Traveling and Listening and Reading

I drove to Denver and listened to NPR podcasts the entire way there. I never thought I'd be engrossed by the Most Emailed stories for 5.5 hours straight. I guess I have a slight off kilter way of gulping up information. It's the same way I surf the web. I look for one thing and a few hours later I'm looking at something entirely different. Often I didn't find the thing I set out to search for in the first place; it was long forgotten and will have to wait until the next time I can set out on a free-fall surfing of the web like that. Sometimes I wonder if there's something wrong with my inability to focus on one thing for long periods of time. I also wonder if it has made me lose a few IQ points since I absolutely don't need to retain information anymore; it's all accessible at the click of a mouse.

Anyway, I was traveling north up the state of New Mexico and into Colorado and heard many wondrous things from the great minds at NPR. I jotted down titles of books that sounded interesting from their lists and wrote down music I intend to look up to listen to later. I heard a band from Tupelo, MS; the Homemade Jamz. They play handmade 'muffler' instruments. The oldest is a 16 year old guitar player; the bass player is 14 and the drummer is their 9 year old sister. Their father joins them on the harmonica.

After listening to lists of great songs to download and various musings on the war and politics, this group of kids made me want to hear more and more of what they had. But since I was in a car with just an iPod, I couldn't stop to play more of their sound. I love their music, it's the genuine thing. It proves that real blues doesn't just come from an old guy sittin' on his porch; it's the music of a place and from the heart. I hope this group of kids goes on to do great things. Even if they don't, I think they will be ok with just following their hearts for the love of music. Check out the video and some of their songs on NPR's web site.

I also heard on the podcasts 4 books I have put in my pile of "to read" books: A Thin Place by Kathryn Davis; Metzger's Dog by Thomas Perry; Replay by Ken Grimwood and Sunshine by Robin McKinley. Of the 4, I am thinking that Sunshine will be the most entertaining. I will start with that one and maybe not even bother with the other 3. Replay will be the next to try if Sunshine does turn out to be a good novel.

That's the best part about finding books you may want to read before going to the bookstore. I do like reading other people's comments, and reviews of a book and have not picked up a book because a 1 star reviewer will dump on it big time. I've probably 2/3rds of my collection of book-dogs because of the number of times I thought at the bookstore, " Oh, this looks really like what I am looking for" and then putting it on the checkout counter without much more thought than that. I get home and try to read it and nothing. I need to find an exchange program for my book-dogs. Someone out there might like it. But, I also need to learn to use the library more often is what it amounts to.