Hello all. Apologies for the extended absence. It's been a crazy busy few months - a crazy busy 6-8 months, really - at work. Things should quiet down now (she said hopefully). This upcoming weekend should, fingers, crossed, be the first weekend I haven't had to work (excepting when I was on vacation) in nearly that entire time. As I said, crazy busy.
We've had one of the strangest winters and springs that I can recall. Believe it or not, the months of March and April were both colder - significantly colder - than February. The week of the 15th was typical of this atypical stretch. When I woke up on Tuesday morning the 16th, it was barely 40°F/4°C. It actually snowed in parts of New Hampshire and Maine.
The next day, Wednesday the 17th, the high temperature was - believe it or not - 95°F (35°C). It was the first day of a three-day heatwave, with temperatures each day well above 90 temperatures.
To give you an idea of how big these extremes have been, I went from my winter coat and gloves on Tuesday to this on Wednesday:
Talk about wardrobe whiplash... Things became more seasonable last week, but it's still cooler than normal (I was sitting outdoors as I wrote this, but had to come inside because I was shivering). And tomorrow is looking even chillier, with yet more rain. On the bright side, we're no longer in drought conditions here in New England, as we have been for the past few years. Definitely a good thing, that.
All that being said, I'm hopeful that I can soon retire the coat and gloves, cute though they may be, and finally break out the sundresses at long last. Fingers crossed.
Anyway, I promise to try to write more often. I know I've said that before, but hopefully this time I'll have enough time/energy to follow through. Quite a bit has been going on, and will be going on, so I'm hoping I can write about some of it here. Watch this space. Have a good week, everyone. :c)
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I was originally going to post several songs from what is my favorite album so far this year, The Sadies' Northern Passages, but with the untimely passing of Gregg Allman this weekend I've decided to include a few personal favorites from his amazing career.
First up is "Melissa," one of his most tender songs, with the Allman Brothers:
Next up is a ripping live version of my favorite Allman Brothers song, "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed."
I saw them play a jaw-dropping version of this during their headlining set on the second day of the 2007 Newport Folk Festival. The interplay between them is breathtaking.
And to bring this post to a close, here is his moving rendition of Jackon Browne's "These Days," from 1973's Laid Back, his debut solo album.
Jackson Browne recorded it on his For Everyman album, also from 1973, although he actually wrote it in 1965, when he was 15(!). A number of other artists have covered it over the years (Annie Clark, a/k/a St. Vincent, does a particularly affecting version), but for my money Allman's version is definitive. RIP, Gregg...
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