Good morning. Hello. How are you? #875
Good morning! Hello there. Greetings once again from Raven Landing, Fairbanks, Alaska. Mom is sipping her coffee. Cousin Portia is watching Nephew Lucas, who is causing havoc with his blocks. But he gave me a hug when I walked in the door, so now I feel on top of the world.
Yesterday I spent… um… about eight hours sitting in my mom’s house with her, mostly alone. I took a break and went and lunch with my sister at a new restaurant in Fairbanks. We ran into Grayson’s parents, saw Roy and Stephanie but they did not see us. Fairbanks still has that small town feel sometimes like that. If you don’t want to run into people you know in Fairbanks, don’t go to the hot new restaurant.
Sitting here with my mom is kind of a surreal experience. Of course she’s very happy to see me and wants to tell me stories and wants to chat though after a while she sort of runs out of steam. Her stories can skip in time twenty, thirty years backwards and forward. If I know everyone involved in the stories, I can follow them. Id I don’t, I have no idea what’s going on. Some stories are repeated every couple hours. She knows all of this, but it makes her happy to tell them and I don’t mind listening to them again. It’s kinda like free association, stone soup poetry, that sort of thing. It’s not unlike the really weird non-sequiturs I make sometimes about someday my blues cover the earth or something, only it’s utterly irrelevant to her whether her audience understands the allusion or not. Then again, I suppose that’s the case with me, too. Were it not for the brain scans, I’d be hard-pressed to say it really was a disease.
I wrote some of it down. Here you go:
We hired Clarice and David back when we lived on Viewpointe drive. I remember you locking the whole house up, and some GIs were... separate from clarice... There was a school dance or something and they decided to crash our house because they knew I was gone... you were offended, I knew about GIs crashing houses durin gschool dances, Dick and I had gone to New Orleans and we hired one of the botus girls to come... well babysit isn't the right world cuz neither of you were babies, you just needed a semi-adult.
Do you remember Dick's gun and it was Dick's gun and then valerie had it maybe she still has it Valerie has to have a gun when she goes out geologizing and anyhow I'm taking care of mother and she says I don't want this gun anymore and I said "well Valerie does cuz daddy gave it to her for bears and dogs and people had guns and it was Wasilla.
I never understood Daddy’s rifles I couldn't shoot out of em I had bad eyes and you were supposed to use the site but someone didn't tell me and then your dad was supposed to shoot to get the job at the airport and he shot and he hit the target then fast forward 20 years and they decided to fire dick but he could shoot just fine but they fired him because he was colorblind or something but yay for unions.
Here’s the house I lived in when I was first born. The house I almost died in thanks to CO2 poisoning. My Aunt Bonnie saved me. My mom had already passed out.
Had dinner with Aunt Bonnie and my mom at Thai House - one of the other stellar Fairbanks Thai restaurants. Weirdly two groups of 8 Englishmen with shaved heads. Maybe some joint training at Wainwright or something. My mom accidentally had some of my Thai-level spicy bamboo. She handled it admirably. Dinner was at 7 cuz it’s the only time Bonnie had free while I’m here, and man, my mom was nodding off. Sleepy at seven. Old people life rules. Sign me up.
Been driving around in my mom’s Subaru it’s super fun. There are no EVs in Fairbanks it’s weird. At home I see a Tesla every fourth or fifth car. Here? I have not seen a single electric car at all.
Also important news: the old Chuck E Cheese is now a Korean church. But the wonderful icon of a man peeing on a car is still at the car wash, thirty years later. Looks like they’ve actually repainted it. Someone enjoys a good joke.
Been listening to KSUA the whole time I’ve been here. My friend Chris (hi Chris!) re-founded the station back in the early 90’s. It had been a commercial station owned by the students of UAF, but pretty divorced from the students. Then it went bankrupt. Then years went by and Chris convinced the ASUAF to re-open the station as a student-run radio station with a small staff. He was the first program director, I was the first music director. Got to spend several thousand dollars and buy the station a new music library. I worked there for a year or two until I had a disagreement with the GM and he had me escorted off the premesis by the cops. I don’t remember the details really but I will say I gotta respect that hippie’s management style cuz nowhere was it ever contemplated that the GM would have some sort of power like that, and it kind of amazes me it occurred to him he could claim that power and use it.
ANYWAY, the station is still around, and it’s so, so good. I was so proud listening to it. So much good music, so diverse.
About a decade ago they were having maybe their 20th anniversary? That sounds about right, was probably 2008 or so. Maybe 15. And they had a big event and Chris and I went. It was pretty awesome. Just a whole thriving ecosystem of listeners and DJs and staff. And no one really knew or cared who we were.
Also this means in addition to Barbarian, which is still around, I’ve co-founded two institutions that have been around for 20+ years. Well, three if you count Archenemy, but that doesn’t really count. I don’t know any of the people running KSUA or Barbarian, and they don’t know me.
Today is my sister’s birthday. We are going to have a bonfire tonight. It is gonna be great. See a few people I haven’t seen in decades.
But before that, another five hours of mom. It’s gonna be great. I am memory building here. It’s kind of special that even though I can see where this is all going medically, it’s mostly good memories nonetheless.
Another nostalgia mix. Sorta crossed the threshold on 1990 a bit on this one. I don’t know why the Diamond Sea needs to be on here but it absolutely does. When’s th elast time you listened to the Diamond Sea my god. So does “Hyacinth Girl” but it’s not on Spotify so that doesn’t really get to happen. Also the first song is not a nostalgia song it’s the end title song of the Chinese sci-fi show I’m watching right now. It’s not a good song but man it is so stuck in my head and there’s nothing doing about it.
Until tomorrow!