You know it’s coming—it always does—but suddenly, there it is: The generations in a family turn over. The last of a generation dies, and now the subsequent generation is officially the oldest. This happened in my family during the pandemic. Grandma died, leaving my parents as the two eldest people on both sides of our family. 

​Seven months later, we finally buried her and had a proper memorial service, with guests, back in the town she grew up in, in a plot next to both of her husbands, her daughter, and her son. As is so often the case, these occasions are bittersweet, because you get to see far-flung family and old friends. But in saying our final goodbye to Grandma, we also closed a massive chapter in our family history. 

For generations, my dad’s side of the family (and most of mom’s) lived in one Ohio town. (Our family unit moved away in 1993.) That’s where we returned for the memorial. Dad took us around on a tour of historic (family) homes. I didn’t know, or had forgotten, that so much of the family residences were within a few miles of one another—and mostly were in the same neighborhood. 

There was my great-grandparents’ house where my grandfather grew up; the house my grandmother grew up in (they were neighbors, aww!). There was my grandparents’ first apartment (which is still there, 70-something years later!), and their first house—an adorable bungalow that they built, and their next home, in a somewhat fancy neighborhood. My mother’s childhood home, and her grandmother’s home (where my siblings and I spent every Saturday morning for years), were nearby as well. 

But this time? We were tourists. We all stayed at a hotel, in our own home town, where my parents lived for forty years, and where I lived until I was 11. 

When I was little, most of both sides of the family still lived in the area. But over the years, most of my generation moved away. And more recently, my grandparents’ generation has been dying off. 

At the restaurant where we had the after-funeral meal, we were shocked and delighted to find a handful of old black-and-white photos hanging on the wall that were of my great uncle and aunt’s wedding in the 1950s. They’d had their reception in this restaurant (and, one of my relatives confirmed, their 25th and 50th wedding anniversary celebrations). In one photo is two full generations of our family. They’re seated around a big, long table. It contains my great-grandparents, all their kids, and all their kids’ spouses and partners (except for a couple of spouses who wouldn’t come into the picture until later). 

In the photo, my grandparents are young—recently married themselves, with my grandfather, the eldest of his many siblings, looking mature and dashing. My father isn’t born yet. Uncle Jerry, the youngest of that generation, is in the foreground, mugging for the camera (which was totally on-brand for him). 

Everyone in the photo is gone now, except for one great aunt. It’s appropriate that their memory remains on the wall of a fun eatery where they had big family parties, in this town that no longer belongs to us. 

It was wonderful to see so many old friends and family at the memorial, but it struck me that this was probably the last time we’ll see many (or even most) of them. Some we hadn’t seen for nearly 30 years. For others, I don’t know what occasion (other than another funeral—maybe theirs) would bring us together again in the same place at the same time.

Goodbye to the old generation. Goodbye to old friends. Goodbye to the geographic family center. 

It’s a little sad—but only a little. It’s been a long time coming, and we’re all ready. The trip and memorial served as a good goodbye. 

​Note: Back in December, when my grandmother died, I wrote the below entry. I posted it elsewhere at the time, but it seems fitting to include it here now: ​

​Remembering the perfect grandmother

There’s a recording of Bob Dylan live on stage in 1967. His hero, Woody Guthrie, had just died. “They asked me to write something about Woody—like, what does Woody mean to you in 25 words. I couldn't do it. I wrote five pages,” he said. That’s kind of how I felt when I sat down to write just a few words about my Grandma Esther: “I couldn’t do it. I wrote five pages.”

She died today, my grandmother. It was complications from COVID-19; her heart just gave out.

Esther was the classiest lady I've ever known. Stylish. Cool. Kind. Cute. Impish sense of humor. Unbelievably, unfailingly generous. Could still tickle the ivories, almost nine decades in. She was the perfect grandmother.

Of course, that version of her had faded dramatically in recent years, as it always does when a person lives long enough. When people become very old or sick, and their faculties and memory slip, and they lose the ability to fake anything, they're distilled down to their essence. You can see plainly who they really are.

It turns out that at her core, Grandma Esther was who we thought she was all this time. Down to her very last interaction with another human being, mere minutes before she died--and loaded with medicines to settle her body and block any pain--she was gentle and sweet and engaging.

The last time we got to see her was this past summer. I had a gut feeling that would be our final visit. She'd been on the decline for years. By then living in a residential care facility, she struggled to remember names and faces. Because of COVID-19 protocols, we couldn't go inside, so the staff set her up on a back patio with us. As always, she greeted us with a little joyful gasp and an open-mouthed smile, as if our very presence was the best thing that had happened to her in ages. In recent years, her face also registers surprise, because she has a hard time remembering if or when people are coming to see her.

We sat under a big umbrella for shade. It was sunny and bright and warm, but comfortable. Idyllic, with birds chirping. We were somewhat closed in, hugged by big, fragrant evergreen bushes.

"Grandma, the smell of these bushes reminds me of those tall pine trees you had at your house on Northwood," I said. She murmured some kind of cheerful affirmative acknowledgement. I did love those pine trees. In my memory they were a hundred feet tall. They had long, soft needles, and there was always a thick carpet of them covering the ground all around her house. You could smell them from the street. Every time I catch a whiff of fresh pine, I’m a little kid back at her house, tumbling out of the station wagon, eager to slip inside and see what treats or toys she had waiting for us.

Her house always smelled great, too. Not typical-grandma great, like freshly baked bread, nor old-lady great, like perfume. Something different. I don’t know how to describe it, actually. You know how every family’s house has a unique scent? And, like, it’s on their clothes and kind of follows them around? It was her version of that—and when matched with the pines outside, it was heaven. Even now, if we pull something that belonged to her out of storage, like a fancy tablecloth or something, we’ll get a whiff. And I am deeply happy every time I’m reminded, when we walk in our own front door after days away, that our family-house-scent is a variation on hers.

There on the patio, I think it took her a minute to collect who we were. We tried to gracefully spark her memory by deftly folding our names and our kids’ names and relationship to her into the conversation, like script writers trying to establish character relationships. (“Hello Pierre, dear brother of mine. Funny how it’s rainy today here in Paris—little odd for early April 1933, don’t you think?—and it’s making me late for my visit this afternoon with Beatrice, who, as you know, is our mother.”) In short order she brightened, remembering, putting it all together.

But she got kind of stuck in a loop. She asked how the drive was. She said she’s so glad we’re here. She remarked on the lovely weather and chirping birds. She said she prays for us every day. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

At a couple of points throughout the conversation, she asked us if we were interested in taking home the patio furniture. Such a classic Esther move, even though this time the furniture wasn’t hers to offer.

She was constantly giving us stuff, or trying to. How about this side table? This recliner? These paintings? This jewelry? How about the chandelier? We said no thanks most of the time, but even so, we have a reputation among our friends: Upon seeing some new vintage item appear in our house, one of them would guess, "Oh that's cool--is that a Grandma Esther thing?" It always was.

Grandma was always looking out for us, in ways small and large, and that was one of the main ways we could feel her love. Once, when we were little, she brought out a Friendly’s watermelon sherbet roll—it’s this extraordinary dessert composed of watermelon sherbet, lemon sherbet, and chocolate chips that looks like a watermelon—and I was so taken with it that she made sure to have it on hand at every visit for years after. And there were the big ways—for instance, helping us buy a car when we were broke and in grad school, and our only vehicle turned out to be an irreparable lemon. And helping us buy our first house (a sound investment, we thought, in 2007), and then bailing us out of that house when it became an albatross in 2011, post-recession.

She would have given her family every cent she had if we let her. I really don’t know where we’d be without her financial support at a couple of those crucial times—probably stereotypical Millennials who are overeducated but failed to launch. Instead, we’ve thrived, to the point that we could now support her, had she needed us to.

Our patio time was up. She left us with a chuckle at some little joke, and a blessing. She said she was so glad to see us, that she loves us, to give her love to our girls, that she’s praying for us, always praying for us. (We weren’t able to hug her because of pandemic protocols. I try not to feel bitter about that.) The caregivers wheeled her back into the facility, and that was the last time we saw her.

I’m glad that was our last interaction, though—my final and lasting memory of her will be Esther distilled: kind, grateful, generous, pleasant, polite, happy, untroubled. I can always visit this memory and be reassured that at her core she was, indeed, the person I loved so very much.

One of my favorite phone conversations of all time when was I called her to tell her that we named our new baby girl “Esther.” She gave that little happy gasp of hers but stumbled over words. I think she was just genuinely shocked that anyone would name a person after her. It wouldn’t have occurred to her that she’d had such an impact on people, such a presence in their lives, that her name would come to mean something deep to them, so much so that they’d want to yell it at their child a hundred times a day for the rest of their lives. Nor that another great-granddaughter, born years later, would wear her middle name—Clara—with the same reverence and affection.

Even though we lost her earlier than we should have, to COVID-19, she was ready to go. She’d been ready for a few years. Not depressed or fatalistic—quite the opposite: content and peaceful. She felt she had a hell of a run, and she was good with that. Ninety-five good years—who could ask for more?

​I’m just glad I got to share a lot of those years with her.

Although it is but one body of water, the Current River in Southeast Missouri provides two very, very different paddlin’ experiences. A weekend on the Current tells the tale of two rivers. 

​...not Two Rivers Canoe, which is a place on the Current River and refers to the convergence of two actual rivers, Jack’s Fork and the Current. I mean as in wow, we had two completely different experiences floating the Current. One peaceful and idyllic, the other loud and...well. We’ll get to that.

After a relatively silly car ride (one stop and then a time-consuming and frustrating zip around Rolla, MO to find something to eat) down to Akers Ferry (an actual working but rough-looking ferry!), where we put in on Friday late afternoon, my adventure buddy Toph and I were joyfully, peacefully floating in our kayaks with nary another person in sight. ​

The Current River is pretty large—quite wide, and in the summer safely floatable all along the main route—and marked by lush greenery, scores of gravelly beaches, and high bluffs. It’s beautiful. 

As we floated, we’d hit pockets of warmer or cooler air, with temperatures immediately swinging 10, 15, or 20 degrees. It was totally peaceful. So much so that you feel like you need to whisper. 

​After an hour or so, we came to Cave Springs. I always appreciate when things are named appropriately, and this place ticks the box. It’s this large cave right on the water. You can paddle into it without missing a stroke.

Back out of the cave and with the light waning, we pulled off on a gravel bar and made camp around 7:45pm. That would have given us sufficient daylight to throw up tents and get dinner going, except  that...I managed to forget my tent poles. Not my tent, just the poles. (How is this even possible? I don’t know.) 

This was a major bummer for obvious reasons, but for me it’s a double whammy, because I loooooove my tent. It feels like a little personal luxury camping hotel. It’s one of those products that is exactly perfect for me and what I want. Sigh. 

​I was able to use the rainfly, two “poles” (big sticks), and a crossbar (another big stick) to fashion a pup tent-like structure. It was ugly but worked well enough. If it had rained, my head and feet would have gotten wet, but thankfully, it didn’t, so I had a reasonably decent night under the stars.

Notably, on the second night, I was determined to have an even better experience. We once again nabbed a delightful spot--a gravel bar with a view of bluffs and a cove--and it had the luxury of a low-hanging tree branch that extended a ways. After a fair bit of futzing with trying to remake the pup tent thing, I realized that because my tent poles attach like an exoskeleton, the exterior is full of hooks. Aha! I grabbed the bungies and the tow rope from my kayak and, using the tree branch and another big piece of wood I found, I strung it up. ​

That first night, we were visited by an expected bioluminescent delight: The fireflies were out in force. We’re used to summertime lightning bugs. They typically slow-glow as a few dozen of them float around your backyard, looking for...well, I don't actually know the purpose of the glowing. Mating maybe? Anyway, that was not the light show we saw there on the river. 

Instead of dozens, there were hundreds—maybe thousands—all set off against the black backdrop of the woods at the edge of our camp site. And instead of slow, lazy glows, they were flashing rapidly, wildly, like a discotheque. 

And it went on ALL NIGHT. I know this because I didn’t sleep super well that first night and kept waking up more or less under the stars, and—yep, still going.

ALSO! Because I was wary of rain, I kept a close eye on the sky. We never got rain, but we did get heat lightning. Heat lightning is apparently real lightning from real thunderstorms, but it’s just reflected off of high clouds, so the actual storm is far, far away, and you neither hear the thunder nor get rained upon. 

​And so, the evening sky was filled with the light of club dancing fireflies and faraway lightning. Wild. Yet somehow peaceful. Never seen anything like it.

The second day, Saturday, was set to be our mega-mileage day. We were up early with the light, knocked back some coffee—and some Snickers and whiskey for breakfast (be jealous and judge not)—and were on our way. 

We knew we’d hit Pulltite fairly early, and indeed we did after an hour and 15 minutes or so. This was where our peaceful peace was very unpeaced. Pulltite is a popular put-in spot for...everyone. We rounded a bend, and there were dozens of bright red canoes, kayaks, and yellow rafts, along with dozens of excited day floaters splashing about. These are “float trip” people. No offense to them, because who among us hasn’t been a “float trip” person, but almost all of these people were shirtless and unsunscreened, smoking, and already half cocked at 9:45am, with full coolers of booze lashed to their boats for many more hours of consumption. 

Again, not to judge much here: Our plan was to refresh our own beer supply at the little store there. And so it came to pass. Also, I bought another adventure hat there. (There was no cell reception anywhere along this river, including Pulltite. They had WiFi, so we were able to fire off a couple of quick messages to our fams to let them know we were alive and well.)

We didn’t tarry. We decided to put as much distance as possible between us and the throngs of smoking, sunburned lobster people. We didn’t stop until Round Spring, which was a bunch of miles down the river.

​The Current River has—surprise!—a bit of a current. It flows around 3mph or so, so with a modicum of paddlin’, we were getting about 5mph. By the time we stopped at Round Spring (to go and find the round spring), we realized that if we continued our current (pun) pace, we’d run out of river by the end of the day. Eep. We determined to slow it down. 

We got confused when we parked our kayaks at Round Spring. It’s another popular put-in/take-out point, but it also promised a round spring that is supposed to be very pretty. But it wasn’t obvious where to find it. We even got back in the boats, went 100 yards or so down stream, thought better of it, and paddled back up and took out again. 

We knew it was around there somewhere, and we weren’t in any hurry, so we grabbed some to-go snacks from our bags and a walkin’ around beer (WAB) each, and set out to find it. TLDR, the half mile walk was nice, but we were a little lost, and we could have floated down to a take-out point that was right next to it. 

​ALSO! We had to cross a long footbridge to get across the river. A driving bridge ran alongside it, and—coincidence scale!—during the three minutes we were crossing, my car zipped past us. It was our shuttle person taking it down to the eventual take-out. I mean, what are the odds?

Y’all. This water is so cold, that when you submerge yourself and pop back up, you’re still cold for a few seconds until the sun’s ray pierce through the thin film of chilly water. ‘Twas quite refreshing. 

​And then, the jon boats came.

Good god the jon boats! Everywhere! There were so many!

A jon boat is a squarish, smallish vessel (good for maybe 6-8 people), in all of these cases with a motor on the back. They have flat hulls so they can fly up and down larger rivers, blasting through spots where the depth is only like 6 inches. 

​I’m sure it is tremendous fun to hurtle down a river in one of them at 20mph, but it is not fun to be in a kayak when they zoom past. You can hear the drone of the motor coming from half a mile away, like a swarm of locusts coming to ruin your day. Then they careen around a corner and churn up a wake that you have to paddle through. Then you get to breathe their motor exhaust. 

Look, I get it, you have to share the river, and this stretch of the river apparently is where jon boat people go to get their zoomies out. But of the hundreds—I swear I am not exaggerating that number—that buzzed past us over the course of hours, exactly one was courteous enough to slow down his engine to keep the wake minimal.

And they just kept on being places. Like you’d come around a bend and discover a gorgeous location—bluffs, a long beach, a babbling brook under some shade trees—and there would be 20 jon boats. It looked like redneck spring break. Dozens and dozens of people turning redder and getting drunker and more dehydrated by the minute, standing in the middle of water such that we had to redirect to get around them. 

​ALSO! Where are people finding the $7,000-$20,000 to buy these things?

Despite the jon boat jambaroo, we managed to 1) put in something like 27-28 miles, 2) not run out of river before our take out, and 3) found a beautiful camping spot. 

Tired and sweaty, we once again went for a dip right there at camp. The shore sloped so far down so quickly that we figured out that we could run, jump off the beach, and land a cannonball in 8-foot-deep water. So we did that for some time. 

​After a heavy night’s sleep, we got up, had coffee, then Snickers and whiskey, then got back on the water for the last few miles before the trip was done. 

We were at Two Rivers, our take-out point, in under 90 minutes. We loaded up and headed to the nearest town, Eminence, MO, for a giant brunch. We found a diner, J&B’s, that was ideal: A grumpy, young put-upon waitress, a large menu, an obvious cadre of regulars, and an incredibly long wait until the food arrived. (A tip: Get the patty melt. It’s on rye, with swiss. It was exactly what we both needed.) 

​And then on home to cell service and dry land. 

If you aren’t exploring adventurous parts of the outdoors in your own state, then what are you even doing? I want to hit them all eventually, and fortunately, Missouri is the underrated home of many underrated natural delights. 

Many of them are located in close proximity to one another in the southeast region of the state, which for all intents and purposes is the middle of nowhere. There are so many that you really can’t get to them all in one shot, but I recently managed to enjoy three of them in one go: Hughes Mountain, Johnson’s Shut Ins, and Elephant Rocks. 

​I’ll be back for the rest of them later. 

Mountaintop experiences tend to happen only on mountaintops. Missouri is not known for them. But there are a few. 

One of them is Hughes “Mountain” (using “mountain” generously here), a bump that rises just 380-430 feet above the floodplain in SE Missouri. But its defining feature is a rare formation of Precambrian rhyolite, the result of ancient lava flow that cooled to form columnar rocks. I hear tell the only other such formation in the world is in New Zealand or somewhere. They call it the Devil’s Honeycomb. 

We’d been AirBnBing at a nearby farm, and while the Momcats snoozed & lazed with wine & kids & rocking chairs, a couple of us got the wiggles. A quick chat with the farm owner led us to a couple of options, and we chose Hughes Mountain over a nearby popular hiking trail. (Life Pro Tip: When you have a chance to climb a mountain, take it.)

​It’s a hard but brief walk. You think you’re near the top, then you aren’t, then you are, then you aren’t. On the way up, there was evidence of a fairly recent fire that claimed many of the skinny pines. I made a note to myself to look up what happened. [Narrator: He forgot.] 

The rocky, piney trail gives way to a wide open stretch of gray and red rocks, peppered with grayish-green moss. The frolic-friendly landscape goes on forever. There are rock cairns all over the place. As well as Satan’s precious honeycombs.

​It was windy at the top, and because the leaves hadn’t popped yet, we could see for miles. We had the place to ourselves. My pal Toph opted to take a mountaintop nap. I am envious of this ability. 

I’m told there’s power in grounding oneself by physically connecting your body to the Earth. With that in mind, I peeled off my shoes and socks and padded over the honeycomb rocks. L’il dangerous to go barefoot on rocks and moss. Every step is a risk. Every step is a gift. I dipped my toes into cold rainwater puddles and thought about how old these stones are. ​

Apparently we have something called “Johnsons’s Shut-Ins” in Missouri. I’ve heard the name many times before, but I never understood what exactly it was.

It sounds like a terrible old homestead from yesteryore where Old Man Johnson lived alone for 50 years and then was trapped inside for another 20. Or a ramshackle prairie prison where he locked up the townsfolk when they got too ornery. Or an old-timey-themed old folks home. 
This is the sort of creepy frontier nonsense that was in my head whenever I tried to look up pictures of it, none of which never clicked for me: It’s just...like...water and stuff, I would think. Where’s the ruins of the ‘ol homestead or whatever? 

I insisted that we swing by Johnson’s Shut Ins to learn once and for all what it is. 
The buildings and parking areas are new and clean. There was a li’l store with adjacent showers and lockers. Hm. Clues!

​A wide, accessible trail led from the store into the woods. It was marked as very short. Mmk. So there’s a destination. At the head of the trail is a sign with a colored flag atop it. The sign explained a color scheme—green, yellow, and red flags, which indicated the level of danger in the river for that day. This particular day? Red. Mmk. Not a great sign.

A river cuts through softer sedimentary rock and carries bits of sand and gravel along downstream, where there’s harder igneous rock (in this case, rhyolite), which doesn’t erode as fast. But all that sediment from upstream, combined with the flowing water, forms a sand blaster. It chews up a lot of the surrounding bedrock, but the rhyolite still holds up. As a result, you get these hundreds of narrow, angry channels where whitewater gashes through. The water is thus “shut in” to the rock. ​

The flag-based warning system, it turns out, is for swimmers, because you can frolic in the shut-ins (except on red flag days)! Hence the showers and lockers and such.

​MYSTERY SOLVED! 

Ah, names. Sometimes they’re misleading like Johnson’s Shut Ins, but sometimes they’re perfectly descriptive, Elephant Rocks. 

What comes to mind when you think “elephant rocks”? You’re picturing it correctly: A whole big bunch of giant rocks that resemble elephants in color, size, and shape. If it sounds perfect for an afternoon of romping, that’s because it is. It’s kid paradise. 

When you pull into the parking lot of Elephant Rocks State Park, it’s just giant rocks rocks rock everywhere. Almost overwhelming. So of course, in the shadow of these wonders, our small children immediately...started playing in the dirt with sticks.

​On the right side of the park is a ton of boulders to clamber upon, and then you face a sharp dropoff where the bluffs tower above a deep pool of water.

If you wend around the little trail skirting the pool, you’ll come to EVEN BIGGER rocks that are EVEN MORE clamber-worthy. It feels like one big stone mountain, smooth and almost entirely devoid of foliage. It’s peppered by smaller boulders that lean on one another precariously, almost as if they’re in mid-roll, and between them are little cave-like openings that you can slither through. ​

Among the most pernicious political and social trends of the past four or five years is the widespread gaslighting perpetuated by those with a far-right political agenda. (Yeah, we’re goin’ there.) This trend is presently at its apex with the Derek Chauvin trial.

The political platform is white supremacy. That’s it, that’s the entire platform. The GOP wholesale abandoned any semblance of the political and moral values it portends to espouse, trading it all in for naked power as they followed Trump into a toxic sinkhole of white supremacy.
  
Yet the whole time, they kept pretending that’s not what they were doing, even as it became more and more and more obvious. The lasting legacy of Trumpism, ironically, will be the mass unmasking of the intense racism in the GOP particularly and in the country as a whole. 

You know exactly what I’m talking about (even if you try to gaslight me by dodging the issue), but the Chauvin trial shows it all so perfectly. The Right lost its collective shit when Colin Kaepernick quietly took a knee to protest police killing Black people. They knew what he was trying to say, but they lied and made it about “disrespecting the flag.” 
These are the sort of people who have convinced themselves that this makes sense:

​Person: Black lives matter!
Them: No, allllll lives matter. 
[pause]
Them: ...blue lives matter.

But—irony of ironies, I mean the optics are too on-the-nose—Chauvin the cop put his own knee down and executed George Floyd, with impunity, in broad daylight, on video. This trial should take all of five minutes. Because we all know what we saw. 

We all know what Kaep was trying to say, and we all know what Chauvin was trying to say. We all know who they are and what they’re about.

Based on my own interactions with people in the weeks leading up to the 2020 election, I am convinced that those who bought into Trumpism early on and stuck with it just have dark spots on their brains now. Each time he drew a new line and dared them to cross it, they had to kill off a part of themselves to justify doing so. After years of this, by the time the 2020 election came around (and it was so clearly just a referendum on hate), I couldn’t get any of those people in my social media circles to agree with me on this: “Just say you’re against white supremacy, misogyny, xenophobia, and bigotry. Let’s start from there.” None of them would. I think it’s because, at that point, they literally couldn’t. 

ALSO: I have zero patience for the “but but but both sides” people. Just don’t. You know what this is. You know what “both sides” mean. One side is white supremacy. You don’t get to hang out in the middle of that. 
All of this was on my mind when I wrote this song. 

Cut the crap, and shut off your gaslight. We’re not confused, we can see in the dark. We know exactly what you mean by your remarks.

We all know what we saw. We all know who you are.

We're all impressed by your mental gymnastics. Your flips and spins are tumbling all around the world. The dark spot on your brain grows wider with every line you cross. Until you can't remember what you've lost.

We all know what we saw. We all know who you are.

They say it's a crime to demand that they value your life. They say it's you who divides, but it's you who puts your body on the line.

We all know what we saw. We all know who you are.
Come and sit, 'round the warmth of the gaslight. Makes you feel safe, untroubled by the horrors they commit. They go on and on and on, but you say both sides need to quit. Either way you'll be staying out of it.

We all know what we saw. We all know who you are.

Take a stand by putting your knee down. To protect life or to take one away. Either way we know what you were trying to say.

​We all know what we saw. We all know who you are.

The first bit that I wrote is the refrain: We all know what we saw. We all know who you are. The second line I wrote is the first line of the song: Cut the crap. Together, that’s pretty much the whole message in a nutshell. The rest of the lyrics qualify and unpack that idea. 

Some of the lyrics just kind of tumbled out, which is always nice. I wrote four of the five verses in one or two sittings, if memory serves. The last one I wrote—the middle one—didn’t come for several days. 

Musically, I wanted that refrain to hearken back to a classic sort of group sing, stompin’, almost call-and-response idea. In my head I heard everyone singing that together. We all know… to kind of reclaim the truth that gaslighters try to take. The chord movement is a straightforward IV-I amen. (Every “amen” you’ve ever sung in church or in a choir boils down to that same IV-I chord movement. “Amen” means “so be it.” Here, it’s musically a way to put a strong stamp on the We all know statement. It leaves no question.) 

The chord progressions in the verses came quickly. I found the opening two chords for it—F to Am7—right away on the piano, and I liked how it sounded, with the G and A notes on the top of the Am7 chord stack. The rest of the chords organically fell into place from there.

I’ve been experimenting with different ways of structuring songs, rather than just relying on the ‘ol verse-verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus format. A lot of it has to do with riffing or sketching on some melodic or harmonic idea, and gradually building it out over the course of multiple sections. In this song, the full-length chord progression of the verse is F - Am7 - Bb - C - Dm7 - Bb - Gm7 - Am - Bb - Gm7 - Dm - C - Gm7 - Bb - F.

But in the first verse (and last verse), we get a truncated version of that: F - Am7 - Bb - C - Dm7 - Bb - C - Gm7 - Bb - F. 

So that main verse idea builds on itself. Then, at the end of the second verse, we pivot to something different entirely. I bring back the chords from the long introduction here. The harmonic contrast from the regular verses is important, because I switch from barking at the gaslighters to speaking a word of support to those who have been gaslighted:

They say it's a crime to demand that they value your life. They say it's you who divides, but it's you who puts your body on the line.

We all know who I’m talking about. 

And then after that verse (with new chords), I bring back the words of the refrain, but with a different harmonic structure—a stronger, more upbeat IV-V-I progression instead of the IV-I. 

So back to this idea of sketching and building: By the end of that newly harmonized chorus, we’re more than halfway through the song, and it’s just now that we’ve heard all the musical parts and pieces of it. Not a single intro, verse, or chorus has been exactly the same. But now we’ve established all of it, and so we can play with it for the rest of the piece. 

For “Gaslight,” I did (almost) a palindromic structure. If you think of the sections not as intros, verses, or choruses, but as musical sections, the structure is basically:

• A (intro)
• B1 (verse)
• C1 (chorus)
• B2
• C2
• A
• C3
• B2
• C1
• B1
• C2
• C3
• A

The A section anchors everything—intro, middle verse, outro—and the verses and refrains grow and shrink as the song ebbs and flows. I broke the rigidity of the structure in favor of a humdinger of a long refrain. (An underrated rule of composition, kids: Find a structure and play with it, but don’t religiously adhere to it—structure is a means to a musical end, not an end itself.) 

I wrote this on the piano, and it really doesn’t work on the guitar for some reason, so I recorded it on the piano, too. And I put a simple supporting electric bass line underneath to give the low end some juice. 

I had some bigger ideas for percussion, but I stopped short with what I ended up doing: snaps, claps, and stomps. I wanted it to feel like there were a bunch of people in the room, so I put on my heavy work boots and overdubbed myself snapping, clapping, and stomping at different positions around the mic to create a sense of space.  

There’s more I think I could/would do in terms of orchestration—like, there’s no solo or lead instrument, and it feels like there should be one, but I don’t hear anything, so I left it out. But what I did here makes sense for now. And also, less is generally more when it comes to orchestrating. As a rule, don’t put in anything that doesn’t need to be there. 

​Maybe I’ll revisit this in another more polished and fleshed-out recording later. But for now, this says what I was trying to say.

Here are some things that have happened recently: The weather got warmer. I got my first COVID-19 vaccine. And I quit my job...and maybe my career...and maybe my entire field.  

​All of these feel like spring. Renewal, rebirth, yada yada. And all feel...just a little...perilous. I’m reluctant to celebrate too loudly, because it’s like...can it be true? Is spring here? Really?

All Midwesterners know that Fake Spring precedes Second Winter. Fake Spring is that little window, usually late February or early March, when the single-digit temps give way to days in the 40s, 50s, or 60s. Optimists and idiots think this means spring has sprung. But a week later, Second Winter and its cold fangs bite hard. 

Some years, it’s just another couple of weeks of cold weather again. Other years, it’s been a full-on resurgence of winter, and we get multiple snowstorms through March and April. 

​Last year, the beginning of the pandemic made most of us forget that spring came early, and was beautiful, and there was no Second Winter. This year...by god, it sure seems as though we’ve dodged it again. 

We had a grueling stretch of bitter cold and near daily snowfall, but by the end of February, the daffodils were already poking their little green heads out of the dirt. And that was that—spring had sprung.

The pandemic is still with us, of course, but...not...for long? 

A bunch of wizards and billionaires managed to whip out a COVID-19 vaccine in a fraction of the time it usually takes—months, instead of years—and governments and some other wizards have been aggressively distributing vaccine doses to everyone. The Prick of Life! 

The timeline for when most of us can get our Prick of Life has actually moved up, not back. For the general population, it was “end of May.” Then it was “mid-May.” And now...where I live, at least, it’s going to be open to genpop on April 9. That’s extraordinary. 

Though some new strains of the virus are causing problems worldwide, most of the news about the vaccines is good. The efficacy is high. Vaxxed people aren’t shedding the virus much, even if they do somehow end up carrying it. Vaxxed people who occasionally do get sick aren’t landing in the hospital. And early tests indicate that at least one of the vaccines (Pfizer) is safe and 100% effective (?!?!) in kids ages 12-15. The CDC now says that fully vaxxed people can pretty much live, laugh, and love with one another like they could in the Beforetimes. 

Meanwhile, the number of cases in our local schools has continuously dropped since they herded our little darlings back into their seats in January. 

So it’s...it’s going pretty well, innit? Much better than I thought it would be at this point. And for the first time in a year, I have a little hope that much of our lives can indeed get back to normal. There’s so much I miss. So much we all miss. And once we’re all vaxxed, we can have most of it back.

Unless...unless...we get a curveball. Those new strains are scary-looking. And there could be a resurgence in cases as people get a little too comfortable with one another. There is, after all, a year’s worth of partying and get-togethers and travel all pent up, and we still need to employ a dollop of caution. 

​But...I hold my breath and hope.

My own personal spring is here. And...well. There’s a lot to unpack. I’ll write a lot more about it by and by—the nature of work, mental health, trauma, personal transformation—but at the moment, here’s the thing:

​I quit my job. It was a toxic, degrading, gaslighting, incredibly frustrating environment, within a dying industry, and I could not take it anymore. 

(Editor’s note: I feel something—shame, maybe—about walking away from a very, very well-paying job while so many people have been laid off and are struggling to scrape together rent. But that’s a thought trap. Forget the money, it was destroying me, and there is no dollar amount you can assign to your life.)

Also: There is currently a mass exodus from that employer. As in, a third to half of the company is leaving or has left, all within a few months. And as I’ve met with and consoled and commiserated with most of them, certain similarities emerged in our respective tales of woe, even from people across totally different departments: Burnt out. Tired of being constantly disrespected. Crippling anxiety. Made to feel like they were terrible at their jobs. 

I had to check on more than one colleague to be sure they were safe. SAFE! Not “if they were okay,” I mean SAFE. And some of them had to do the same for me at one point months ago. Looking back over the years, you’ll find a similar trail of casualties from that company, mainly because of the incompetent and cruel CEO. 

(Note to self: The past several paragraphs are just me justifying my decision to leave. Hm. Must explore that later.)

People keep asking me what I’m going to do next. The answer is I don’t know. Also, I don’t care. I am currently unemployed and plan to stay that way for the foreseeable future. (I am, though, doing some minimal freelance work to bring in some cash flow. We are very, VERY, VERY fortunate that we can comfortably financially afford for me to do this.)  

But this is about more than just ditching a bad job. Work hasn’t felt good to me in many years. And I realized that I haven’t taken a break since I was a child; I got a paper route when I was 11, and since then I’ve been keeping pretty much full-time hours (or more!), between school and work. I’ve never not had at least some kind of job. Even when I stayed home with our eldest child for a few years, I freelanced and was still working way too much, including on weekends, evenings, and holidays.  

But this isn’t even about me and how tired I am deep in my bones and brains and soul. It’s about realizing what drove me to work like that for so long and to push myself so hard. And...not doing that anymore.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve finally started doing therapy. Multiple modalities. (I highly recommend doing this.) Through that, I’ve learned a lot about who I am, what parts comprise me, and what drives me. 

And it’s, uh, pretty alarming. Like...you know how some people are “high-functioning” addicts? They’re reasonably successful in school, work, and life, but they’re living on the edge and barely hanging on, dangerously juggling substance abuse and life. That’s how I, and I think many others, live life with poor mental health. You get by, you get by, you get by. You have a big breakdown every few years or so. You pick yourself up and find a way to keep going each time. Then eventually you die, exhausted.

That is not any kind of way to exist. And we don’t have to exist that way! I have finally come around to this notion, and am Doing Things About It. It’s difficult and confusing—lots of twists and turns on the ‘ol mental health journey—but well worth the time and effort.

My hope is that the first half (maybe one-third) of my life was winter, and that I’m blooming into the spring of my time on this planet. Renewed, reborn, yada yada. Cautious hope.

It has been exactly one year since we went into self-quarantine on March 14, 2020.

No one knew how long it would last, or how intense it would be. We just knew we had to lock it down and wait. Throughout our quarantine, we kept track of our day to day—what else was there to do? Here’s our family log of our first 60 days in lockdown, with pictures and the occasional audio interview.

• Week 1
• Week 2
• Week 3
• Week 4
• Week 5
• Week 6
• Week 7
• Week 8

Excerpts from Day 60: “Two MONTHS! HAHAHAHAHhahahaha…hah…ha. Well. That went by fast. Because ev-er-y-day-is-the-same. Here's to two more months.”

[Narrator: It was a lot longer than two more months.]

Day 60 was May 15. Our town started opening back up 11 days before, and the COVID-19 case number were beginning a steep climb that only accelerated in the many months since. (Only just recently, with the vaccine rollout, have numbers begun to settle.)

For me, worry set in. And malaise. I got distracted by things that weren’t stories about my family dealing with lockdown. Then George Floyd was murdered, and the reverberations took me over. This time period was so incredibly dark—not only was there no end to the pandemic in sight, it was getting worse. Racial strife skyrocketed, and although there was some overdue reckoning going on, the pushback was astonishing even by racist American standards. Trump, and Trumpism, still seemed invulnerable.

Like many people, I felt just totally crushed. It was all just too much. No wind in my chest. No strength in my legs, no sparks in my brain.

The long months of schooling at home, the constant togetherness with the kids (which is to say, often quantity without quality), wore us all down. My job crumbled out from under me, collapsing into an impossible quagmire that I couldn’t handle anymore.

Although the final results of the presidential election spelled the official end of the Trump era, the process of getting there was long, agonizing, and traumatic, and it showed that the nation is still broken in half.

But amidst it all, I found this social media post of mine from back on June 1, 2020, and it serves as a shining little example of what most of us have found, and clung to, in the many long months of 2020 and the first few of 2021:

​These humans are small points of light in the darkness. Camille posed for me in the new kayak. And this is what Essie wore to go kayaking.

Small points of light in the darkness, indeed. Perhaps here you see a reflection of your own family’s sparkles from that bizarre time. 

We are at a Moment, between the fear and dulled senses and worry and exhaustion of the 2020 pandemic and political season on one end, and glimmers of hope in the darkness on the other—a defeat of Trumpism at the ballot box, the continued momentum of a racial reckoning, and the beginning of the end (maybe) of the pandemic.

Take a moment to look back at the dead of winter; see how far we’ve come?

​Soon, I’ll write about looking forward to a cautious spring.

*This story was originally posted on Feb 13, 2021

Hi, it’s zero degrees outside. It’s mid-February. And Punxsutawny Phil’s stupid shadow recently indicated that we’re in for many more weeks of this than we’d hoped. 

It’s the dead of winter, friends. 

And it’s not just the dead of actual winter; we’re still trapped in this pandemic, with no real end in sight. It’s the proverbial dead of another sort of “winter.” On top of that, people are just...dealing with a lot right now. Maybe you’re in the “dead” of a bad job, or a soured relationship, or maybe you’re just listless and feeling stuck and drained from...well, from everything. 

​So I wrote this:

Hope to see you in Kansas City. Maybe when all of this is over. But for now Union Station’s empty like an echo...

Think you'll ever make it to Kansas City? Do you think she'll ever decide? Or in the dead of winter will you die inside?

What about all the missing persons? The ones who will never see the thaw. Will we remember who they are?

I admit to cabin fever. You bet the walls are closing in. It’s sad when home is not a palace, but a prison.

I’m afraid of what we’ll find when the thaw comes in its time. When did your children get so tall? Tell them we miss them, one and all...

If you don't make it to Kansas City, and I have to have that drink alone. I'll raise a glass. I'll raise a glass. I'll raise a glass to the dead of winter’s own.

I wrote this sort of as if it was a letter to a loved one. In the early verses, I tried to evoke this feeling of wanting to connect and be together, to at least meet up somewhere soon, but...well. Who knows when that will be possible again. 

And I used the imagery of a place like a Union Station in Kansas City, which is typically busy and bustling and is also a place where travelers meet, but right now is completely empty (or at least, in my imagination it is). I’m calling out how unnerving it is to see these places and spaces devoid of the people who usually give them life. I think it’s because a space that is meant for people, but doesn’t have any people, is dead in a way. 

The second line is really about those personal “winters”...when we’re in limbo or stuck or drained or hopeless or whatever. The frustration and lack of control. The waiting. Waiting, waiting, waiting…

One of the things about this pandemic is that we’re losing so many people. They’ve become missing persons. Partly of course it’s COVID-19, which has taken almost half a million lives in the U.S. alone. But we’ve all been hunkering down for nearly an entire year, and in that time, people have died from other things—accidents and old age and other illnesses. And people have moved out of their communities, for normal reasons, but also because of job losses or new opportunities or what have you. 

And all those people are just...gone. We can’t have going-away parties. We can’t really even have funerals. We’ve lost all the rituals of saying goodbye to people. We don’t notice when they aren’t at school, or church, or community events, or the grocery store, because none of us are at those places anymore. 

When you lose those rituals and can’t feel the absence of specific people from your normal daily life, you don’t mark their departure. And you don’t remember. When we re-emerge from all this--the proverbial and literal thaw I mention in the song—I’m worried we won’t remember who we’ve lost. 

My grandmother is one of those people. She died in December, of complications from COVID-19, and although we did a Zoom memorial with our immediate family, it’s just...it’s just not the same. At a real funeral for her, we’d see far-flung cousins and aunts and uncles, and there would be a dinner where we’d laugh a lot and be grateful to see one another despite the circumstances, and there would be a hundred random people I don’t know who would pull me aside and tell me how much she meant to them. People like her hairdresser, or some clerk at a store who saw her every week, or a neighbor from way back, or whoever. That’s how we remember people who have gone.

One thing that did not stop during this endless lockdown is the growth of children. Any time people we haven’t seen for too long see our kids, their jaws drop. “Oh my gosh, they got so tall!,” they remark. I’ve felt the same way seeing other people’s kids. It’s sort of a loss, isn’t it? We’re missing out on something there. In schools and communities, we raise our kids together. For almost a year how...we haven’t. The same goes for extended family; how many of us finally get a chance to see nieces and nephews and grandchildren and...God, they got so tall. What else did I miss while that was happening? 

​So. I tried to capture that loss and longing, and that anxious stillness, and the little needles of despair that come with being in the dead of (several types of) winter. But hey, at least you’re not alone in feeling this way, right? Does that bring you a touch of comfort and connection? I hope so. It does for me.

This is one of those songs that began life as a little riff—a simple two-chord progression on the piano. C to Em and back again. Nothing notable or unique. It just kind of rang right in my ears. From there I noodled around to try and find some chordal movement and harmonic structure that complemented the mood I was going for: Am, Am7, B°, back to Am7, land on Dm7. The topmost voice in the right hand climbs up while the left-hand bass walks down step-wise, creating different chord inversions along the way. 

Then a pause on that Dm7 (F - A - C in the right hand with big fat octave Ds in the left), and a resolution with a transition as I hit a G in the left hand while walking down scale-wise to get back to where I started. That was the sort of harmonic thesis of the song, and I built on it from there.
The tone and mood told me this was going to be morose. It was born as a winter song, and the idea of the dead of winter showed up pretty quickly. 

Although I wrote most of “The Dead of Winter” on piano, and always intended to use piano as the main instrument when I recorded it, I ended up doing it on the guitar kind of by accident. I wanted to experiment with some vocal ideas, and it was late at night. I can get away with playing guitar in my office without waking everyone up, but not banging on the piano in the living room. 

So I laid down the guitar track and did a quick scratch vocal track. Then I started playing with more vocal accompaniment—that “hah-hah-hah-hah” stuff, in two- and three-part harmony.
Astute listeners will note that the “hah-hah-hah-hah” vocal bits are reminiscent of Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman.” That is because I unabashedly stole the idea directly from that song. 

I’ve long felt that the “hah-hah-hah-hah” perfectly illustrates the ironic combination of stillness and anxiety that comes with living in the dead of winter. Her voice in “O Superman” is gentle, almost soft, with a calm tone. Yet those pops of air are energetic (try it yourself: hah-hah-hah-hah), and their rapid, unceasing repetition creates this sort of nervous urgency. It’s at once a drone (calming) and an ostinato (agitating). And it’s exactly the effect I wanted for this song.
I was happy with how the vocal harmony was working, but with that and the guitar and lead vocal tracks down, the recording was definitely missing something. It needed a lead instrument or voice. I’d had a lick in the back of my head for some time, and I tried it out on an electric guitar. It worked. Sweet. 

This lead lick always felt wistful to me, almost like it’s an aural nod to the thoughts of this main character in the song. And I really wanted a sound that contrasted with the rest of what I had in there. So I plugged the electric directly into my recording box (I usually record by playing the electric guitar through an amp and recording that with a mic) to get a pure and simple tone from the guitar, and then I slathered it with an obscene amount of reverb. I think the effect works: It almost doesn’t belong in the song, which was kind of the point--it’s off on its own, a sort of descant that’s lost in thought while we feel the jittery hah-hah-hah-hah of the backing vocals. 

So! A song for winter—this particular winter, and the other winters we’re all currently going through. Hope to see you all in a literal or figurative Kansas City soon.

It’s early on a Sunday morning. Bitter cold. An inch of snow so far, and more coming. I slurp down my first cup of coffee; it’s enough to get me through the task at hand. I’ll use that second cup, waiting for me in the carafe, as my motivation for slogging through the next hour or so of exhausting manual labor. I gear up: Long johns. Double gloves. Boots. 

A heavy sigh as I open the back door and greet the frigid morning. It’s six degrees, but there’s no Kevin Bacon. At least I have a good podcast to keep me company on this lonely labor. I grab my snow shovel, put the blade on the ground, and go. I hope I have five—maybe 10—minutes until my back is screaming for me to stop. 

A thousand linear feet of snow to go.

​...is what would happen if I didn’t have this BIG-ASS SNOWBLOWER!! WOOOOOO VROOM VROOM!!

Make no mistake: I’m still too lightly caffeinated, I’m still geared up against the cold, and Ira Glass’ weird little voice is still ringing in my ears telling me that I’m listening to This American Life, but buddy--instead of that shovel, I’m yanking the pullcord on a hog that’s as big as me. This American life now has a snowblower in it, and it’s roaring to life. 

​I behold the glory of Snowraven, for this is the name we’ve given to this machine.* Yes, “we.” We as in the people of the neighborhood. Because we co-own it. 

See, this is not the run-of-the-mill story of a tool-happy Midwestern dad getting a shiny new toy to plow his li’l 10-foot driveway. No, this is the story of a community adventure and the solution to a long-time problem that has vexed it.

We (as in my family and me) live on a corner lot—a big one, with a lot of sidewalk. It’s right across from the elementary school, which is quite a larger property, with even more sidewalk. And both properties are essentially atop a hill; no matter which of the four directions you approach the school from, you’re going to have to hoof it up a significant incline. 

And when all of that sidewalk gets piled up with snow, it’s a mess. Worse, a lot of it just doesn’t ever get cleared. Unless a little snow-shovel gnome comes and does it. (Actually, miscellaneous neighbors often will eventually just emerge from their own street and help get the school walks cleared. None of them are actual gnomes, to my knowledge.) 

The city is supposed to provide this snow removal as a service, but when the white stuff begins to accumulate at all, the crews become completely overwhelmed. Basically, the more snow there is, the less likely you are to get it cleared from your streets and sidewalks. (Whiiiiiich is backwards from the way it should be? Right?) 

And so, all of the little schoolchildren, and their parents, are always fighting snow and ice during pickup and dropoff.

I was seriously considering buying a snowblower last year. But I priced them, and anything good was close to $600, and I just didn’t want to pull the trigger on something that I would use only five or six times a year.

But this year, a frustrated community decided enough was enough. When I was out shoveling the most recent snow, my friend JK pulled up in her minivan and rolled down the window. “We need to get you a snowblower so you can get the school walks, too!” she yelled. We chuckled. We exchanged small talk briefly, and then as she drove off, she called out, “I’m serious about the snowblower!” 

She was. 

She put the word out on the elementary school parents’ Facebook groups. Who wants to go in on a snowblower? A bunch of families, apparently. Including one of the school’s teachers. A lot of people were excited about the prospect of having all the sidewalks around the school cleared consistently. Some were enamored of the idea of having such a powerful tool available for their own sidewalks and driveways, too. 

After a day or so of Facebook chatter and collecting donations, JK Venmo’d me $400. I put up some of my own cash, picked out a good machine, and now suddenly there’s a big ‘ol snowblower sitting in my carport. We named it partially after the school mascot--the raven. Hence: Snowraven.   

We still need to figure out some logistics, though. Who all has access to Snowraven? Can anyone on the list just...swing by and grab it? What is the optimal route? At what point do I hand it off to the next school parent to do their section of the neighborhood, and how does it find its way back to my carport, where it lives? How long will it take to blow a few thousand feet of sidewalk? Will I be able to avoid whooping loudly for joy while I plow?  

Well. Today was the trial run. 

And it was glorious.

Never mind the fact that it was only an inch of snow. I still don’t want to shovel that nonsense like a caveperson!

It took me just a couple of minutes to get the hang of the controls, and off I went. I had mapped out the perfect path. I was thwarted only because someone had already done most of the school sidewalks, leaving the surrounding neighborhood walks to me. No matter. 

I exited my driveway and turned south, then west to the edge of the school property, then across the street, then east, then...you know what, that part is exciting only to me, forget it.  
Okay but I’m kind of proud of it, here’s a map:

Just kidding. For real, here’s a map:

Initial results of the trial run? Superb. Thanks, neighborhood. It’s fun to all be on the same team. I can’t wait to not destroy my back for the next 40 years.

​Long live Snowraven! Caw, caw!

*OH MY GOD, wait wait wait, should we call it “Snowpiercer”? Just thought of that.