IT’S SONOMA VALLEY’S HIDDEN JEWEL. It’s Bill Stallings’ “Tasty Nuggets,” a decades-spanning flashback every Friday morning. (It’s also his prog-rock “Rocks Files Radio” on Saturday nights and every-hourly :20 weather forecast.) It’s Tuesday night’s “Big Fish,” surveying and promoting the Valley’s eclectic music scene. Speaking of eclectic, it’s “Kitchen Sink,” Sooth Slinger’s weekday wakeup at 7 a.m., followed by “The Morning Show” from 8-10. It’s Mike Ryan’s never-miss two Thursday-evening hours of punk, New Wave, and assorted indie rock. It’s the “K-Pop Hour” (I mean, who else brings you an hour of synthesizer-rich Korean popular music?) It’s the hyperlocal focus. It’s “Jeff’s Joint,” a lively 1920s-40s Monday retrospective. It’s Thursday afternoon’s “Sonoma Valley Interfaith Radio Hour” (full disclosure: I engineer and cohost). It’s the Latinx, French, and Sinatra programming. It’s community-sponsored and -supported. It’s the passion and dedication of mad wunderkind, blazing electric guitarist, and chief-cook-and-bottle-feeder Bob Taylor as well as the kind attentions of Ronny Jo Grooms. It’s forces-of-nature George Webber’s and Butch Engle’s “Radio Theater of the Wild West.” It’s the coffeehouse sounds of “Coyote Road,” “Nowsville Junction,” and “Uncle Dirtbag.” It’s Chef Marco’s, Sheana Davis’, and Kathleen Thompson Hill’s culinary insights. It’s the varied weekday tuneful and topical offerings of “Guys at Five.” It’s the breaking disaster-news of fires and floods. (It’s also the endless calendars of events.) It’s having to forego in this brief synopsis many, many other important and diverse musical, cultural, community, sports, business, personal, and political shows. And it’s literally the only radio station I listen to — at 91.3 FM or streaming live at ksvy.org.
Tag: Why I Love
An exploration of the Noblest Emotion
Why I Love: My Dad
Why I Hate Jay Michaelson ;-)
IT’S THAT ANYTHING I CAN do, he can do better. It’s his unaffected, artless prose. It’s his vast non-dualist scholarship and experience. It’s his light touch. It’s his unpretentiousness. It’s that he neither talks down to or over the heads of his audience, but speaks directly to their hearts. It’s that he makes what he does look so damned easy. It’s his open-faced sense of humor. It’s his genuineness. It’s that he knows a lot, but doesn’t come off as a know-it-all. It’s that I’ve been avidly following his career almost since he began writing professionally. It’s the anticipatory glee I get when I see his byline. Continue reading “Why I Hate Jay Michaelson ;-)”
Why I Love: Cooking (Rewind)
IT’S THE PROCESS OF SCRAWLING ingredients on a shopping list, buying them, unpacking them, staging them, using them. It’s the quiet alchemy of watching those ingredients transform into something delicious and nourishing. It’s the adrenaline rush of following a new recipe. (It’s also the guided meditation of following a familiar recipe.) It’s the self-esteem that comes from self-reliance. It’s the slow accumulation of skills with knife, skillet, slow cooker and baking dish. It’s flashing back on Michael Pollan’s Cooked and making meal-preparation a political act. It’s the delicious and home-filling smells, and the quiet but ear-filling sounds. It’s the saving (and using) of leftovers. Continue reading “Why I Love: Cooking (Rewind)”
Why I Love: Grocery Shopping
IT’S THE ANTICIPATORY PROCESS OF scrawling ingredients on a shopping list. It’s the simple pleasure of browsing a well-stocked and -stacked produce display. It’s the ritual of interacting with the people at the butcher/fish/cheese counters. It’s the Dad-inspired satisfaction of saving a few nickels here and there. It’s the smell of the various aisles — even the one with laundry and dishwashing products. It’s browsing three different stores: Safeway for staples and housekeeping supplies; Sonoma Market for meat and produce; Whole Foods for croissants, frozen fruits and spices. It’s the structure it gives to my days. Continue reading “Why I Love: Grocery Shopping”
Why I Love: Robert Anton Wilson
IT’S THE WAY HE BLOWS my mind. It’s the way he mixes conviction with doubt. It’s his searingly funny prose. It’s his search for Ultimate Relativity. It’s that he taught me some important Latin phrases, like “Cui bono?” and “Non illegitimati carborundum” (look ’em up). It’s how he manages to make everything he writes sound like a personal communication to the reader. It’s the little phrase-gems he drops off-handedly like “reality-tunnel,” “domesticated primates,” or “guerrilla ontology.” It’s his nimble skipping from neuroscience to neuropoetry to neuroanalysis to neuropolitics. (It’s also that “neuro-” is his favorite prefix.) Continue reading “Why I Love: Robert Anton Wilson”
Why I Love: Ancient History
IT’S FALLING ASLEEP HOLDING A copy of Herodotus’ The Histories or Gaster’s The Oldest Stories in the World. It’s the endless theorizing about daily life in a different context. It’s the observation that no matter what the era, people will still be people. It’s the seminal technologies still strangely similar to our own. (It’s thus the feeling of anthropological deja vu.) It’s the skill and effort involved in translations. It’s the feeling of Deep Time, even though recorded history is only 6,000 years long. (It’s also knowing that we’ve only had 200-300 generations in that time.) Continue reading “Why I Love: Ancient History”
Why I Love: Books
IT’S THEIR SMELL. IT’S THE way they feel in my hand(s). It’s the inner voices of different fonts. It’s that they’re a direct link from somebody else’s mind to mine. It’s the varied and variegated subject matter. It’s the endless fun of categorizing and re-categorizing a home library. It’s the way they look on the bookshelf. It’s the impression they make on guests. It’s the way they illustrate my thinking and interests. It’s the way they bend their shelves. It’s the painstaking search for new, used, and relevant titles. It’s browsing their indices, their bibliographies, and their tables of contents. Continue reading “Why I Love: Books”
Why I Love: Star Wars
IT’S THE BLUE INTERTITLE PROCLAIMING “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” It’s the concept of the Force: nakedly nondual, essentially Taoist, but not preachy about it. It’s the costumes. It’s the sets (even the CGI ones, but especially those of handmade origin). It’s the original spaceship designs. It’s the lightsaber battles, especially the long-awaited-by-fans Darth Vader v. Obi-wan Kenobi duel in Episode III. It’s the way each film ups the special-effects ante for the whole film industry. It’s the details. It’s the recycled sounds; especially for R2D2, the jawas, various droids, etc. (It’s also the Wilhelm Scream.) Continue reading “Why I Love: Star Wars”
Why I Love: Restaurants
IT’S THE ATMOSPHERE. IT’S THE background music of cutlery-clinked plates and conversation. It’s the initial pleasure of sitting down at “your” table. It’s having a skilled and knowledgeable waitron. It’s eating what I wouldn’t (or couldn’t) cook for myself. It’s the free iced-tea and water refills. It’s being exposed to unfamiliar food. (It’s also the first bite of said food.) It’s expanding my culinary horizons. It’s seeing and guessing what other people are eating. It’s the perfect match of expectation and fulfillment. It’s the way the aromas of the place excite your senses before (or after) you walk through the door. Continue reading “Why I Love: Restaurants”
Why I Love: Travel
IT’S THE NOVELTY. IT”S TRYING to see new places through the eyes of their long-time residents. It’s the road-trip soundtrack, whether CDs, tapes or new-to-me radio stations. If flying, it’s seeing the landscape from a different perspective; it’s the tiny bottles; it’s the in-flight magazines and audio offerings (and it was eating the twice-wrapped kosher meal, at least when airlines still offered meals). It’s watching urban areas dissolve into countryside the further away you get from the city. It’s finding new places to eat, and eating like the locals. It’s testing the limits of my comfort zone. It’s the packing. (It’s also the unpacking.) Continue reading “Why I Love: Travel”
Why I Love: Torah Study
IT’S THE ENDLESS INTELLECTUAL PUZZLE. It’s that Hebrew writing closely resembles Klingonese (well, it does; come to think of it, so does some of the sentiment). It’s belonging to the 3,000-year-old Permanent Floating Book Club. It’s the spectra, vagaries and levels of meaning. It’s the idea of “seventy faces of Torah,” meaning that each word (even letter!) can be looked at in multiple ways. It’s engaging with the minds of long-dead people who live on in your study. It’s the level playing field (“Only a little is all anyone knows of Torah,” quoth the greybeard rabbi). It’s seeing how far the Sages can stretch a metaphor. Continue reading “Why I Love: Torah Study”