Well, we finally got the rain they’d been promising yesterday afternoon. After getting up to 93 degrees or so, a line of pretty impressive thunderstorms came through yesterday afternoon. Since God hasn’t lifted his veil of protection from us (unlike the Midwest, South, and Southwest), we didn’t have any tornadoes or anything like that. Just some power outages here and there. Now it’s quite a bit cooler out.
Sad news that Doc Watson passed away. Aside from his phenomenal guitar playing, he was a veritable encyclopedia of Traditional American Music. And he was a pretty darn good carpenter, from what I’ve read. This is pretty amazing, considering he was blind since he about a year old (though if you saw some of my carpentry work, you’d probably guess that I was blind, too). We’ll miss you, Doc. Say hello to Merle.
Ironically, it was a carpentry accident that was the beginning of the sequence of events that lead to sighted Merle’s death. The only reason I hope that some of the myths are true is the thought that Doc and Merle and Bill and Earl and Lester and Charlie and Ira and so many more are all sitting on the biggest damn porch somewhere picking away.
🙁 :gate: :blues: :turkey: :pup:
Was it? All I’ve ever read was that Merle rolled his tractor, which is pretty easy to do. I never wear my seat belt when I’m on my tractor, and the “pucker factor” is often quite high.
Merle was doing some late night work on a saw and cut himself. The tractor accident ensued.
As is the practice of the group for whom I worked, the folks who retired this year (like me) are invited to the end term party. So, I spent an afternoon at a fancy restaurant in midtown Manhattan with my former colleagues. It was nice to see them all but I’m NOT going back to work. On the drive home I heard the end of a Doc Watson concert on WNYC.FM. The whole concert, they said, can be downloaded at their website.
Here’s a link to the Doc Watson archive on NPR. A lot of great stuff. I heard part of the Fresh Air show from today on my way home for a happy hour with some friends. Thanks for the Docknowlegements.