Big Yellow Taxi

“Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone?”

— Joni Mitchell

Late last winter, I came down with a nasty cold that wrecked my vocal cords for months, and I learned not to take my pipes for granted.

A week later, our campus closed because of the coronavirus pandemic, and I learned not to take in-person teaching for granted.

Campus reopened briefly in October, but the state ordered my boss to take all the flexible seating out of my classroom and replace it with traditional desks, and I learned not to take my professional autonomy for granted.

I came down with the coronavirus in November, complete with several weeks of brain fog that screwed up my ability to get words out of my brain and onto the page accurately, and I learned not to take my intellect for granted.

The virus also forced me to quarantine, and I learned not to take my pantry and freezer for granted.

In the middle of all that, one of my oldest and dearest friends died, and I learned not to take people I love for granted.

Last night, a colleague and I realized that our usual regional inservice day — which everybody generally hates — will happen online this year, in a scaled-down form, and I learned not to take free doughnuts and coffee and a day of bitching about consultants behind their backs for granted.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been on doctor’s orders not to run again until I can walk three miles without feeling winded. Ramona the Pest and I walked 3.8 miles today, and I feel better than I have at any point since last spring. I did not take that for granted, and I am looking forward to a gentle run later this week.

After a year of loss, I think a good workout is going to feel a lot like slashing the tires on a big yellow taxi.

Emily

Folk Thursday: The Fallow Way

It’s been a bit since I posted anything for Folk Thursday. With a little more time on my hands than usual, this seems as good a time as any to do it.

In “The Fallow Way,” Judy Collins’ lyrics speak to the value of stillness and solitude — two commodities many of us have in abundance at the moment.

I found myself thinking of this song Tuesday as I was standing in the lobby of the Roadrunner Lodge, minding the desk while the owner was busy with a teleconference. Here in Tucumcari, the winter is quiet, but this time of year, we start to see the snowbirds stopping in on their way east from Arizona, and the first few tourists begin wandering up and down Tucumcari Boulevard, cameras in hand. Every spring, I look forward to watching Route 66 come back to life, a bright blossom with petals made of neon and chrome.

Folk Thursday: Shawn Colvin

Shawn Colvin is a Carbondale girl. I have no idea why I haven’t posted anything of hers here before, but this is a really nice Tom Waits cover.

Emily

Folk Thursday: Walela

I was looking for a different Walela song when I ran across this video, but I couldn’t pass up a video of Rita Coolidge performing live, and these lyrics are just heartbreaking.

Emily

Folk Thursday: Sandy Denny

It is beyond incomprehensible to me that I have never posted a Sandy Denny video here. She was the lead singer for Fairport Convention, but perhaps more importantly, she wrote “Who Knows Where the Time Goes?” which has to be one of the three greatest songs ever to come out of the ’60s folk revival. (“Both Sides Now” and “Blowin’ in the Wind” are, of course, the other two. And yes, I know “Both Sides” isn’t technically folk, but I bet there’s not a folkie alive who couldn’t sing every word of it by heart. If there is, I call No True Scotsman.)

Anyway. Sandy Denny. Gone way too soon, but her work remains to bless us all. Enjoy.

Emily

Theme for 2016

By all rights, this year should have been great. A lot of good things happened. But it seemed as if every good moment had a down side.

I paid off my station wagon early … because it broke down in April and I need it out of my driveway.

My Cubs finally won the Series … without Ryne Sandberg on the top step of the dugout.

I got paid to lead a bus tour down Route 66 to New Mexico … where I spent the final day of the tour holed up in an Albuquerque hotel room with the worst migraine I’ve had since 1986.

I bought knockoffs of an Eames Shell chair and a George Nelson Marshmallow sofa … to replace the Eero Aarnio ball chair I had to get rid of because it was contributing to chronic tension headaches.

I watched the most qualified candidate in the history of presidential politics earn her party’s nomination …

This whole year has felt like that.

Fortunately, the Grateful Dead were kind enough to write a theme song for 2016. They just didn’t know it was for 2016 at the time.

We will get by.
We will get by.
We will get by.
We will survive.

Emily

Folk Thursday (If You Want It)

As I said a few years ago: I’ll stop posting this when it stops being relevant.

I wonder where all those boys in the choir are today? ‘Twould be awesome if somebody could track them down and tell their stories.

Emily

Folk Thursday: Leon Russell

There has never been anything even remotely folk about Leon Russell, but after spending nine years in Oklahoma, I came to appreciate him every bit as much as I do my beloved folkies, and I was so lost in my tears — for him, for Leonard Cohen, for an election that went horribly, horribly wrong — that I completely failed to acknowledge his passing and honor him and his work here.

The first time I saw Leon Russell in concert, I was slogging my way through the second draft of my novel, trying to whip several hundred blog posts into something resembling a cohesive narrative, feeling certain something was missing but completely baffled as to what that something might be.

On a gentle April evening in 2012, he walked onto the stage at the Brady Theater, that long, white hair and beard making him look for all the world like some kind of shaman who’d wandered in from another era, and two thoughts floated through my mind.

The first:

I want to photograph him.

The second:

This novel needs a lot more mysticism.

I never got to photograph Leon Russell. But my first impression of him is etched indelibly on my mind, and its echoes influenced the entire direction of my book, and maybe that’s better than a picture.

Maybe tonight, the Master of Space and Time is having Irish coffee with the bean sidhe in the warmth of a kitchen in a high-desert town that never existed but always will.

As the fanfic writers would say: Headcanon accepted.

Emily

Folk Thursday: Judy Collins and Ari Hest

I had to post this after seeing the list of Grammy nominees this week and discovering that Judy Collins and Ari Hest were on it for their recent album, Silver Skies Blue.

It delights me to no end that my beloved folkies refuse to slow down or retire. They just keep singing and writing and reinventing themselves and discovering new talent and making political statements and just generally being awesome into their 70s and beyond.

I want to be just like them when I grow up.

Emily

Folk Thursday: The Mamas and the Papas

I have no idea where the footage in this strange little video came from, but I find it impossible to be unhappy while listening to this song. In my world, a big dose of the Mamas and the Papas fixes pretty much everything.

Emily