TomFlannery.com

We just had one of those majestic fall weekends, when the temperatures hover near 70 and the sky is ocean blue and the foliage is at its peak, bursting with wild colors, every mile a new painting. You didn’t even need a destination. Just had to point your car towards the mountains and try to keep your eyes on the road. The summers may be too hot and the winters too cold, but in between are times like these, which can make NEPA worthwhile. I cannot imagine a colorless October anymore than I can imagine a music-less one. Windows open, the stereo a little louder than usual. The fall is its own soundtrack. Monday morning we all awoke to a cold, dreary rain, which somehow made the weekend that much better.

Pandemically speaking, things are still a mess. We went from no sports to complete sports overload….the Stanley Cup leading into the NBA finals competing with the MLB playoffs competing with an NFL season with a schedule being made up on the fly to deal with all the positive Covid cases. Saturday college football, especially in the South, all of a sudden is featuring tens of thousands of un-masked un-socially-distanced fans, which could lead to a health catastrophe (but not before the money is counted, which is apparently all that matters). And, bizarrely, the Masters golf tournament will be held a week or so before Thanksgiving, so there’s more chance of seeing frost than azaleas. Positive Covid cases are once again at the same level they were in March, when things were shut down. They are trending upward. Over 1000 die every day. The difference is that less and less people seem to give a fiddler’s fart. My life is filled with countless dunces wearing masks under their nose, apparently convinced that they too are filled with Trump’s tiger blood (and have access to his government health care). There’s no stimulus in sight, so here’s hoping you haven’t spent that $1200 you received 5 months ago. The upcoming election promises nothing but more chaos, sending us even further down the banana republic highway. It really was nice to have this weekend. A little respite before the shithouse starts to burn down again.

Today the news cycle is dominated by the pointless hearings for Trump Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, a spooky self-hating religious zealot set to take the seat of the feminist icon Ruth Bader Ginsberg, which is the most FU-this-is-2020 thing ever. Flocks of women dressed in “Handmaid Tale” costumes have gathered to protest the nomination. Barrett will crash through doors RBG opened for her, only to ensure that she slams them shut behind her…..assuming her husband allows it, of course. Set your clocks back 100 years.

And it’s “Columbus Day”…..the day federal employees get to sleep in thanks to the genocidal machinations of a guy who used indigenous people as dog food. #MAGA! Kinda like Cambodia having “Pol Pot Day”….which would be a better analogy if any of the “grrrrr Columbus grrrr” folks knew who Pol Pot was. The struggle is real when you’re trying to be clever these days, yo.

So I turn to music, as I usually do. Stevie Nicks dropped her first new song in years today, and it’s marvelous. A 4 minute piano-driven dreamscape called “Show Them the Way”. Amanda Shires and her husband Jason Isbell released the powerful “The Problem”, a song depicting a couple having an honest conversation about abortion. Strong women are getting stronger, which gives me hope in the days of a relic like Amy Coney Barrett.

(and this just in…..a Dolly Parton documentary recently dropped on Netflix…the south should tear down the Robert E Lee statues and replace them with Dolly….”of course black lives matter! Do we think our little white asses are the only ones that matter? No!”)

I was thinking of the great stuff released during this pandemic, and remembered that Pearl Jam released a burner in March called “Gigaton”……and as I type this I have “Never Destination” on repeat. I still prefer the boys when they kick out the jams. Drive-By Truckers have released two full length records this year…..as these road warriors didn’t have the luxury of sitting back and living off non-existent royalties. They need to work, and if they can’t gig, releasing new music is their only option. I have no idea how long bands like this can sustain themselves in a world of closed venues. Live music may be dead. I’ve blasted Bob Mould’s latest called “Blue Hearts” so many times, and wonder if Sir Bob will ever have the chance to tear through a set with such power that paint chips fall from the ceiling rafters, like he did in 2015. The Metropolitan Opera House announced that it won’t re-open for another year, at least. By that time it may be too late to re-open at all. Broadway will remain dark until at least the summer of 2021. If ever.

Don’t take anything for granted. Anything. Reach out and support those you can. Hang together.

Wear a fucking mask.

And take sides. Silence only helps the oppressor, never the oppressed.

In a bit..

–tf