Cold Splinters

Another Outdoor Retailer show, another long weekend of puffy coats and new friends. And another long flight home with music blaring on the iPhone as I curse the heavens for my inability to sleep on airplanes.

It’s been a while since there was any Grateful Dead in these parts. Mostly because it creeps up in the sunshine, but after a few straight days of 3.2% beer consumption that lasted from 4pm – midnight-ish, summer needed to come early. And Harpur College? May 2nd? 1970? Dick’s Picks Volume 8? Whatever you want to call it, just listen.

MP3: Grateful Dead – We Bid You Goodnight

Chapter 2: The Law of Club and Fang:

“…His development (or retrogression) was rapid. His muscles became hard as iron and he grew callous to all ordinary pain. He achieved an internal as well as external economy. He could eat anything, no matter how loathsome of indigestible; and, once eaten, the juices of his stomach extracted the last least particle of nutriment; and his blood carried it to the farthest reaches of his body, building it into the toughest and stoutest of tissues. Sight and scent became remarkably keen, while his hearing developed such acuteness that in his sleep he heard the faintest sound and knew whether it heralded peace or peril…The domesticated generations fell from him.”

Tis the season to dust this one back off, always worth the re-read. For a change, you can catch the free domain audiobook here, or watch Charlton Heston’s take here.

People used to get together round a fire
Fishes were cooked, songs were sung
Moonlight used to guide our way through the dark
Do you find it hard remembering?

MP3: Donovan – People Used To

If you’ve yet to hear the new one from Sandro Perri, I highly recommend going to your local record shop and picking it up. Great music for a sunny day with a little bite. Reminds me a bit of Arthur Russell. And yes, I would have posted about Impossible Spaces whether or not the cover was a mountain scene. I swear.

Read a review here and listen to another track here.

MP3: Sandro Perri – Love & Light

If you’ve seen The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (and I’m sure you have), or the beautiful views of Monument Valley with your own two eyes, chances are you know John Ford. Either way, you’ll want to watch The American West of John Ford, the 1971 documentary about the director made just a few years before he passed away. Amazing footage of John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, and those southern Utah red rocks are well worth 51 minutes of your life.

Watch the entire thing here.

In honor of the 20 or so hours that is the Europe ’72 box set, currently being blasted in CS Headquarters, here’s Pigpen doing “Chinatown Shuffle” from their first night in Copenhagen.

MP3: Grateful Dead – Chinatown Shuffle

Look: The 2 oz. Backpacker by Robert S. Wood
Look: Pleasure Packing by Robert S. Wood
Look: About Robert S. Wood
Watch: Dwight Yoakam – Swinging Doors/After Midnight

MP3: Mark Fry – Dreaming With Alice

(Thx Creepy Powers)

MP3: Wings – Love Is Strange

Julia Butterfly Hill is a famously eloquent environmental activist, who, from December 1997 to December 1999, lived atop a 1500-year-old California Redwood tree on a tiny, handbuilt platform. She spent 738 days more than 180 feet off the ground on one of the most successful tree sits in Earth First!‘s history of organized action.

You can watch the entire 2000 documentary about Julia Butterfly’s tree sit until September 30 over at PBS.