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“Unusual gesturing” was the New York Times description of Joe Cocker’s hand & body movements in 1969 when he performed at Woodstock– today it’s better known as air guitar. There’s even an annual event that’s held in Finland to see who is the best air guitarist in the world. 6 years ago it was Eric ‘Mean’ Melin. I knew him back when he only got as far as the regional competitions. He used to come in to Homer’s for coffee. This morning I was thumbing through a summer issue of the Smithsonian when I read an article with this picture at the top. Eric was quoted in the article as saying “…we want to express ourselves in a way that goes beyond what a ‘there’ guitar can do.”

There was a time when radio deejays were entertaining and knowledgeable. We are no longer living in that time. Tonight Jenny & I were laughing uncontrollably when a DJ played Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now by Starship. We thought it was funny because the DJ called the band Stewardship, and apparently it is a big deal that they are coming to Great Bend, KS on October 19. Great Bend is over 250 miles west of Kansas City. That’s almost 4 hours driving time. I don’t know anyone who is that big of a Starship fan.

Everyone in my neighborhood knows that Halloween is only four weeks away when the skeletons come out on Hemlock. For the last 20 years the folks that live in this house wait until October 1st to decorate their yard. Then 30 days later, they crank up the audio: thunder, moaning, cackling, and all the other scary noises that are associated with Halloween. I always wonder what the Jehovah’s Witnesses think about all this devilish detail. The church is just a few feet away.

When we think about people and places, we remember faces and forget names. Sometimes smells and sounds can trigger a memory, and we remember images better than stories– but in the guts of every good story there’s cool stuff like:
a before and an after
a then and a now
a prologue and an epilogue
I’m putting together an audio podcast series called EPILOGUE CABIN. On each episode I’ll talk with old friends from high school to see if our memories match, and we’ll also find out what’s going on with each other right now. Stay tuned!

Memories used to be “pressed between the pages of my mind,” but with today’s technology, it just takes a few seconds to project them up on a big screen– or put them up on social media. These are a few of the pictures that ran on a slideshow at my high school reunion a couple of Saturdays ago.

It was just a folded piece of paper… something that had fallen out of someone’s pocket. After reading it, I asked a couple of people, “is this yours?” when no one claimed it, I posted it on instagram and facebook. Then I entered the listed items into an anagram generator and got these results:
Dog Nails = dang silo
Oil Change = goal niche
Ink berry Bush = nubby shirker

That Texas drawl. Those half closed eyes. That stoned self confidence. It’s been 27 years since he played the part, but Matthew McConaughey will always be ‘Wooderson’ in Dazed and Confused. Yesterday on an NPR’s game show, Ask Me Another, he told the story about the role that started his acting career– and then he won a Rubik’s cube for his knowing 4 school mascots.

She was a cowboy’s sweetheart and she yodeled right up to the end. Joan Mathis left this world last Saturday night. She was 91. I became friends with her through her oldest son, Jim, who was my first boss at Homer’s Coffeehouse from 2004-2008. She was always smiling and she loved music. She was always there at Homer’s when Jim’s band played, or when my band played. Ironically there were a lot of coffee mugs on display at her funeral. She had collected them over the years. Everyone was encouraged to take one home. I think I got the best one from her work at AT&T.