairgrounds and left on the street by a saloon; the family welcomed her, called the doctor and the police, while “Mrs. Weinhard got her something to eat and made her comfortable for the night.” She was a member of the Portland Women's Union and sent money to the Louise Home for Unmarried Mothers and Albertina Kerr Nursery Home. And during the last weeks of her life, she offered money to a woman whose husband was in prison in California so she could visit him.

I have lots of stories that could expand and fill the rest of my time: things I found out about Louisa’s siblings; brewery owners, saloon keepers, gambling, prostitution, and vice; women’s clubs in Portland; or family real estate acquisitions. But since it’s where I found the most detail, I’m going to tell you about how Louisa used that wealth and her position at the end of her life.

In the years following Henry and Louise’s deaths, it is difficult to determine how involved Louisa was in the brewery and family estate business, perhaps no more than in name as an executrix of the estate. What is clear is that she continued to support her German community. The most significant was her donation of a twenty-acre lot in Southeast Portland, worth $30,000, to build a retirement facility for elderly Germans to spend their final years “among their own people.” The Altenheim was to be the “most important of its kind in the U.S.” Newspapers reported that she wanted residents to take advantage of fresh air, good water, and rich soil; and because she valued work, also wanted “helpful occupations for charges” and imagined the home would be partially self-supporting through farming. On August 6, 1911, with 2,000 people present, the cornerstone was laid, which contained pictures of Henry and Louisa, as well as copies of Portland’s German and other daily newspapers. Louisa’s great-grandson talking later about a picture in the newspaper of Louisa at the May 1912 dedication, in an open carriage with the mayor of Portland, described her as looking like queen Victoria, “very short and very fat.” That’s the picture you see here – a find made possible by the University of Oregon’s Historic Oregon Newspapers site. I learned more about Louisa from the news coverage for the Altenheim than in most previous articles about Henry or the business. Beyond a tone-deaf comment about her appearance, I learned that she valued work, self-sufficiency, and cultural traditions, but also that she was part of a community that felt isolated from the rest of Portland. What we don’t hear are her words – in all the press coverage regarding the Altenheim there isn’t a single quote from Louisa.

The Altenheim was closed in 2003 and the building housed the German American Society offices until the property was sold to Portland Community College in 2010. And that’s where her portrait is waiting for me!

Louisa died in Portland on April 23, 1918 and was buried at the River View Cemetery. She was eighty-five years old, had been in America for seventy-one years and Portland for sixty-three. News of her death was carried in several papers.

W.G. Maclaren, General Superintendent Pacific Coast Rescue and Protective Society, wrote a letter to the editor that was an unfettered tribute to her good works and the hidden nature of her charity. He said that during the hard times of 1907, she bought $100 worth of tickets for the Portland Commons, and distributed them among “men who were out of work and in need of food and lodging.” He went on “She gave me orders that I was not to allow any unfortunate person to go away hungry and agreed to meet the expenses of feeding them.” He continued, “there never was a case of a mother or child in sickness or distress that Mrs. Weinhard knew of where she would not give assistance” and concluded she was a “good woman with one of the best hearts where human suffering was concerned that I have ever known. I believe that the people of Portland should know something of what she did during her long residence in this city for the benefit of Humanity.”

This last sentence feels like a final reminder that she gave freely to charitable causes and individual people, not for personal recognition (and maybe not for our historical record) but for the purpose of bettering others.

In researching Louisa, I found a handful of touchingly personal details that I couldn’t verify. The Weinhards supposedly had a house in Astoria and a farm of 620 acres in Yamhill County. An Oregonian article, written in 1954 when Louise Weinhard Wagner's home was being demolished, noted a 4-foot stained glass window with a woman sipping from a wine glass, said to have been installed by Louisa Weinhard as a gift with the house. The names Henry and Louise/a are handed down to subsequent generations in their family. And Louisa herself was immortalized in Brewery Block Two, a 242-unit high-rise residential building built on the location of the original Weinhard brewery in Portland.

But the last bit of sparkle to this story is a connection I made with one of her descendants on ancestry.com. I found Lizzie Hart, her great+ granddaughter, which had pictures of Louisa’s granddaughter and Lizzie’s grandmother. I wrote her and said “I’m an archivist. I have this picture of your relative and I’ve written this article about her, would you like either?” Fortunately, she wasn’t creeped out by this...

Instead, through our ongoing correspondence she has given me a more personal perspective on the Weinhard family and validated my work in this area. My research has added a dimension both the story of the women in her family and in her own personal understanding of how she fits into it. Her family story was the story of men.

I can’t end with a quote from Louisa, but I can end with one from Lizzie “What you are doing in your work -- the recovery of women's stories, painstaking as it may be to grapple in the dark room of the dominant narrative -- is such an important task to undertake on behalf of our futures.”

***

For more on archival silence, see

Carter, Rodney G.S. 2006. “Of Things Said and Unsaid: Power, Archival Silences, and Power in Silence”. Archivaria 61 (September), 215-33. https://archivaria.ca/index.php/archivaria/article/view/12541.

#louisa weinhard #prepinkboots #beer history #women in beer #Henry Weinhard #portland

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rachel-sermanni · 7 years

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Tour Journal

12th April 2017 Portland Abbie Weisenbloom’s House Concert

Pleasant 10 hours of train.

Portland.

Taxi through pelting rain to the Graham household. Philip Graham (father of family and household) is inventor of Eartrumpet Lab Microphones. Made known and connected by Tom Terrell back in November, 2015.

Land on their porch, somewhat unannounced and drenched.

Reminiscent of the natural yet remarkable quality to the moment Annelinde opened the old school door in Rotterdam. Sense of strange familiar. Philip greets at the door, as does the biggest hound to have ever graced my life, Grendal. From an armchair, Meara sits at a ‘business meeting’, booming brash and shining into the laptop.

Down the stairs comes 21 year old Gordon. Swiftly fills a cup of coffee for me.

Roast almonds piled, fresh, on a baking tray atop cooker. House old, filled with old things.

Meara, on finishing the call, introduces me to the latest addition to her taxidermy collection: A lady beaver.

Talk in the hearty kitchen. My room, bedecked with antiques, silver, crystal, glass and heavy old wooden cabinets.

Buster and Charlie, monochrome kittens, whip about, shin level.

Swift wash of travelled body. Oh glorious shower.

Graham drops me at Abbie Weisenbloom’s house. And soon I play. Not before a sit upstairs, staring at a branch of cedar brush the window from a tall garden stance. Consider how it is easier to take moments of composure before shows when travelling alone.

Front room clad; wall, floor and furniture; with wood. Resonates. Small, perfectly formed audience of 8 or 10. An online audience, joining from farther places.

Abbie speaks of time as a traveler. Lacking a sense of transience. Decided to open her home to Transients. The movement comes to her door.

Afterwards, Philip and Meara take me to ‘The Laurel Thirst’. Bar, untouched since the 70’s. Malachi, their daughter, is singing here. Another bold woman whose words I take with all ear. Flanked by two other women on a little platform in the corner.

Meara and Philip have one other son, twin to Gordon. Studying comic book illustration at art school.

Things are about to get ever crazier at The Graham’s. At midnight, a psychedelic-rock band from France will land on the porch, also seeking sanctuary. The boys - unknown entirely apart from recommendation by mutual friends to Meara and Philip - will stay a month, in the attic, as they record their debut album with Dan from the Dandy Warhols.

Dropping in bed when I hear the door swing. Tramp of many a french foot. The boys have been travelling all day through the dredge-swing of time zone. But they move to the many old-time instruments in the front room. Drift away to the sound of tired french tongued english and wielding of banjo and guitar.

Will wake to run. Admire the Camelias: ‘When they drop they make a noise like a wet steak hitting the ground’ says Meara. Grace can’t be with us forever. Not even for Camelias. Nor Swans.

The French boys, known collectively as ‘You Said Strange’; Martin, Eliot, Regi, Theo and Matt; will become fond brothers. We will eat donuts, drink coffee, go dog walking in a big blue bus with eight dogs and an incredible woman called Meg. Meg will dance through the park blasting Gillian Welch from her phone. We will play boardgames and half-known tunes on half-known instruments late into the night.

Meara and Malachi will become like mother and sister. Gordon will read to me, via his podcast ‘The Narrow Century’. Philip will invite me to sing in the Eartrumpet Workshop.

#Rachel Sermanni #Tour #Tied To The Moon #Portland #Abbie Weisenbloom #Eartrumpetlabs #microphones #Malachi Graham #The Narrow Century #Gordon Graham #You Said Strange

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mythandritual · 7 years

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"Up Close and Personal - That's What Sharing Music is All About.” An Interview with Dennis Taylor

An Interview With Dennis Taylor, North Country Primitive, 20th April 2015

The local reaction to Dayspring led to an unexpected new venture for Dennis. “Shortly after it was released, I walked into a Radio Shack to buy a part for a speaker. As I was writing the cheque, the cashier’s eyes got big and he asked me, 'Are you the Dennis Taylor? The guitar player?’ 'Uh, yeah. I guess so.’ 'Wow! I play your record on my radio show all the time!’ He then asked me to come and play live on the show, Green Fields, which featured new age and jazz-fusion music. After I played, my new friend, Clyde Adams, who was also a drummer and like me was into Indian classical and fusion music, asked me if I wanted to come back and co-host the weekly program. I ended up doing this for the next six years. We were the only program in Lincoln at the time playing those kinds of music and the show was very well received.”

A big thank you to Dennis Taylor for the time, energy and enthusiasm he put into this interview. Dayspring is available now from Grass-Tops Recording.

#north country primitive #Dennis Taylor #Fingerstyle #new age #american primitive

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airoasis · 6 years

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Nurturing Your Creative Motivation-- Genuine Kind & Function-- Medium

Supporting Your Imaginative Motivation

Every day I find myself blown away by the productions of others. Whether it's constructing an organisation, composing an elegant piece of code, or crafting an entirely unique and initial idea; the creative output of others makes me admire their achievements.Admittedly, each time I see

something this moving, a little fire lights in my stomach, subconsciously (or perhaps purposely )wanting to produce on the exact same level as those who I appreciate. While it's difficult to quell the natural and immediate sense of envy, I'm not someone who sells the success of others short. The outputs I appreciate are the item of time, dedication, and difficult work; and the success people have based on their own merits should just be celebrated.My next line of thought brings me to the point of this journal post

. If these successes are the product of time, dedication, and hard work; where do these people discover the inspiration essential to be successful at exactly what they do? Are they by nature incredibly driven and encouraged? Do they have routines or processes in location that enable them to radiate this inspiration? Is inspiration something that can be discovered, developed, and even taught? You can see the bunny hole I'm beginning to peer into.The function of this short article is to discuss inspiration. Taking a look at the motivation of others, the inspiration each people have inside ourselves, and trying to, to the finest of our capabilities, determine ways we can discover our own motivation, and utilize it for accomplishing our goals.To include viewpoint beyond my own ideas, I've asked concerns to a handful of pals and colleges who I believe are especially encouraged.

2 factors I took the liberty of pricing estimate throughout the post are Dan Burseth and Adam Garcia. Dan, one of my finest pals who I

have actually understood since middle school, finished from Northwestern with a degree in Industrial Engineering, continued to work as a trader on Wall Street, and has because registered at MIT where he'll be finishing with a dual MBA and Masters in Engineering in the spring of 2015. Adam is the creator of The Pressure, an innovative studio based from Portland Oregon. Adam's work has been demanded by brand names such as Nike, Nickelodeon, and Quick Business Publication; and beyond his customer work, adds to a variety of remarkable enthusiasm projects.These two were excellent examples of individuals who I think about extremely inspired, and their contributions are greatly appreciated!To me, motivation is the inherent sensation that drives an individual to achieve their goals. Individuals who utilize

inspiration successfully generally accomplish their goals, and those who are not inspired normally fall short of objectives or are too apathetic to set them. To me, inspiration is a quality that can not be objectively measured, however like dark matter (geek alert ), you understand exists since of what it creates.During our discussion, Dan pointed out that inspiration(and it's brother or sister ideas: accomplishment and will)are maybe the 2nd most recorded philosophical topic in human history, falling listed below the existence of God. It is essential to keep this in mind when reviewing inspiration, understanding that the internal struggle all of us have is one which every human ever born has in one method battled with. It's also important since it implies that determining exactly what inspires us is something that requires devoted thought. It's not a quality individuals intrinsically have inside them (or not ), however is developed through thoughtful habits, self evaluation, and discipline.When diving into the topic of Motivation, I asked myself and my coworkers, a series of concerns all relating to their own motivation-- inspiration on both a micro(everyday) and macro (months/years)scale. I would like to know if individuals consider themselves

to be inspired, if it's something they made a mindful effort at, and some of the conscious or unconscious things they do to maintain this motivation.While not an exhaustive dive into the topic, it definitely strengthened a couple of ideas I had, and likewise showed a couple of interesting themes worth sharing.From my discussions the theme that preserving motivation is hard, returns to the risk/rewards questioning of the brain. As Dan puts it, Thinking long term is difficult-- The brain is tasked with an incredible challenge: forecast the expected worth of my existing choice along a constant and definitely long timeline, identify the probability of an ultimate benefit(and it's value), and act accordingly.That statement in itself is hard to digest, let alone act on.The declaration suggests motivation is the capability for individuals to effectively navigate choices needing long-lasting benefit assessment. Choices that determine the risk/reward of a provided task, and the benefit of that task in the context of attaining an objective. The more long term risk/reward evaluating you require to perform to achieve a job, the more difficult your brain needs to work, and the more motivation you drain.Continuing that idea, to keep inspiration, then, those

choices need to end up being simpler to make, thus requiring less brain power and leaving you with more inspiration for the next decision.The question then becomes, how can we make the choices required much easier to make, allowing us to stay more motivated, and allowing us to perform more tasks inline with achieving our goals?That question could be talked about into some information, but in my viewpoint the best strategy to relieve

the procedure of figuring out risk/reward is establishing a core set of worths which are right away known and can easily be referenced. This makes the procedure of pondering a decision much easier to make, as the risk/reward choice can be assessed in the context of the core set of worths you wish to embody.Does it align with my worths or does it not? Boom: decision.That quick analysis is far from scientifically corroborated, but

none the less, speaks a lot about the significance of crafting personal values you abide by, and objectives you desire to achieve. With those firmly held core beliefs on the top of mind, decisions you make in your everyday life are inline with your values, values which assist you perform tasks, jobs which line up with your goals.Knowing that most of the options that I make are leading toward a basic instructions of where I wish to remain in the

future.Not Necessarily a Conscious Thing From the determined people

I spoke to, nobody came out and said "Yeah I'm extremely encouraged."Maybe this reveals the simple character of those I spoke with (which I would agree with), but I think it's safe to state people generally don't consider themselves as more or less determined than the next person.Part of this non-identification most likely comes back to motivation being something that is naturally personal, and as such, tough to identify in other individuals. Dan recognized three layers of individual inspiration: Benefits, Flexibility, and Fear. Without understanding those deeply held thoughts of somebody else, it's difficult to identify why they do exactly what they do, and in turn, how motivated they are.However, as I continued to talk, it became clear that while these people didn't instantly recognize themselves as uber inspired, they all spoke about mindful actions they take in their daily lives to grow and preserve their motivation. These"actions "weren't always monumental steps, however rather, particular attributes of their personal values that assisted cultivate motivation and drive.One example I found very fascinating was Adam's notion of being a producer instead of a customer. He says: The balance of intake vs production is something that I am very conscious of. I decide to be a producer instead of a customer, and at the end of every day I can certainly look at that day, look at that percentage and state" Exactly what did I do today?" Dissecting the quote a bit, Adam has actually determined purpose in what it suggests to being a manufacturer and has actually produced personal worths around that concept. This permits him to assess his day, assessing success and development on the method he wishes to live.What about the day to day?So if the macro level to remaining inspired is developing a personal values, producing core worths, and setting long term objectives; what is the micro level?Based on the people

I talked with, that answer is a little less meta than the previous discussion, and is considerably helped by surrounding yourself

with other determined individuals. People who are accomplishing their goals, then associating yourself because collective efficient mindstate.The adage of you are the average of the 5 individuals you see frequently comes to mind. Adam says," I have the tendency to surround myself with inspired, imaginative people that are constantly and consciously taking actions to who they wish to become. Those kind of people are so effortlessly woven into a creative life that they exhibit inspiration and it's infectious. "I can vouch for this as well. People who are motivated and accomplishing their goals, love doing exactly

that. They enjoy the notion of development and love helping other people attain their goals.Last but not least, the other theme that showed up rather often, was the notion of eliminating distractions and preserving focus. A number of individuals I talked to mentioned being weary of television, stay hesitant of social media, and don't load their day loaded with other non-productive meaningless tasks. It's not that any of these things are inherently bad in little dosages, however that they sidetrack from the reflection and reflection essential to weigh the development of your day.While outright meditation may not be the answer for everyone, requiring time to think of your actions, without being nervous of a pending Twitter alert, proves powerful.To sum up everything I stated above: Everybody has motivation, however it's difficult to gauge the motivation of others.On a macro level, establishing securely grounded core worths and a personal ethos will make your day to day decisions simpler to manage.On a micro level,

surround yourself with other determined individuals, assisting to support each other, and jointly keeping the group inspired and accountable.Avoid diversions and include reflection.I hope you discovered the reading

of post as gratifying of an experience as it was for me to write. Being and remaining determined is something I understand will always be a WIP for me, however there is convenience in knowing that it is for everyone, and we're all here to help press each other forward, together.

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monkeybrainmama · 7 years

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The Working Mom Shuffle Begins Again

This morning, I packed up Dylan’s first daycare bag. I put in an extra outfit, some Pull Ups, and a labeled water bottle. I pulled out a Sharpie and wrote our last name on a Cars blanket that all three kids had used, trying to infuse some good daycare Juju from her brothers. She chose a long sleeved navy dress that has a big gold glitter heart on the chest and a full tutu skirt with more glitter gold hearts glued onto the navy tulle.

She bounced to the car with Daddy, I went back into the house and sat down to cry for a solid 5 minutes.

I did not expect that! I mean, my boys went to daycare at 4 and 6 months, and while it was a little sad, I didn’t feel overwhelmed with grief. Today is a dry run today, though, so I don’t have as much work to distract me. And I’ve been home with her every day for 23 months, my longest stretch of being home with my children.

Two weeks ago, a former colleague referred me for a three month contract gig, preparing projects to apply for an incentive program that I used to manage in Northern California, a program that I worked on or with for 9 years. Things moved quickly from there, and here I am, preparing to flex my project manager muscles for the first time in a while.

When I left my job in 2015, I had a lot of mixed feelings about leaving a ten year career for the unknown (Portland, life coaching), especially what felt like throwing away knowledge in a field (renewable/clean energy) that is very hot, and will probably continue to be so for the foreseeable future. But my Shingles outbreak of February 2015 made the decision much easier. Nothing like a stress induced illness to make your priorities clear.

The life I have right now is pretty amazing. I have a stronger community that I expected to have in just two short years. I have an active social life, and I live in a beautiful home in a gorgeous and peaceful part of the country. Last Sunday my friend and I packed up our kids and headed into the Columbia River Gorge for a hike, lunch, and a playground, and the whole excursion took 4-5 hours. I get to be a part of my kids’ school, and it feels really good to walk into your kid’s school and the office staff know you, and your kids’ classmates whisper-shout, “Cody/Jacob!! Your MOM IS HERE!”

The thing that I’ve struggled with the most is figuring out these days without a structure. When I worked, I could organize my life so much better. And while there ways to create a structure where there is none, I haven’t been able to do it in any lasting manner. For someone who thrives on checking things off the list, it’s been a humbling experience to look at my day and wonder how the only thing that I accomplished in 10 hours was a load of laundry. This has been especially true in the winter, with snow and lots of rain, and one car. It’s not that I’m getting nothing accomplished, but it’s that whole “not living up to my potential” refrain that can bug so many of us ADD-ers. I know that I can be doing more with my time, but there’s this wall between me and what I want to be doing.

Anyhoo. When this job came up, and I started reacquainting myself with my former work, I felt a spark light up within me. It’s like that project manager me was hibernating, unable to figure out a way past my ADHD symptoms, which, without structure of some kind, grow like kudzu, shading and shrinking the executive function skills that I’ve worked so hard to build. Every so often I’d bush wack my way through, but those roots are strong, and I’d struggle with the simple act of scheduling a doctor’s appointment. During my interview, I could feel the light come in, and my passion for my former work disintegrated those suffocating roots that can feel like a stranglehold on my ability to get what I want finished in the course of a day or week.

So I’m a little sad today, but also excited for a few days a week of daycare, to be alone (if there were an introvert war whoop I would sound it now), to use my brain in a different way, to focus, to work and get things done, to contribute to my family in a deeper way, both financially and emotionally. I’m hoping to use these months to come up with tools to be as efficient and effective as possible in this project, and to keep up some structure, especially over the three months of summer, unscheduled summer. I’m hopeful that this could lead to more work, and I’m hopeful that this work can be in conjunction with growing my coaching practice. It would be pretty amazing to keep my old knowledge fresh while building something new.

#working mom #life coach #adult adhd

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remindersofgrace · 8 years

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2016

In 2016, I turned 26 and officially entered the latter half of my 20’s. I began exploring calligraphy and found much joy in creating things again. I worked my last night shift and became a day-shift nurse at Saint John’s, then after months of restlessness and conviction, left that incredible floor to become a clinic nurse and serve the population I feel I’ve been called to serve. We found a church home at Epiphany LA and became renewed in excitement for how the gospel might move in South LA’s Crenshaw area. Eden and I went to New Zealand with Fishermen Labs and explored the country from bottom-to-top in a Jucy camper van (not my idea). I got to witness some of my closest friends getting married in Maryland and California. We said hello to baby Larsen and see-you-later to Amanda. We visited Portland with our buds and decided that we still want to live in LA. Eden joined the board of a missions organization called Pioneers that has encouraged our hearts in the worthiness of Christ and His desire for the nations. I stopped using social media on my phone and discovered that nobody really cares all that much about what I’m doing, which is surprisingly liberating. Eden and I celebrated 3 years of marriage together and now finally have some weekly rhythms with my new work schedule. We still really like each other and are starting to think a little bit more about babies, although I’m still terrified at the thought. We shall see what 2017 brings.

When I look back on this year, I see so much evidence of God’s grace and sovereign hand, even in the midst of my fear and weakness. I still can’t believe I’m working at the same clinic that I heard about 4 years ago when I went to my first CCHF conference the summer after graduating, nervously looking for an opportunity to speak with Dr. Katy White and Dr. Wayne Aoki without looking like an awkward and desperate new graduate nurse. Years later, even though I was working in an acute care setting on oncology, something continued to propel me to go to Christian Community Health Fellowship conferences year after year, and this year finally gave me the unction to quit my job and work as a nurse among the underserved. God knew that my timid heart needed something drastic enough (like LACHC’s clinic nurse suddenly taking medical leave) to make me make the hard and fast decision to quit a job that I loved at a great hospital with incredibly loving and supportive staff. He gave me reckless faith to take that temporary 4-month job even though there wasn’t a guarantee of future employment after Sergio returned from medical leave. Yet He provided a permanent job for me there as of December and I’ll be working as the second clinic nurse once Sergio returns on January 9th. I have loved these last months of working at this little clinic on Skid Row. Most of our patients are homeless, some on the street and others in the shelters that are nearby. I’ve seen the ugliness of addiction up close - a physical depiction of how sin initially brings pleasure but in the end will destroy you and those around you. I’ve also seen patients beam with joy and life as they tell me they are 6 months sober from crack, and when I ask them how they did it, they almost always attribute it to God. “God is looking out for me. He’s got me. He’s been so good to me.” I’ve had a patient who came in for wound care, weeping because he couldn’t manage his wounds while on the street and maggots were coming out of his wounds as I changed the dressings. I saw this same man a month later, after a stint in the hospital and now in transitional care - now a different man, smiling, showing me his healing wounds and how he had learned to take care of it from the hospital nurses. I’m starting to know some patients by name and am learning their stories. Each morning I walk into Skid Row, I feel a sadness in the pit of my stomach that this is not how things were meant to be. I still feel at a loss about how to truly help people who are homeless while preserving their dignity and not fueling their addictions. But I am grateful to be part of an organization with staff who feel it to be their calling to love the marginalized in the name of Jesus. At 6:40 each morning, a group of us gather to worship and to pray for our clinic before it opens. It’s one of the sweetest parts of my day. I cherish the conversations I get to have with patients when they come in for their PPD readings, with the patients I see each week as I give them their meds for latent tuberculosis. I love the grace that my Spanish-speaking patients give me as I painstakingly attempt to communicate and learn Spanish.

This might be the first year where I feel that the neighborhood that I live in, the work that I do, and the heartbeat of my church are all in alignment. There is a joy and an excitement to be in that place of focus and I am excited for what 2017 has in store for South LA. Back in July, we were starting to look for a new church home and weren’t sure where we were going to go. We loved our old church Reality LA but it seemed so far removed from our context in south LA, and we didn’t know of any other solid churches in our neighborhood. Eden was randomly back visiting Reality LA with an out-of-town friend and ran into our old CG coach who asked if we had heard of Tommy Forester, a pastor who was church-planting in south LA. Eden looked up Epiphany LA and saw that it was going to be more in the USC area which was outside of our neighborhood, but decided to meet up with Tommy anyways to befriend a like-minded brother. Tommy told Eden that they had just decided not to plant at USC, but were instead going to focus on the Crenshaw/Baldwin Hills area, which is literally our neighborhood. We started checking it out and have loved being a part of it ever since. This body of motley brothers and sisters have become one of the most precious gifts to me of 2016. What a beautiful picture of multi-ethnicity and multi-socioeconomic backgrounds, but deep unity in Christ. It’s been so refreshing being part of a church that is centered around a gospel that doesn't neglect matters of justice and poverty, but instead is the engine of its mission. This month, the Foresters are moving to our block, and two women from my church are moving into our back unit. I’m so stoked to see what God does with 7th Ave. We just got access to the Crenshaw YMCA to have our Sunday services there, and will be starting up life community groups in our homes and neighborhoods. God is at work in this place.

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5 ESV)

In last year’s 2015 post, I wrote that I wanted to have a more steadfast heart. At that time, I don’t think I realized that steadfastness and endurance are a result of suffering. I’m not sure if I grew in steadfastness this year, but I have realized just how averse I am to any kind of suffering or difficulty in my life, just how much I have idolized a life of comfort and ease. It’s the reason why I don’t feel ready to have kids, it’s why my attitude instantly goes sour and fretful the moment that I am tired, hungry, or in pain. How so many opportunities are wasted when I hold back for fear of failure, pain, or discomfort. In 2017, I’m praying once again for this heart to grow in steadfastness of hope as I learn to trust my Almighty God at His Word, to lean on His understanding and not my own, and to take risks for the sake of the glorious name of Christ.

To this end we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Thessalonians 1:11-12 ESV)

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