Liza Constable

It’s been a long summer filled with music, kids, weddings, funerals, and the vast Atlantic ocean. Went to some great festivals; down to Philly for the big folk fest, also went to the Lowell Festival, to Mystic for the Sea Song Festival, and then up to the Champlain Folk Fest where the BEST part was hanging out with octogenarian Willie Beaudoin, whose brother Louis was so influential on all these NE fiddlers. Willie and I just sit and play old jazz tunes (no one else likes that music) talk about Django and all the great players, and show each other a thing or two. He learned the guitar on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific. He probably floated past my father who was somewhere out there too. Too late to ask Dad what the name of his vessel was. I suppose through the internet I could find all that out.

Our most elegant venue I played with Nat was in the beautiful Unitarian church in Nantucket. That morning we played for Nantucket TV, and that was fun, out on Straight Wharf with the wind whipping my hair every which way, the kids scarfing down the crew’s donuts and staying quiet.

Saw old friends- Bob Carlin who has a new album out with an African player, he is just as funny and the same snappy dresser- as always. A great jam with James Leva and Jane Rothfield at Philly. Got to play with Bob Naess at a wedding (an old hero of mine from the “Gypsy Gyppos”, which any old time fan should know about). Got to sit in with The Hot Club of Portland at the Portland Lobster Company (at low tide on Commercial St). Good beer, great summer spot. Their guitar player (Bryan Killough) has worked out the Django solos to a T. He is amazing. Plus- they trusted me, sight unseen, to hand them a chart and sing.

Glad to be home — not going anywhere far for a little while. Gotta make sure the kids have real shoes for school. Hide the flip-flops. Looking forward to getting back to teaching. Been working on learning some Joseph Spence tunes, they make me, my hands, happy.

Great books from the summer of 2007:
The End Of Faith, by Sam Harris
They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky, by Benjamin Ajak, Alephonsion Deng, Benson Deng, Judy A. Bernstein
Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell
Flow, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Ahab’s Wife, by Sena Jeter Naslund

TTFN-

Gigged last weekend with the Big Blue Ox Swing Band. Friday night in “The Basement”, Noho. Haven’t played a bar in forever. That familiar sour beer smell. No worry about tempos. No lindy dancers, no west coast swing. Sometimes it’s nice to play it however it comes out, and play the moody stuff that I can’t do for dances, or weddings.

Saturday we played the Northampton dance with the full band. Horns were glorious, that’d be Lise and Adam. Love it when I sing things I don’t expect, because of what’s happening around me. I can’t not respond. Listening to Louie Prima has changed me. I love his abandon. Like on “Five Months”, or “Pennies from Heaven”. He really rocks. Also that bit of work I did with Murphy’s Blues. I had to relearn how to sing. I didn’t know how to push and create tension. Uptempo, aggressive, is harder, getting loose, still strong, and still in my true voice. The lyrics are usually tossable — it’s more about rhythm and tone than content. Those sad love songs have always been easy. Give me Hoagy Carmichael anyday. I can feel those.

St. Dan, our bassman and Mr. Enthusiasm, sent me pics. Grunge lighting. Tried to clean up the color in photoshop, but the highlights get blown out. From left to right: Lee Blackwell, Lise Brown, Liza Constable, Dan Goitein, Adam Scotera, Ellen Cogen (pinch hitting on piano for Chris Haynes who was home waiting for his baby boy to arrive).

It was my birthday last week. I am 39 years old, according to realage.com. I’m going with that. I hate pictures of me, but in ten years I’ll think I looked pretty good….that’s what mom always said. Damn if it isn’t true.

Nat gave me a great book. “Two in a Boat”, the story of a couple that sold their house and went sailing. What happened to their relationship through the trials of sailing under stress. Do I know about that? Is he trying to scare me off sailing with him? Haven’t finished it. I have 4 books going now: Jimmy Carter’s Palestine Not Aparteid, 101 Days by Asne Seierstad (Bookseller of Kabul), and Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich. All great reads, and I feel so damn informed

…….But I have to tell how I fixed the iPod.

My 2 year old iPod has been acting up, freezing in the middle of songs, not starting up when cold, when hot, when ignored. This has been happening off and on for months. Nat always fixes it somehow, when I’m through with it forever this time, through hard reboots, reset, restore, etc. then hands it back with a smug little smile. Not so this time. We looked up all the pages on the web we could, then I found one. How To Fix an iPod that Won’t Boot

“These hard drives get warm as they spin, and the metal casings warp outwards. Some hard drives won’t work correctly when the casing isn’t secure. The solution is to put the pressure back on the disks.”

I read though many many thankyous, “OMG, this actually worked!” So I opened the Ipod up (with the edge of a knife and a guitar pick- it took about 10 minutes to figure out), put close to 1/8″ sticky notes on the back of the hard drive, and clicked the back into place again. OMG - it totally worked.

by Harvey Wasserman
Published on Friday, April 13, 2007 by
CommonDreams.org

http://www.commondreams.org/

Here’s something that Sam and Abby sent to me. I won’t copy it in here, you’ve got to get there yourself. As suggested, read and then try it yourself.