PicoBlog

Nearly fifteen years ago, I published my first newsletter on a free WordPress site. Even though I could count my readers on one hand (my mother among them) I made the commitment to post new content every Tuesday morning - and I still do. Now there are over 30,000 of you, representing nearly every continent on the globe, but my mission remains the same: to share strategies to help you clear physical and mental clutter so you can live a more authentic, productive, and purposeful life.

British rock keyboardist extraordinaire Ian McLagan, who lived in Manor the last 20 years of his life, passed away nine years ago today, at age 69. Mac didn’t come to the Austin area to retire, but to work and create. He and his band of topflight Austin players held a residency at the Lucky Lounge for ten years, and when he died you had to kick yourself for not going every single Thursday.

Since forming in the cursed year of 2020, Militarie Gun have almost seamlessly moved into the position of being one of hardcore’s best and sometimes challenging bands. At the helm is Ian Shelton, who with this week’s release of Life Under The Sun—a collection of somber reinterpretations of songs from their breakthrough album, Life Under The Gun—officially expands his range from principal songwriter and singer for Regional Justice Center, the much-loved powerviolence band, to unmitigated post-hardcore balladeer.

Song structure is a strange music theory topic, because there is not much "theory" beyond just describing it. Why are some patterns of song sections so broadly appealing? The answer has something to do with the balancing of surprise and familiarity, of predictability and unpredictability, but if someone has a systematic theory of why some structures work so much better than others, I am not aware of it. The best approach I can recommend is to examine the most widely used structures across styles and eras and try to internalize them.

I. The solitary Our word ‘idiot’ originates from the Greek Idiōtēs, which in its most basic form means as much as that which is peculiar to itself, that which distinguishes something from everything else. Idiōtēs is that which makes something singular and unique, as opposed to common and shared. Idiōtēs is what is singular, as opposed to what is regular. In its form as ἰδιώτης, idiōtēs comes to refer to people.

I watched the debate last night, did you? With the post-debate analysis, it is a few hours I will never get back. It was horrifying in many ways. The question kept coming to me: why are these two men our main choices? Something isn’t right. Without links or sources, here’s my impression. Biden has a pretty good policy team and he has gotten a lot done in the face of a difficult Congress, but he was not able to get it across last night.

Review of Cha Cha’s Hiland Bakery, 3615 6th Ave.; 515-282-4059. Hours: Wednesday through Friday: 5 a.m. to 1 p.m.; Saturdays 6 a.m. to 1 p.m.; Sundays, 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. Closed Monday and Tuesday, though the Kirkmans plan to start opening on Tuesdays starting October 17. ncG1vNJzZmivmaO2rrvRmqWvoZyhsm%2B%2F1JuqrZmToHuku8xop2ihlmKwqa2MnJ%2Baq12dtq2tzZ1km5mbmr%2B6ecOonKympA%3D%3D

Elisabeth Elliot probably didn’t mean to become a fairy story. But she did.  Elisabeth Elliot’s written work is, on the whole, geared towards the theme of self sacrifice – that giving things up, humbling yourself, following God, and rejecting personal desires or feelings is the way of the cross. This is not particularly surprising given the trajectory of her life – after all, Elliot became a public figure when her first husband, Jim Elliot, was killed while missionizing the Huaorani people in Ecuador.

Lordy, I've befriended so many things and jobs and people who were "friend-shaped." One thing I learned is that if a company you're interviewing with describes themselves as a "family," RUN. I'm also thinking right now of the stacks and stacks of college promotional material my son received as a senior, especially after the second time he took his SAT. Some of it almost convinced me. I'm not-so-secretly delighted that he didn't (and didn't want to) apply to Stanford (my alma mater) because it didn't have the major he wanted.