Halloween Death Trip

As October slides into the dark night of November we gather tonight to celebrate the onset of darkness dressed as skeletons, devils, witches, and, uh, beer cans.

Life, Death, and Record Stores

oldnow
Originally uploaded by BarrettJ.

As I type this post I see people walking by on the street below carrying yellow Tower Records bags. Those bags will soon be memorabilia as the chain is set to disappear. I bought my first record in a Caldor in Ridgefield, Connecticut. I'm pretty certain it was Some Girls, which was the latest Rolling Stones record at the time. I still have it, with the original cover, the one that includes all the photos of celebrities, before it was pulled. (No Beatles Butcher Block though). So I started this post to talk about record stores and wound up on a nostalgia trip. But it is kind of weird to realize that many of the stores where I once bought music are gone. And not just the stores have changed. Listening to music used to involve getting up and flipping the record every 20 minutes. Then you had the CDs that played for an hour. Now my iTunes library measures music not by hours but by days. So much for original album covers...

What You Bring Is Who You Are

The other day as I was packing for a two night backpacking trip on the Appalachian Trail I thought about a post I'd read recently by Pete Townshend who talked about what travelers take with them when they travel. With backpacking you have to eliminate everything that isn't necessary because whatever you bring you have to carry on your back. Even the little things add up. Do you sense an analogy developing here?

Out on the trail, in a woods where the silence was punctuated only by the sounds of bird songs and rustling leaves, we passed a hiker listening to his iPod as he hiked. What he considered necessary seemed ludicrous to me. But obvious to him.

So what did I bring? Besides the obvious food-clothes-shelter? I brought a book. And a camera. I like books because the act of reading allows room for my imagination to play. And I like taking pictures for the same reason.