Beach Day

 Happy Friday and Beach Day at KHS! Labor Day Weekend! 

Commodore

The Commodore by Patrick O'Brian. Seventeenth in the Aubrey-Maturin series of 21 volumes of sea-faring tales. I've been reading these off and on for over 20 years and each book never disappoints. The Commodore is another great sea-yarn from the early 19th century. I only have four more left! Must not rush through them!

Happiness

I've seen this in several places in the deep recesses of the internet. Apparently this is a distillation of Camus's thoughts on the conditions which lead to happiness.

Sounds right and I'm inclined to agree on all these points.  

Badges

For some inexplicable reason, our school made two sets of ID badges for us this year. We were told we could choose which one to use. I'm having trouble deciding. 

Camus Again

 More from Camus’s notebooks. 

400 Blows

I just discovered that the outro music for Episode 1 (Havana), Season 6 of Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown pretty much rips off the soundtrack from François Truffaut’s 1959 movie Les quatre cents coups (music composed by Jean Constantin). I’m shook. 

Bird Lives

 Bird’s birthday today 

Diary

 

Peaches!

Another record I picked up a few months back: a white vinyl edition of Peaches by The Black Keys. I had tickets to their July concert but couldn't go due to a family vacation. This is one of their best albums in awhile. Old school rock and blues. This is what The Black Keys are best at in my opinion. I like the title too as it matches my Peaches Records album crate where I store my albums. 

 

Phosphorescent Blues

The other day I picked up a used copy of Phosphorescent Blues by Punch Brothers at Josey Records in Garland. The cover features a 1928 painting by Rene Magritte. This painting hangs in the MOMA in New York. This double record is very nice and was the most recent Punch Brothers release when we saw Chris Thile host Live From Here in Austin almost a decade ago so it brings back some nice memories. This is a great set of songs. 

Dolly

 

Clowns

 Read this today from Camus’s Notebooks 1935-1951. 

New Jeep Swag

Flying Sooners 

 

College

We took the boy back to college this week. Always bittersweet. He’s happy with his new apartment and his roommates. He’s living his best life and is making us proud. But we miss him. 

Gold

This past Saturday Jackson and I went to Josey Records in Garland for a Weezer Listening Party. They were playing the new album, presumably called The Gold Album, which comes out next week. We got some nice swag and the record was good. Unlike the Jack White Listening Party they did not have the record available to purchase yet. Seemed kind of strange to me. Still it was fun. Weez on. 

 

Shortstop

 Shortstop for the Santa Fe Trail Indians. Circa 1984. 

Veracruz

Spend last Sunday evening in the Bishop Arts District. Ate at the Veracruz Cafe. Had pie at Emporium Pies then got some chocolate to take home from Dude, Sweet Chocolate. 

 

Pop. 1280

Another quick and easy read after a heavy one. Oklahoma's own Jim Thompson, the Dime Store Dostoevsky, always comes through with a crack in' good yarn. Pop. 1280 follows the same pattern as "all is not what it seems." An unreliable narrator who both entertains you and scares you. A nice pulp read.

Mountains and Mountain Villages

Well, I'm back to work so I'm thinking about our vacation right before the summer ended. We went to Estes Park and Rocky Mountain Park. And it was Fantastic. 

 

Black Jacobins

This 1938 work (revised in 1963) is considered the definitive history of the Haitian Revolution (1791-1803), the only successful slave revolt in history. Their leaders, Toussaint Louverture and Dessalines even defeated Napoleon in the process causing him to eventually sell off the Louisiana Territory to the United States. The Revolt had far reaching global consequences that reverberated for generations. I wanted to like this book more than I actually did

I found the first two thirds fascinating. But I found the last third pedantic and a chore. James frames the work from a Marxist argument which although compelling ultimately fell short in my eyes. I was looking forward to the denouement, the chapter on the French's failed invasion.

But the narrative wandered and became hard to follow. Overall, I enjoyed the book. It is a tragic story. Louverture was loyal to the French Revolution and wanted to remain tied to France. He resisted British efforts to make him an independent ruler. But Napoleon betrayed the Revolution and attempted to restore slavery to San Domingo. Toussaint and Dessalines were not going to allow that to happen. And they reluctantly fought off the French. 

The French Revolution had declared the blacks free.

But when you read Napoleon's frighteningly racist correspondence, he was not going to accept a black leader of the colony. He paid the price for his racism and France lost the most valuable colony in the Caribbean. The story of Haiti (named by Dessalines after the original Taino name for San Domingo) since has often been one of tragedy as the principles of the Revolution have often been ignored by leaders in the service of their own ambition.