Bookin' It in 2025

For a plethora of positive reasons, I was only able to finish reading a mere five books this year.  They are as follows.

1. Emerging from the Cracks: My Journey to Authentic Living by C. H. Danton (second time)
2. Harbor Me by Jacqueline Woodson 
3. Bicycles: Love Poems by Nikki Giovanni (second time)
4. Keith Haring Pop Up Book 
5. 107 Days by Kamala Harris

Quote of the Day

Act like you belong, until you do belong. 

-- Cameron Crowe, on the best piece of advice he's ever gotten

Quote of the Day

When I was starting to write, James L. Brooks told me, "Buddy, think of the privilege we have.  We got the greatest job in the world.  We get to tell stories."  I still feel that every day. 

-- Cameron Crowe 

Quote of the Day

Glenn [Frey of the Eagles] was such a student of how to slip into a room and make everybody part of your sport, which is "Let's all do great stuff together." 

-- Cameron Crowe 

Quote of the Day

You’re never going to get the story done or delivered in time if you’re that guy who is there for a dual purpose. And I think there’s a kind of journalist that gets filtered out of the process pretty quickly if you realize that they’re there to make friends more than write something from the heart. 

-- Cameron Crowe 

Quote of the Day

"Do you know who Billy Strayhorn is?" I said no.  (Max Roach) kept playing music -- beautiful music -- on the piano.  He finally stops and says, "If you don't know Billy Strayhorn, you don't know anything about the drums."  I was 12, and I didn't really know what he meant by that.  But I know now.  He meant that ... you first and foremost are a musician, and you need to learn about music ... and open your mind and ears to all the possibilities ... Then you're able to play music instead of just playing drums.

-- Joe Farnsworth

Quote of the Day

Joy doesn't just find you ... it takes work, and it takes intention ... We're going to do this one thing to bring us some joy and then continue on with what we're dealing with.

-- Brandee Younger 

Quote of the Day

Your instincts are composed.  They're affected by what you practice, by what you think about, by what you hear, by what you talk about.  And they change.  And they develop.  And they hopefully get better. 

-- Phillip Golub

Quote of the Day

(The Westerlies' album Paradise) asks the question of what paradise means, and to us it's gathering around art and fostering empathy, which is something music instinctually does.  With the state of division especially in the U.S. today, that feels more important that ever.

-- Andy Clausen

Quote of the Day

A piece of art doesn't have to be a piece of art for everybody.  It does not have to cause feelings in everyone.

Art doesn't have to be eternal.  There could be something that works as art for a few people for a few weeks, for a lot of people for a hundred years, for one person for a lifetime, for a small number of people for a thousand years.  There are all sorts of levels.

It is always a conversation, even if there is only one person involved in the conversation.  You might make art as a conversation with yourself.

-- Brian Eno and Bette A., What Art Does: An Unfinished Theory

Quote of the Day

Sometimes you can take the whole of the world in, and sometimes you need a small piece to take in.  I think that is really what a work of art is: it is a small piece that you can ingest, that gives you an idea of the richness of the whole.

-- Sister Mary Corita Kent

Quote of the Day

Well, somebody can take your publishing and somebody can take your records or take your songs or take whatever money you've made out of the thing, but you can drop me out of an airplane anywhere in most parts of the world, I'll land, and I'll light up somebody's night.

-- Bruce Springsteen