18 Comments
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Jim Barnette's avatar

Marty Robbin’s Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs was one of my Dad’s favorites! Surprised to see you mention it yesterday.

Allison Stadd 🥁's avatar

Casting a vote to make “random thing in our house that gives me joy” a new series!

Pamela Barclay's avatar

Oh Mary Ruefle! Austin you turned me on to her with that first typewriter interview! I love her writing. My favourite was from her book THE BOOK

“I took my dog to the lake, he stood at the water’s edge and barked, the echo of his bark came back and he barked at it, again and again he barked at his own echo, thinking there was another dog on the other side of the lake. Welcome to poetry, I said.”

Austin Kleon's avatar

She rules!

Sam's avatar
2dEdited

Hah - small world: this was very close to our spring break too. We took the kids to a Cubs spring training game, visited Sedona and the Grand Canyon, and went to Saguaro National Park as well - one of the strangest and greatest desert landscapes I’ve seen.

Austin Kleon's avatar

More ambitious than ours! Well done

The Spiral Dispatch's avatar

Too bad you didn’t get to listen to Big Iron, but somehow stardew valley *also* conjures up the spirit of adventure. I may have given up on my farm, but not on this soundtrack

The Spiral Dispatch's avatar

That’s a great fun fact! I love picturing this great western album being conjured up in a wood paneled sedan with his kids in the back

Austin Kleon's avatar

Recently learned Robbins was from Arizona and he wrote stuff like “El Paso” in the back of his car while driving back and forth for family holidays

Kimberly Hirsh's avatar

Another week, another moment where I check in with myself: "Wait, I pre-ordered Don't Call It Art, didn't I?"

Steve Cardoso's avatar

The fun with typewriter pages took me back to pasting ASCII art in AOL chat rooms. (_8^(|)

Mary Walker's avatar

We have several of those bug catchers. They are the best! Our area has stink bugs. If one of the cats eats a stink bug you don’t want to be near them. W

The bugs are captured and released to the wild.

Abel Arias's avatar

The bug catcher is, as the kids say, the move. I have calmly removed numerous wasps who have wandered in through our vents.

I'm also a HUGE baseball fan. It's my favorite sport and I love comparing it to improv (and all art) It's singular (all eyes on one person at a time) and collaborative (shortstop goes to cut off a throw from the out field while teammates cover respective bases) all at once. And of course, like most sports, it's a game of failure. Summed up wonderfully by Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own, "...it's the hard that makes it great."

Austin Kleon's avatar

Yeah I really enjoy the drama of the game — everyone gets a chance to be a hero

soosixty's avatar

“Kids who didn’t stop” ! My mother likes to share this anecdote that I started drawing when I was two and never stopped…

Jenny Dudley's avatar

As a follow up to Desert Solitaire, you might like Amy Irving's Desert Cabal.

MelissaKeane's avatar

Spring training is great fun! my favorite is attending the very first games in early March, watching the players as they come out of hibernation, a bit tubby, a bit slow. And then seeing them again a few weeks later, up to speed, ready to roll into Opening Day.