Go Buy Some Art

The new Laura Veirs album arrived at our door today. I have it on the turntable now and would be listening more carefully, but I'm stuck on this thought that it's a good thing to buy art. You should go buy some. 

Laura Veirs is good. She's not everyone's cup of tea, but Neko Case and Sufjan Stevens both think she's worth playing alongside. Don't even start to argue with Neko or Sufjan. I love her stuff and know she's not a multi-millionaire. Streaming the whole album nets her about two cents and that's too little to pay for art. I bought the album because I love listening to music on the turntable and because I want to support artists whose work I love. It's the same reason I bought Austin Kleon's books and the new album by The Bad Plus. I want these people to keep making art I enjoy. Paying them is worthwhile. 

It doesn't cost much. I spend a lot of money on music because I'm obsessed, but I still probably spend more on bourbon. And it's not as though I buy everything I listen to. I have a streaming service and will play the Veirs album there so she makes a bit more money, but when artists I like release new stuff, I buy the vinyl and try to see their shows. 

There's probably more to say about this, but I really want to follow along as she sings side two. This album is good. Go buy some music, a book, or other art and show artists some love. Do it now.

New And Selected

Having finished a book of George Bilgere’s poems and having no more of him to read, I picked up Billy Collins’s New and Selected Poetry wishing publishers wouldn’t keep reselling the old just to put out a dozen new. I finished The Trouble with Poetry Section and went to replace my bookmark. A piece of folded paper on which my youngest daughter had written in marker: dear dad. I am really sorry For what I said I was just angry and I am really really really really really really really sorry. She drew a sad girl in her bed looking straight at me. The note is signed with Love, the O a sad face. It’s a poem I’ve read before. I may ask her to write another volume and place it in here. New and selected poetry from one of my favorite authors.

Ten Miles, Wegmans, A Smoothie

Just got home from spending $235 at Wegmans for the week's groceries and back-stock. This after dropping my youngest and a friend at the mall and having my oldest drive from the mall to Wegmans on the highway. She is sixteen and her driver's ed. class will be on the highway this week so she wanted practice. Sure, why not? She did well and we made it to Wegmans where we shopped for an hour and a half, my girl in full command, me just following and paying the bill. Coming out, getting in the passenger seat, I looked at the clock. "4:03? How did it get to be 4:03 already?" I just wanted a nap. And a smoothie. 

I'm sipping that smoothie as I type this. A cup of milk, handful of spinach, one frozen banana, a heaping tablespoon of natural peanut butter (no sugar!), and a tablespoon of chia seeds. Delicious and nutritious, don't you know. I'm skipping the nap in favor of writing. That and I tend to make a mess drinking smoothies in bed while asleep. 

I wanted a nap because I ran ten miles this morning. I'm getting ready for The Fifty, as I call it and did two loops of the course on which I hope to run ten loops in August. I didn't plan to run two loops, but as I finished the first I felt good and wondered what it would be like to go for a second. Ten miles later I had my answer. You're thinking I'll say it hurt like hell. 

You're wrong. 

As I came down Euclid and turned into home, I smiled then laughed a little. It's okay. The neighbors know I'm weird. I laughed because it didn't hurt. I had felt my legs tire on the run, but not so much that I wanted to stop or was counting down the miles to home. I knew I would want a nap later (bet your ass I do), but coming up the driveway, stopping my GPS watch at 10.02 miles, I felt strong. I knew that I could have easily gone on for another mile or two and could have gutted out another loop.

I may feel differently tomorrow, but for now I feel good even if it is thirty degrees and snowing. It's Syracuse. These things aren't that shocking. And neither really is the run. 

The groceries are away. The girl is learning to drive. That smoothie was delicious. My legs are tired but strong. My feet too. I don't know if other people think about how strong their feet are, but I do, and I've got some work to do on them, but it's too cold to run barefoot. That can wait. So can the nap. I'm feeling too good to go to sleep just yet. 

Is It Time To Leave Facebook?

It's such a simple question and the answers ought to be simple, or so it seems to me, but I have been thinking about this most every hour of the last two days and on and off for several years. The latest data breaches (if giving the data away can be called a breach) give me new incentive to quit, but they aren't compelling. I already give away all sorts of information to Google, post about my life on this website, and have more online accounts than I can remember. There has long been something about Facebook though, something icky, for lack of a better word, that has bothered me and I continue to admire people who aren't unpaid content creators for Zuck. 

Why stay then? I connect with people on Facebook. Not good connections, but at least something, and I fear losing touch with our old neighbors, a girl I used to date, and so on. Then again, are these not good connections worth much of anything? 

One good reason to go is time. I know I'm the only one, but I lose an hour at a time to Facebook. That hour isn't productive, doesn't feel good, and yet I give it up as if I have to. If I don't lose an hour all at once, I lose more than an hour coming back throughout the day and night, checking in, hoping something will entertain me. 

I just opened Facebook and found four notifications. One was my neighbor's Like! of a reply I made to his post, another was his reply to me. A third was someone else replying to his post and the fourth was a friend Like!-ing something I replied to her. This is what I mean by not good connection. Still, I'm loath to shut down even these "not good" connections. I wonder if those four hits felt like connection at all. Why do I go back for hit after hit of that? 

I stopped using the Like!. It seemed to epitomize "not good" connection. To Like! was simply acknowledging something had been posted. It doesn't mean someone had read or really connected. It certainly doesn't mean "like" as we know the term. (A while ago my sister-in-law Like!d Kids With Cancer and we had a lot of fun thinking of her as an angel of pediatric death.) I publish a blog entry such as this, link to it on Facebook, and in a moment someone Like!s the Facebook post. They haven't have read the blog, aren't responding to my writing, and I don't know what the hell they are doing. My wife says, they're trying to be nice. She's right, I'm sure, but what's nice about Like!? 

It's not that I think Like! people are rude or superficial (though there is nothing much more superficial than a Like!), it's that I can't figure out what all of us are doing. It seems to me to be less foolish than insane. 

Is it time to leave Facebook? Of course. It was time five years ago. It was time last month. It was time when I posted this:

The link is to a Washington Post article about Facebook giving away all our data (or having it stolen, whatever). 

Yet I still haven't deleted my account. Weakness? Maybe it's the sort of thing to which I need to adjust. Maybe I'll just rip the bandage off and quit. I'll regret it for sure, like a recovering drunk dreams of going back to the bottle, but I bet I'll feel better, better, and better. So much better I'll Like! it. 

There is irony in the fact that below this line is a button by which you can Like! this post. Sigh.