The great irony of the McKinley Death Rock in the north end of Buffalo, NY is that 1) he didn’t die there, and 2) of all the buildings and structures built for the Pan American Exposition World Fair of 1901, nearly all of them are gone.

But the rock remains.

From May 1 through November 1 of 1901, the exposition occupied 350 acres of land which, at the time, was just outside of the city proper. An estimated 8 million visitors wandered through the exposition, which featured night time illumination courtesy of none other than Thomas Edison. There was nothing like it in the world, before or since.

And all of that was overshadowed by the tragedy of McKinley’s shooting. At the spot where the stone rests today, on a grassy median in a residential neighborhood, the exposition featured the enormous Temple of Music.

The Temple's dome rose 180 feet above the ground floor and the hall featured seating for over 2,000! There was a gigantic pipe organ and Edison spared no inch of dark space, it was one of the most lit and vibrant buildings at the fair.

But on Sept 6, inside the Temple of Music, during a meet and greet with the president, Leon Frank Czolgosz, a disgruntled anarchist, smuggled a pistol into the greeting line and shot McKinley twice. The first shot bounced harmlessly off a button on the president’s waist coat. The second shot lodged in McKinley’s stomach.

A mob attacked and pummeled the would be assassin. As he was being whisked away, McKinley shouted over his shoulder to the mob to go easy on Czolgosz.

The president was taken to the exposition hospital, and word was sent out to the best surgeon in the city, a doctor named Roswell Park. (There’s currently a cancer center in Buffalo named after him.) But Park was in the middle of a delicate neck operation at the time one town over and, incredibly, told the messenger that burst into the operating room that he couldn’t leave, not even for the president!

In modern times, McKinley’s wound would most likely not be fatal. In 1901, however, abdominal trauma was nearly always a death sentence. Doctors operated in an attempt to find the bullet. They never did. At one point a few days after the shooting, McKinley appeared to recover to the point where administration officials left Buffalo.

But gangrene had already set in and McKinley’s condition deteriorated. Modern doctors believe that he ultimately died of a condition called Acute Pancreatitis, or an inflammation and infection of the pancreas due to blunt trauma. Surgeons of the day would have had no idea what that was.

McKinley died on Saturday, Sept. 14 at the home of John Milburn, a wealthy supporter. Teddy Roosevelt showed up there to take the oath of office.

Meanwhile, back at the exposition, the fair continued but attendance dropped and the final few weeks went by quietly. The Temple of Music was torn down in March 1902 with most of the rest of the fair grounds shortly after. The assassination itself seemed to fade out of memory as the fair grounds were swallowed up by homes in the expanding north end of Buffalo.

It wasn’t until 1921 that the Historical Society finally erected the underwhelming stone marker, a lonely reminder of a sad moment for a city that never seems to be able to catch a break.

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Tucked back off the western side of Route 302/10, in the heavily stripified section of Littleton, NH, sits a rock marker dedicated to, perhaps, one of the most famous men you’ve never heard of.

Well, that is unless you happen to belong to the Order of Patrons of Husbandry.

Odds are you have a Order of Patrons of Husbandry right in your little town. That’s the formal name of the National Grange and they currently have about 150,000 members with Grange Halls still functioning in about 1,400 mostly rural communities across the country.

One of the Grange founders, John R. Thompson, was born in Littleton and grew up on his family farm approximately where his rock sits today.

Around 1867, President Andrew Johnson tasked his commissioner of agriculture - a fellow named Oliver Kelley - with improving Southern agricultural conditions after the devastation of the Civil War. Without slave labor, Southern farms were a mess; outdated, but still suspicious of any government help. So Kelley tapped Thompson to take the lead.

Thompson was a high ranking Freemason and Kelley figured the best way to both earn the trust of Southern farmers and create a productivity system for them was to have Thompson develop a Mason-like ritualistic agricultural teaching practice around farm and family. Thus, the Order of Patrons of Husbandry was founded.

One of my favorite rituals is their use of ceremonial sashes or robe colors to signify individual duties. They also use stones, like agate, to remind members that though farming and family is of primary concern, cultivating one’s mind is also important.

Thompson could also be considered an earlier feminist. As far back as its founding, women and teens were encouraged to participate. And the Grange required that local elected positions maintained, at a minimum, one third women in leadership roles. Dues were also lower for women than men.

Finally, here in New Hampshire, the state Grange took up two progressive (for the time and maybe even still today) causes, funding public schools and making libraries subscription free. That last thing was also a major cause of our founder here at Griffin Free Public Library - that’s why we have ‘Free’ in our name.

Thompson died in 1894 (one year after my library was founded), but despite dropping membership numbers, his legacy in the Granite State lives on. There are currently about 35 active Grange Halls in New Hampshire with about 1,500 members.

So, next time you’re up Littleton way, slow down a bit after the McDonalds and before the Home Depot, to glance at the Thompson Grange Rock, an obscure but important facet of rural life that still remains.

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“The sun is roaring, it fills to bursting each crystal of snow. I flush with feeling, moved beyond my comprehension, and once again, the warm tears freeze upon my face. These rocks and mountains, all this matter, the snow itself, the air - the earth is ringing. All is moving, full of power, full of light.”

~ Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard

And so, just last week would have been the 99th birthday of Peter Matthiessen, the naturalist and travel writer that both inspired me to write non-fiction and to visit Nepal. I have done both.

Matthiessen is the only writer to have won the National Book Award for both fiction and non-fiction.

The other day, a friend casually asked me, “Who is your favorite writer.” I didn’t even have to think hard.

Before Matthiessen, non-fiction to me meant either biography or school books. And then I read The Snow Leopard.

In 1973, a 45 year old Matthiessen went to Nepal (I was also 45 the first time I went) with George Schaller, a naturalist and biologist trying to catch a glimpse of a snow leopard, a rare native to the Dolpo region of northern Nepal. For Matthiessen, the trip was more personal.

A year earlier, his wife had died and he was in the throes of a painful spiritual exploration. He went to search for the leopard. But really, he was looking for himself.

His style, curiosity and language form the foundation of not just my own journey into reading non-fiction, but writing it as well. I can’t say this of many writers, but without him, I couldn’t say for certain if I’d even BE a writer.

One final thing. Today, on many library shelves, my book The Nepal Chronicles sits next to The Snow Leopard. That fact never ceases to feel surreal and wondrous to me.

So thank you to my mentor whom I never met!

To all of you I pose the same question. Don’t give this any thought, tell me straight up off the top of your head: Who is your favorite writer?

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Technically, the very first fictional short story I ever wrote was fan fiction, Star Blazers to be exact. This was middle school, sixth or seventh grade. The famous Japanese science fiction anime had finally made it to American television, daily, channel 29, right after school.

In fact, in order for me to make it home in time, it was faster for me to run home. If I took the bus, I’d miss it. So I ran.

At some point in the middle of the school year, I started writing my own Star Blazers fiction. I had to hide it. This was a Catholic school after all. That sort of thing was frowned upon.

But mostly, during that time in my life, I had disassociated enough from my ‘real’ life at home that writing fiction became an escape. The story got pretty long, 20 or 30 pages in a spiral bound notebook if I recall, written in between classes, or sometimes during class.

That was my undoing.

I was caught. My notebook was taken away. It was never given back. I pled my case to my parents, but to no avail. They had bigger things to worry about at the time. So, it was lost.

The other night, I discovered that my daughter is also writing fiction. Secretly. At school. Not in a notebook, but online. She’s writing dragon fantasy, based on a series of books called Wings of Fire. So, she’s writing fan fiction as well.

“Sometimes, school is boring,” she said by way of explanation.

The difference here as near as I can tell is that she’s a straight A student. I was not. I struggled badly in middle school. Perhaps that makes a difference.

“You’re allowed to do this?” I asked her.

She nodded. When their work is complete, they can engage in other activities. She sometimes chooses writing.

Her work is good. Better than mine at that age, certainly. She’s not ready to publish it here yet, or anywhere. She gave me permission to mention it here, but for now, this is something just for her. But I’m glad I found out. And I’m glad she’s letting me read it. I’m not even editing it, or making suggestions. Just reading.

After the Star Blazers disaster, I became more careful. If taking the notebook away from me was meant as a writing deterrent, the nuns obviously failed spectacularly. I branched out, began writing original fiction short stories. If memory serves, one of my first originals was a ‘horror’ story about a community of house spiders that join forces to spin a super strong web and trap the resident human so they could eat him. (I was REALLY into Stephen King in those days.)

I still have many of those early stories. Maybe sometime, I’ll run one here. Or, more likely, when she’s ready, I’ll let her read them first.

We DO have to work on that whole boring school part though!

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Last night, 11 years after they last toured, Rush hit the stage in California with a new line up and renewed energy. The greatest drummer in the universe, Neil Peart, passed away in 2020 and most thought that was the end of the band. But German drummer Anika Nilles climbed behind the kit last night and did The Professor proud. Keyboardist Loren Gold gave Geddy Lee some space to focus on vocals and Alex Lifeson continues to be one of the most underrated guitarists in the rock/prog world.

Honestly, I wasn’t certain if this was going to work. I’m not a big legendary band sort of guy (AC/DC being the exception) and Rush… well, to teenage Dan, that band’s music literally saved me.

But I woke this morning to some fan cams of the show and one moment in particular that helped me understand.

First, let’s talk about 1987. That was the year things began to turn around for me; not yet out of high school, but on better footing academically. Making some money working at the mall. A more solid friend circle. Already learning how to be a writer.

In July of that year, I went to Darien Lake Amphitheater to see ‘Til Tuesday. I was deeply into both progressive and new wave rock at the time and seeing Aimee Mann gave me life!

Three months later, my favorite band at the time, Rush, released one of the best songs of the prog era (or any era), Time Stands Still. On backing vocals for that song was Aimee Mann, the first time Rush had ever brought in an outside musician on a track.

Peart explained in a later interview that the song was a meditation on being in the moment. He told the Boston Globe in a 2013 interview: “All through the '70s our lives were flying by; we spent so much time on the road that it became like a dark tunnel. You start to think about the people you're neglecting, friends and family. So the song is about stopping to enjoy that; with a warning against too much looking back. Instead of getting nostalgic about the past, it's more a plea for the present.”

Yesterday, Rush brought Aimee Mann on stage to sing that song with them, while images of Neil Peart played on a screen overhead, and suddenly somebody was cutting onions.

Music, like all art, isn’t just notes, or paint, or words. Music is engagement, a measure of where you are, how far you’ve come, what you have left. How you feel when you hear those songs doesn’t change with time because art grounds you in the moment. That song, to me, is ME in 1987. And now, it’s ME in 2026.

My joy in hear those musicians play that song again, today, is profound. And even though I won’t be able to catch them live on this tour, the fact that they’re out there doing this, both bringing fans back and helping them look ahead, is everything.

Anyway, here’s a fan cam of the song I found. There’s nothing pro shot out there yet, but I don’t care. Just let the this wash over you. Then, find art that gives you life today and make some space for it.

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Today’s reflection is about nothing, really. About having a whole notebook of ideas. The Littleton Stone Marker. Hiking the Old Man of the Mountain. The Snake Pond. The Lafayette Button.

Today’s reflection ran up against mowing the lawn. Lunch with the family. Lighting up sparklers. A walk in the park.

And even then, even after the lights were dim and PJs were on and nighttime orange slices were eaten, even then, today’s reflection would have had enough time.

Except… “Daddy, help me sort these beads.”

Today’s reflection watched as I sat on the floor next to my child, in the dim evening light, on a warm June night, as she directed me in the ways of bead sorting. This type of bead would go here. These little ones combined with the small charms. The clips here. The tiny glass dragonflies, precious, to be placed inside the spiral metal necklace.

And now, finally, with sore knees and sleepy lids, today’s reflection just shakes its head. Go to bed old man. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow will come… you can count on that. Today, you sorted beads with your daughter. Everything else waits.

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STONE MASK: Remember that story we did on the great stone mask carving up in Portland, Maine? We came across a strange picture of the Elm Street Theatre Mask Rock, just down the street from Portland House of Music. Little Bean and I have walked by that rock many times, but never realized it wasn’t a rock! It’s a piece of the Elm Street Theatre that stood on the site of what today is the Portland Public Library.

The theatre was there from 1916 to 1952, but they only found the stone mask when construction began on the library in 1977. So it was moved across the street and installed as a sculpture.

Well, we visited it! It’s huge and cool! That’s it, just thought you’d like to know!

WHO ARE YOU: Remember that story we did where we posted two old photos of hiking parties and then we asked you which member of that party would be YOU? Well, we got a whole pile of responses from all of you and most were quite clever and thought through. Thank you! We love thought experiments like that.

Well, it turns out that there is ONE hiker in the bunch that was mentioned the most. See the lady in the picture below, right in the middle, crouching with the walking stick - a determined look on her face. She was the hiker that a bunch of you honed in on and said something about her most resonated with you.

Something about her fierce resolve that made her stand out to all of you! Check her out below!

BIRD MASKS: Remember that story about Uma’s mask making hobby. So many of you were so positive and encouraging, we wanted to answer a quick question about her craft asked by a reader. Judy asked: My question would be that, given her love of the Audubon Society and the work they do with birds, has she ever made a bird mask? Can we see it, if she has?

Uma HAS made a bird mask. One. It’s an eagle. She said that she’d like to make more but bird masks are particularly hard because of the bird beaks. Most of her masks are built up from a mask template. She crafts the ears and eyes and such. But for birds, she says, molding a beak is time consuming and complex. She’s getting better though!

As for showing it to you, her response when asked where it was: “I haven’t a clue!”

Elsewhere on the mask front, Uma just got a big donation of VERY interesting mask parts from another reader, Paul. When she digs into those, we’ll be sure to report back!

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As the school year slides into the chaos of the final few weeks, keeping track of the ‘Last ofs…’ becomes more challenging.

The last orchestra concert. The last recital. The last report card.

And the last school play. We’ve fallen way behind on writing about some of these happenings, and to be fair, elementary school theatre can have - how to put this diplomatically - a limited, interested audience… outside of the parents of those kids taking part of course.

But there are always lessons to be learned.

For example, why has Little Bean taken to debating and challenging EVERY SINGLE THING around the house - you know, aside from the fact that she’s a pre-tween.

Well, part of that stems from the fact that she’s Goldilocks’ lawyer. Her elementary school performed the short, farcical comedy, Goldilocks on Trail. The Ed Monk play puts the famous Goldilocks character on trial for breaking and entering and theft of porridge. The courtroom setting brings the three bears, the big bad wolf and others to sit in the witness seat. Goldilocks is defended by Attorney Wombat, AKA Little Bean, who said she wanted the role because it had the most lines.

She wasn’t kidding! And Goldilocks needed plenty of defending. One standout confrontation between Attorney Wombat and the Big Bad Wolf results in the wolf professing his love for Goldilocks! In another back and forth, Attorney Wombat gets the lead detective in the case, Detective Clorox, to admit he was bribed by doughnuts!

Attorney Wombat is the Columbo of the fairy tale world. I don’t want to spoil it for you, and will leave it to your imagination as to whether or not Little Bean succeeds in getting Goldilocks to beat the charges. Hint: My daughter usually gets her way.

Anyhow, after four performances over four days, Attorney Wombat was pretty tired. It’s rough going head to head with Papa Bear day after day and not feel a little burned out. Still, one hopes that some measure of lawyerly debate experience will stick. Just not when it’s time to take out the garbage.

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Well, it’s been nine years today since the old man left us, nine years like yesterday.

The family wants me to do a little memory ceremony, maybe light a candle. Maybe I’ll cut the grass instead. He’d like that. More practical he’d say.

Grief doesn’t care about time, of course. This has been a bad year for avoiding grief - every time I’ve managed to put it in the rear view, I come around a corner and there’s been something else to mourn it seems. The old man would think I was just wasting energy.

I’ll do something frivolous after work today to make up for it, take the family for smoothies maybe, sit at home with the dog and stare into the middle space for a while. Recenter. Get ahead of it. Again.

Anyway, he wasn’t perfect but he was decent and he tried. He loved the heck out of his family, so that’s a good place to start, a place we have in common. Cheers dad, another year and another year and another year. We carry on.

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He said, “I do not paint a portrait to look like the subject, rather does the person grow to look like his portrait.”

Given his penchant for surreal - how shall I put it - bizarre images, getting your portrait painted by Dali must have been a character building experience indeed.

I have some experience with this.

Recently a very young patron stopped by the library with thrilling news. She had drawn a picture of me! My eagerness could not have been more pronounced and I practically overflowed with enthusiasm as she handed me her master-work.

I’ve posted it below. It is, dare I say, a perfect likeness! It now hangs in my office.

This fine work of art rang another bell for me. Years ago, when Uma was about this patron’s age - likely about four - she also drew a picture of me. This was her very first picture of me.

Of course I still have it. Uma’s portrait is also a perfect representation. How fortunate I am to have had my portrait painted not once but twice by great masters of the arts!

I do wonder how I’ll be able to “grow to look like my portraits” though, as Dali suggested. Both appear to show a very different me - one shaggy and unrestrained, the other more sleek and controlled. Or, perhaps the portraits, TOGETHER, conspire to direct me toward my future; a little bit of responsibility, a little bit of wildness. Did my daughter ‘see’ me differently than a young artist of the same age, a father figure vs. an authority role.

So much to consider here! But isn’t that the beauty of art? You never know what you’ll grow into.

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Sightings of Champ, the Lochness-like Monster that lives in the cold waters of Lake Champlain up in Burlington Vermont, extend all the way back to Abenaki lore. Over 300 sightings of the legendary 30-foot serpentine reptilian creature have been reported over the years, the most recent being in 2009.

So imagine my delight when one of the library’s littlest Cryptozoologists popped into my office the other day to inform me his family was taking a vacation up Burlington way and he needed a picture of Champ so he could identify the creature if he saw it.

I was happy to oblige. He selected the image you see above. I told him to check the picture on the back after the vacation to let me know if he saw Champ or not. A few days later, he returned with, sadly, the NO box checked. Oh well, better luck next time!

I mention all this because we also realized that this week (yesterday actually) was the grand re-opening of one of our favorite places on the planet - the International Cryptozoology Museum in Bangor, Maine. After months (maybe years) of planning and moving, the museum packed up their 20,000 items and moved north from Portland. This week, they re-opened!

Their new address is 490 Broadway in Bangor, Maine. Here’s a link to their website: International Cryptozoology Museum. And here’s a message from Chris about the new location: Message from Chris.

As you may recall, last October, Uma produced an interview with assistant director Chris Packard about the museum and its move. You can revisit that interview below:

Bangor is a wee bit further afield for us than a day trip to Portland so we’ll have to plan a bigger trip next time to check our their new digs. The old location was absolutely packed into such a tiny space. This one looks so open and inviting. Plenty of space for Mothman, Bigfoot, the Giant Squid and the famous Fox Cerberus to breathe!

And with little monster hunters like our Champ obsessed little guy looking to explore some mysterious creatures, the new museum will appeal to an all new generation of crypto-fans. We’re eager to visit again and will tell you about it when we do.

Has anyone here had a cryptid experience they’d like to share?

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Miku has been one of my favorite singers for a while because I like her music and I’m not sure even how to say how uptempo and fun her music is. Some of her songs can have a sad vibe, but that doesn’t make them any worse!

Her music doesn’t have a specific genre. The songs are considered j-pop/rock/dance-electronic/vocaloid-utaite, and all of her songs tell a specific story. I got to see her in Boston!

That was one of the best concerts I’ve been to because of the cosplayers, music and visual effects. Also, she had a different outfit for every song, and there was a live band playing on the side and it was really cool. It was about 2-3 hours long and started at 8:00pm.

When we were waiting outside (the line was very very long it stretched around a corner and looped around like 25 times) there was this guy with a giant Miku plush and he lifted up the bangs so Miku looked bald and people started chanting “Bald! Bald! Bald! Bald! Bald!”

Inside, there was a stand selling light sticks but they were sold out. But there were people selling them for 10 dollars more outside so we got one. I don’t know if we got scammed but it was worth it!

There was so so so many cosplayers and people handing out trinkets that I got like eight new bracelets from just waiting outside!

100000/10 highly recommend!

Here’s a video of the first song from Miku’s encore:

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Who are you?

Have you ever really given that any thought? Not, what do you like, or your hobbies, or your name. That’s not really you. Or is it?

Today, a fun thought experiment.

Two century old photos, both of hiking parties in the White Mountains. Both consisting of a wide variety of personality types, ages and genders. Both from around 1900-1910.

Take a good, long look at them - their faces, their poses, what they hold, how they lean or move or sit. Zoom in if you like.

And then, tell us… which one of these hikers is you, and why?

I’d love to hear who YOU think is the most YOU!

Stay tuned for a special Umi’s Zoomiez column tomorrow. Uma is finished with her review of the Hatsune Miku concert and she’ll tell you all about it!

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So today, I thought I’d reprint an excerpt from my book The Nepal Chronicles. This passage comes late in the book, as we begin our final push to Everest Base Camp. I day dream often about that trip and those days so I’m pleased to take you with me. Enjoy, and at the bottom I’ll include links to the book at our bookstore.

Chapter 12: Base Camp / Thursday, Oct. 21, Afternoon

A long, aching groan fills the air. It sounds like something is coming up from the earth to swallow us. The groan is followed by a sharp crack — a thousand iron hammers hitting a thousand anvils.

The glacier moves like a living thing, a constantly writhing eight-mile snake made of ice and rocks. It makes thunder.

The Khumbu is alive, and we are tiny, walking on its narrow spine, a good half mile up slope from the ice. It’s like walking on a sleeping monster. A minuscule shift in the ice someplace out of sight creates massive shifts above and that energy explodes with the force of an earthquake. Here on this ridge, we can feel the glacier move and hear it crack, and it makes us want to move faster, to avoid angering it. But we can’t. In fact, we can barely move at all. We are at 17,000 feet and ascending and it’s like walking in glue.

The three-mile hike from Gorak Shep to Base Camp is not technical. It should not be difficult under normal circumstances. But this place is far from anything that we would ever call normal. We are so far beyond our comfort zone. We are specks floating on the top of the world. We are nothing here, we are all we have.

I am beyond words. Meenakshi and I share little because we can’t afford the energy, but we can feel it, the power of this place.

The glacier speaks again and we stop to listen. Someplace from high on Nuptse (or on the other side, or in Tibet for all we know) a miles-wide crevasse opens and an avalanche comes tumbling down and we can feel the rumble in our bones and under our feet. We scan the ridges for the plumes of white but can see none.

I am trying to understand my place here. In between the upset stomach, the shifting weather, the porters coming and going, I work hard to be in the moment, to attain some level of mindfulness, as Buddhists would say. The trail and the rocks and the ice and the air are the physical that is here. My amazing wife and our past and future, and the history of all who have come and all who will come swirl in my mind.

Irvine. Mallory. Norgay. Tabei. Messner. Krakauer. Arnot. Viesturs. We walk in their footsteps now. Tomorrow it will be our footsteps that those who come will follow. We follow history, we make history.

There is no yesterday, there is no today. There is now. And right now, we move silently through the swirling snowflakes, watching our time, watching our steps and trying to watch the giant mountains all around us.

If you’d like to learn more about The Nepal Chronicles: Marriage, Mountains and Momos in the Highest Place on Earth or pick up a signed copy, please click below!

THE NEPAL CHRONICLES

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Tonight, from 5:30-8pm, myself and about twenty other regional authors will be participating in Epsom Public Library’s Author Festival. The library is located at 1606 Dover Rd, Epsom, NH.

I’m so excited to have been invited, but nervous as well, which is newish to me! Back in my pre-librarian days, I was doing 75+ events like this one a year. But life changes, and one adapts. So this will be only my second such event this year. Have I forgotten how to do it? Will I be so happy to just be out there surrounded by my other authors in arms that I don’t sell anything? Will I go out and spend all the money I make buying other authors’ books? Who knows!

There will also be food trucks and music. Here’s a direct link for directions and more information: Epsom Library Author Festival.

And while we’re here talking about local authors and books, I’m regularly reminded that this newsletter is a great place to occasionally remind you all that, well, yes, I’ve written a bunch of books and that, well, yes, they are for sale! And I’ll even sign them for ya!

So, in that spirit, I figured I’d leave you all some links to our bookstore and all our socials today. And remember, if you enjoy this daily meditation, Little Bean and I also have a Buy Us a Coffee (Or Smoothie) donation site. We appreciate you all!

Here we go!

Dan and Uma’s Bookstore

Here We Are at Amazon

Buy Us a Coffee

Subcribe to Our YouTube Channel

Check Out Our Instagram

EDIT: Just a quick note to let you all know I woke this morning with what might be a cold or maybe allergies. We’ll see how the day plays out. If I don’t make it, it’s still a fantastic event!

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SITTING on my porch, listening to you play piano,

I tuck myself back away from the window because,

I want to listen without you knowing I’m there.

THOSE moments now are growing wider,

Where your real self, the uninhibited by a

Parental audience self, is visable.

KNOWING you now, really seeing you, can

Require some subtle adjustments on my part,

Not trickery, but let’s say accommodation.

YOU play a bit, talk to the cat, fiddle,

You break into “Jingle Bells” for some reason,

Then pound on the keys and laugh and tinkle more.

THERE’S a melody that I swear sounds like

AC/DC, and I think I can hear you, the honest you,

The explosion of color and life and wonder.

SITTING on a concrete porch, hiding, listening to

You play Mozart in a tiny nowhere town, on a tiny nowhere street

And I’m suddenly fully aware of the universe.

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Great new music continues to be released, from local nu-metal favorites to West Coast rock/pop to hard core punk grunge. Asian metal continues to dominate the scene while one familiar voice has reemerged on the scream-o scenes with a new band. Oh, and Muse has a new single and soon a new album dropping! There’s something for every Rock ‘n Roll fan on our regular list and if you can’t find it, you just aren’t looking hard enough.

The folks behind Paperjam Music Magazine, Sheila and Tony Russo, have asked us to contribute a regular new music round-up column to the magazine! The May/June issue is out now and so we have permission to reprint our column here!

In case you have not yet, go over to Paperjam and do the following: Subscribe to their socials, read the digital magazine, drop a few bucks their way and have a print copy sent to you. They work hard and it’s worth it. Here’s their website: Paperjam Magazine

And then, take a listen below and tell us which of these new songs resonated with you the most! Or, let us know of any that were recently released that you’ve been listening to. Are you ready? Let’s go!

Major Moment: Not That Broken

One of our favorite Boston bands is on a roll this year! With a major tour opening for Plush in the fall just announced and a new album on the way, Major Moment is THE band to watch. Not That Broken is a nu-metal shredder, combining singer Sasha Razumova’s soaring vocals with Andrey Borzykin’s industrial-grade keyboards and synths. This song will sound so so good live! And good thing too, as Major Moment is touring the country in a Major way this year. We can’t wait to see them in August!

Turning Jane: Let’s Play Doctor

LA-based Turning Jane returns to the rock-pop scene with a new bass player and a catchy, hooky sound. If the song and official music video for Let’s Play Doctor came out in the early 90s, it would be shown on MTV twenty times a day. Taylor Heart’s playful vocals are the perfect counter-point to the head bopping fuzz from Izzy’s guitar. This is like Hole, but with a sense of humor!

Blue Medusa: Checkmate

After more than a decade as the scream-o vocalist behind the melodic death medal band, Arch Enemy, Alissa White-Gluz departed last November and it was unclear what was next for the talented singer. Well wonder no more! Blue Medusa comes roaring out of the gate with the blistering Checkmate. White-Gluz sings in both her trademark harsh and clean vocals here and the band shreds and dive-bombs so hard behind her that if this is what the new album will sound like, I can’t wait to hear it.

Rolling Quartz: Romantist

I still contend the best rock and metal is coming from Japan and in this case Korea. And the best Korean lead singer right now is Jayoung from the five-piece Rolling Quartz. Blending new energy with classic rock tropes, Romantist is the band’s arena anthem. If this were 1970, you’d put your lighters in the air. Today, you hold up the lights of your cell phones. Catchy riffs, emotional fan participation and bringing the organ back to rock music. This is a band to watch!

unpolished*: lobotomy

This ripping punk-tinged band from LA is everything rock should be, unapologetic, raw, in your face. Their newest EP, “Full Frontal: Act 1” feels dangerous, like listening to Iggy Pop or the Runaways in the 70s. And the newest single off that EP, lobotomy, is a six-and-a-half-minute punk masterpiece of gritty riffs, screamo aggression and dark fun. Open your windows and play this loud. Bass player, Santos, holds the aggression together and Boston native Mary Bugbee’s unfiltered gritty vocals harken back to the best days of Courtney Love or PJ Harvey. Favorite moment – Celina Chang’s long, brutal shredding outro over drummer Jasmine Day’s utter drum annihilation. You’ll be exhausted after listing to this, and you should be!

Muse: Cryogen

Hey, what? Muse is back with maybe their best single since the early 2000s. No tomfollery and experimenting here. Matt Bellamy drops in with some blistering riffs over the top of his trademark distorted falsetto, Dominic Howard smashes his drums to pieces and my goodness, but Chris Wolstenholme leaves a bottom that could be an outtake from Hysteria. Getting back to basics is what Muse has needed to do for some time and Cryogen is it!

Special Bonus

Holy Wars: Shadow Work / Light Work (Full Album)

Holy Wars, led by front woman and Connecticut native Kat Leon, released their sophomore effort in April and the whole album deserves a shout out. Musically, “Shadow Work / Light Work” lands someplace between industrial metal and alt-rock. The themes and compositional structure here is surprising and outside the box. Leon and fellow composer and lead guitarist Nick Perez don’t let listeners off easy, the album growls and slides between just below the surface gurgling darkness and all out chaos, sometimes in the same song. Like the title suggests, lyrically there a lot of duality at play, pain/pleasure, depression/joy. The pace is deliberate and designed to stick with you long after the needle comes up off the vinyl. An easy choice for best album of the year so far.

Happy Wednesday friends! If you’ve been following along for a few weeks now, you know that Wednesdays have traditionally been our Kathmandu Days column. Well, we’ve come to the end of those. I’ll still have a few more here or there. But what we will try doing in the next few weeks is begin a section by section release of our Mount Washington book chapter dealing with Alton Weagle and his record breaking exploits. Look for that!

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Some of you have, no doubt, already read sections of this essay. Some of you, who are new to Day By Day, will be seeing this for the first time. Everyone will be unfamiliar with the updates and new section. Here’s a link to Part One and Part Two in case you missed it the past couple days.

I’ll say only this about this ongoing project - I have no intention of cheer-leading. My hope only is to maybe just get us talking about what being a hero actually means. I know how my father felt, and that’s really all I know. I leave any judgement to you all and post without further comment.

Part 5: The Path

I don’t actually know where to go from here when it comes to Memorial Day. I may never.

Last year, at her ceremony, out there in the parking lot of her school, as my daughter finished her song, she glanced over at me and I waved like a madman. I waved and smiled like a lunatic because I was there for her and she worked hard at learning that song, so I didn’t care in that moment about America. She grinned and looked away, giggling with her friends about her old man’s antics.

As I always do around this time of year, we talk a little bit about Memorial Day. I show her a picture of her grandfather, whom she does not remember. I tell her that he was a good man and a good daddy, because he was. A good soldier, though? He was not.

I want to find a pathway to celebrating life and I worry that, maybe, this isn’t it. I want there to be no veterans. And yet, I feel engaged enough with the light to understand that it only burns brighter because of the darkness. But I wish that darkness didn’t hurt so very much all the time.

Ultimately, I suppose, if you’re hurting, your heart’s beating. And if your heart’s beating, there’s still time. I want that to be enough. I wish it was all bigger. I wish I was bigger.

So, as I’ve decided to do a couple Memorial Days ago, I’ll show my daughter pictures of her grandfather not in uniform, but rather, holding me, there on a sunny spot of lawn in the back yard of our nondescript, suburban home. Or the picture of me pushing both of them down a corridor, my father in a wheelchair, my baby in a stroller.

As is the case every single Memorial Day, I don’t have a plan. My uncertainty always remains. And when confronted with uncertainty, I just turn to her because I know I love her, and that gives me focus.

The parades will come and go, there will always be wreathes to lay on tombstones, and she’ll always have another patriotic song to learn.

I wish none of that were true, but it is. I can’t just wish that away.

So, as always, we’ll push on and remember what’s worth remembering, and hope for the best. That’s heroic, maybe? That’s worth celebrating while we wait and work for better. We’re alive and that’s what I have for now. Maybe that’s enough.

Part 6: The Peace

I have a vet friend named Will. He comes to the library often. He’s been in the process of downsizing his home, so we are honored to receive many of his books and music as donations to be put toward our big annual book sale.

Will is a US Navy Veteran (USS Okinawa-LPH-3) of the Vietnam War. He’s also a active and vocal member of the local chapter of Veterans for Peace. Whenever he stops by, our conversation tends to lean toward more, how shall I say, peacenik and hippie topics.

Much of his book and music collection leans toward 60s and 70s peace activist leaders, musicians and poets, like Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan and the like.

Occasionally, when I happen to be downtown, I’ll see him in a small huddle near city hall with other Veterans for Peace, holding signs.

I wish I could say for sure that all of that matters. But I don’t know.

Recently, Will brought me a folder full of poetry and essays written by veterans. There’s some beautiful work in there and I’m still reading through it. I’ll save it for another time.

For today, I want to publish part of an essay that Will gave me titled “Why I am a Veteran for Peace” by Robert Maxwell O’Kane. O’Kane was an educator and activist from Dover, NH. He was also a World War II combat veteran in the Army, who in mid-winter 1944, found himself fighting on a mountain ridge near the border of France and Germany.

Brace yourself, this is not easy reading.

A few months later, we were being fired on my German snipers in the wooded hills near a village in Germany. Several of us went up the hill to attack the snipers. We killed a number of them. One German soldier suddenly stood up in front of me, aiming his rifle. I shot him. I went forward to check on him, he was badly wounded. Just as I reached him, our troops in the road below, thinking we were all German on the hill, began firing machine guns at us. I fell to the ground and found myself facing the badly wounder German soldier. He was very young. We looked at each other, my troops’ bullet very close to our bodies. The German solder was crying “Mutter, mutter.”

Two young soldiers, American and German, probably as innocent as most of us about why they were there, dying, calling for their mothers.

That is why I am a Veteran for Peace.

We are all, each of us, responsible. Yet none of it - not my father peeling potatoes, not my daughter singing Patriotic anthems, not any of those vets in homes desperately seeking fellowship and not Will or Robert standing on a corner - feels like it makes one damn bit of difference.

And yet..

Back in the mid-1960s, already well into his 80s, the Dutch-born American clergyman A.J. Muste stood in front of the White House, alone, holding a candle. A reporter asked him what American policies he thought he was going to change by standing there alone with a candle.

Muste said, “Oh, I don't do this to change the country. I do this so the country won't change me.”

Hold firm. Be resolute. When we are unmoved in our resolve to be people who stand for love and life and peace, then maybe the power that CAN changes the world will gain traction and take root in us. Maybe.

Talking to Will often makes me think about my father. My dad would never go march on a corner or hold signs at a protest. He was just too, I don’t know, Polish for that. But he felt how he felt and he tried in the best ways he was generationally able, to help me understand him.

I kind of think he’d be a Veteran for Peace. He just, basically, wanted to leave people alone and for people to leave him alone. As I get older, that perspective begins to become much clearer.

I’m not prepared - yet - to proclaim that just sitting on your porch, listening to your daughter play piano, watching the dog walkers go by is heroic. But I know that he would have loved to do that. And I know that I certainly do.

I don’t think we’ve learned anything here these past three days have we? Or these past few years. Or these past few centuries. I’m beginning to think we never will.

But I’ll keep writing about my dad, mainly because he’s me and I’m him, so what choice do I have? We’ll try again next year. And the year after that. You never know.

Meantime, I’m curious, is there anyone in your family who was a reluctant soldier - any lessons from your past that perhaps you’d like to share? Tell us how you navigate Memorial Day.

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Some of you have, no doubt, already read sections of this essay. Some of you, who are new to Day By Day, will be seeing this for the first time. Everyone will be unfamiliar with the updates and new section. Here’s a link to Part One in case you missed it yesterday: Part One of The Heroics of Staying Alive

I’ll say only this about this ongoing project - I have no intention of cheer-leading. My hope only is to maybe just get us talking about what being a hero actually means. I know how my father felt, and that’s really all I know. I leave any judgement to you all and post without further comment.

Part 3: The Heroics

A couple years ago, I happened to find myself at the New Hampshire Veterans Home in Tilton, giving a presentation on Mount Washington. Facing a solid wall of about 100 vets, men and women of various ages, most wearing patches or hats signifying their station, many in wheelchairs, I talked about that mountain and I included its role in World War II. For the most part, everyone honored me by staying awake.

But after, a few members of the audience stayed behind to chat, and we gathered around at table – about a half dozen of us - and I asked each of them this: “Tell me about the thing that happened to you during your service that you best remember.”

Here’s some of the stories they told me;

-A story about being in Korea, being cold and gray, and coming upon the dead bodies of three Korean men, each wrapped in filthy clothes and blankets. The American soldiers tried to take the blankets off the men for their own warmth, but the smell was too awful. “I told the men, just take these guys and toss them in the fire. We couldn’t just leave them here.”

-A woman told me the story about how when she signed up, the Marines didn’t allow women to be combat soldiers so she was stuck doing office work. One of the women in the office got pregnant, which was not allowed, and when it was found out they put the baby in an orphanage and gave her a dishonorable discharge. “They came in, cleaned out her desk and walked her to the gate. They shut it behind her, turned around and walked away.”

-A younger vet told me about the time he was stationed at Fort Devens in Massachusetts, and he never saw combat. What he did do though was drive supply trucks from base to base throughout New England and he recalled the first time he saw Mount Washington. “I just kept staring at it out my window and going slower and slower, until I realized I was barely moving. I looked out my rear view and there’s 50 cars lined up behind me! Me and the guys had a good laugh over that.”

Another man told me about his time in Rome, petting the stray cats. One said he had an easier time in the service then being a taxi driver in Boston. And one older woman, with a dreadful cough and teary eyes, wouldn’t talk at all about her service, just saying over and over again how she wished she could hike a mountain.

No tales of glory.

Give vets some space and an honest ear, and the stories you will hear are deeply personal and human; tiny core moments that they have carried in their hearts for decades. Many will bring up comrades in arms. Some will talk about the places they were stationed. A few will mention food. Almost none, like my uncle, will talk about the hurt.

And heroics? Not so much. Still, I think to myself, maybe THAT is heroic, maybe doing the best you can for an imperfect country that often asks too much from you and just coming home with your dignity and sanity intact… Maybe that’s heroic.

Part 4: The Pride

Flashback to my eighteenth birthday. My father drove me out to the downtown post office where I was to register for the selective service. For the life of me, I can’t recall if this is still a thing or not. But at the time, he wanted to do this personally. He wanted to talk to me about what it meant to him and what was in his, and my, heart.

If you knew my father, you knew he was a man of few words, but when he had something to say, he didn’t hold back. It was a long afternoon, but the thing I remember the most was his ultimatum, something I never remember my father ever giving me.

“The draft is one thing because if you ever get drafted like I did, I want to you to do your best and make us proud,” he said. “By if you sign up on your own, if you volunteer, I’ll disown you.”

That was my true father.

So, where are we? What is the lesson for us on this day set aside to honor the men and women in uniform, gone but not forgotten? Would I disown my daughter were she to sign up for a military career? Of course not.

Maybe it’s just that I’m far less interested in the waving flags and speeches then I am in the stories. Maybe I’d rather put a microphone on the lapel of some of these folks while they are still alive than to salute their gravestone after they have passed. Maybe we should ask “How do you feel?” instead of “How did you fight?”

My father grew more cynical and distant about his time in the service as he got older. I remember a Memorial Day a few years before he passed, when I was trying to practice what I preached about remembering vets while they were still alive, so I called and thanked him for his service.

“I ain’t dead yet,” he said.

“Obviously, dad! I just wanted you to know I appreciate your service.”

“Daniel,” he said, using my full name which meant business, “the only way to honor them is to not make any more dead ones.”

That’s good advice, of course, but we’re very, very bad at taking that advice, aren’t we? We somehow, always, relentlessly, unceasingly, do just the opposite.

Please join us tomorrow for Parts 5 & 6 as we conclude our Memorial Day exploration.

Subscribe now

Some of you have, no doubt, already read sections of this essay. Some of you, who are new to Day By Day, will be seeing this for the first time. Everyone will be unfamiliar with the updates and new section, which is in Part 3.

I’ll say only this about this ongoing project - I have no intention of cheer-leading. My hope only is to maybe just get us talking about what being a hero actually means. I know how my father felt, and that’s really all I know. I leave any judgement to you all and post without further comment.

Part 1: The Romance

The romance of military service never existed in my family like I see so often in other circles.
My uncle, my father’s brother, was a crew member of a Douglas A-26 Invader, a long range, heavy bomber. My father always referred to him as a gunner, so as near as I can figure, his job was to man the Invader’s rear 20mm cannons. Some versions of the Invader had gun turrets mounted under the wings, and up to eight 0.50 caliber machine guns mounted in the nose. My uncle’s plane could fly as fast as 355 miles per hour, had a range of 1,400 miles and, finally, could carry up to 4,000 pounds of bombs.

She was powerful, and deadly. No wonder the plane was often referred to as the “grim reaper.”

I don’t know this because he told me. In fact, I know only the most rudimentary details about his role in the service because he refused to talk to me about it. Lord knows I tried. As a young man, such a job felt adventurous and, dare I say it, fun. I begged him for stories, but he’d just smile and shake his head.

“Let your uncle alone,” my father would scold. “He didn’t do anything worth telling.” The two brothers would share a glance, and even at my young age I understood that look to mean, that he did indeed do many things worth telling.

It was only much, much later that I realized that those things were horrible things.

My father was drafted into occupied Japan right at the end of the war. He spent his time there, overseas, as a supply sergeant. Unlike his brother, as near as I could tell he saw no engagement. But he did have to deal with being an occupier. My dad, unlike my uncle, was more than happy to talk about his time in Japan, a place and people he grew to respect and a culture – I believe -that fashioned his worldview.

He spoke often about how polite all the natives he met were, expecting them to hate him, expecting them to harbor anger or resentment. He recalled a day when he and his buddies decided to drive as far up Mount Fuji as they could. The Jeep broke down and it took a “little old Japanese man” to do the repairs.

“But what did you do as part of the military,” I would ask him. I was looking for adventure. I wanted my dad – there in a foreign country, in a uniform – to be bold and noble and exciting. But he was not. At least not in the way my young, foolish self was looking for.

“Well,” he’d begin slowly, “mostly I didn’t listen very well and ended up walking up and down a lot of stairs. Mainly I peeled potatoes the entire time I was there.”

Part 2: The Ceremony

For the past couple years, I found myself standing in the parking lot of my daughter’s school listening to an elementary school Memorial Day concert. That didn’t happen this year, but more on that in a moment.

There is always a small section up front reserved for a handful of veterans. At one point, while a recording of “Grand Old Flag” plays, one of the classes presents the veterans with hand-made poppies.

Each class takes turns singing some patriotic anthem. Some individual kids come up and read a poem or an essay.

Three years ago, Little Bean’s first grade class drew the “America the Beautiful” straw and she sang delightfully, mimicking the motions of a tall tree, fruited plains and crowning thy good. This is the same as I did when I was her age. Another song had something to do with being a hero but for the life of me I couldn’t hear much of it over some nearby construction. She did, however, wear a red, white and blue, headband.

Two years ago, there was a bucket band, with a group of mostly boys playing plastic buckets decorated with red, white and blue stars.

Last year, in third grade, she sat right out in front, first row, and wore a red sparkling head band. She admitted that the headband was actually for Valentine’s Day but she decorated it with butterfly hair clips so that somehow made it work for a Memorial Day concert.

Her class sang Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” though everybody knows that song as Proud to be an American. At the proud verse, the kids all stomped their feet and stood up tall.

Incidentally that song by Greenwood was released on May 21, 1984. Thirteen days later, Bruce Springsteen released “Born in the U.S.A.” I’ll leave it to you to debate which is a more appropriately patriotic song.

This year, just last week, bad weather forced the whole ceremony into the gym of the school. The result of that change was that only a select group of veterans and the families of a couple kids who had solos were allowed to attend due to space concerns.

In other words, for the first time, I didn’t go. This greatly displeased my daughter.

“But we worked so hard at this and now we don’t have anyone to sing to,” she complained the night before.

“You have the veterans who are going to be there, baby,” I told her. “Just sing your best anyway.” I paused. “Just do your best and sing like you would if we were there.”

She grumbled about it, and later that night wasn’t terribly talkative. She just said, “Fine,” when I asked her how it went.

Don’t tell my daughter I said this but I was relieved I didn’t have to go this year.

You see, for me, over the course of the last few years, as I stand there on the hot pavement, it always begins to feel like these ceremonies start to bleed together. There’s going to be a parade. And then sometime soon is Flag Day and Fourth of July, and there’s Veterans Day and Armed Forces Day. There’s also an actual holiday called Loyalty Day. Some communities still celebrate that.

There no longer appears to be any separation between the meaning and the actual purpose behind the holidays.

I confess to just feeling tired by it all. Did you know, for example, that the original last stanza of the poem that became “America the Beautiful” is not “And crown thy good with brotherhood / From sea to shining sea.” Rather, early feminist Katharine Lee Bates ends her poem with the not so gentle reminder, “Till nobler men keep once again / Thy whiter jubilee.” She was referring to Chicago’s “White City” 1893 exposition but the Congregationalists didn’t want there to be any… let’s say mix up… and added the brotherhood line whole cloth.

We sing a song celebrating nature and technology and heroes on a day designed to honor the valor of dead soldiers, in an elementary school parking lot with little kids reciting poems about the glory of war and handing poppies to living veterans, and all I can think about is my father peeling potatoes in the Army in occupied Japan.

And how he begged me to stay as far away from the military as possible. Since he passed in 2017, his honor is at stake on Memorial Day and yet he’d be mortified to be memorialized in such a way. Why do I know that? Because he told me. Many times.

I feel mixed up. Every year, I feel sad about the whole thing.

Please join us tomorrow for Parts 3 & 4 as we continue our Memorial Day exploration.

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