I wrote this song at the beach in Port Aransas, TX, and combined it with a video I took one day at the beach in San Diego. It’s about several idyllic scenes with Maile, my love.
Released November 27, 2011 on FOK DUB:
Jason Molin – Guitar and vocals
Gray Parsons – Drums
Timmy Campbell – Percussion
Lindsay Greene – Bass
Chris Vestre – Guitar
Derek Morris – Keys
Thomas van der Brook – Sax
Oliver Steck – Trumpet
Karla Manzur van der Brook – Vocals
Sara Hickman – Vocals
Maile Broccoli-Hickey – Vocals
Produced by Everyday J
Mixed and Master by Dr. Ivan Mordo
We had another great annual installment of my bday singalong – I turned 44 on Monday, a day after the singalong – on Sunday at Barton Springs. My main man Doug showed up with guitar and played along with us. It was a beautiful morning.
1/23/17: If you want to know what’s really going on, beware social media and the 24-hour news cycle. Move away from news bites and start digesting longform sustenance from well-informed reporters.
I have come to believe that it is impossible for anyone who is regularly on social media to have a balanced and accurate understanding of what is happening in the world. To follow a minute-by-minute cycle of news is to be constantly threatened by illusion. So I’m not just staying off Twitter, I’m cutting back on the news sites in my RSS feed, and deleting browser bookmarks to newspapers. Instead, I am turning more of my attention to monthly magazines, quarterly journals, and books. I’m trying to get a somewhat longer view of things — trying to start thinking about issues one when some of the basic facts about them have been sorted out. Taking the short view has burned me far too many times; I’m going to try to prevent that from happening ever again (even if I will sometimes fail). And if once in a while I end up fighting a battle in a war that has already ended … I can live with that. – Alan Jacobs
8/11/16: I frequently get stuck in a rut visiting the same news sources. So I’m trying to create a list of authoritative sites for cycling through and seeing beyond my progressive bias. As one Redditor put it,
There’s no such thing as unbiased news. What you can do is check several different reputable sources regularly and cross-check what they say.
Where do you get your news? Leave a comment below of your favorite sources. Here are a few points of reference I’m gathering as resources for gleaning what’s really going on.
This chart is an interesting indicator of trust by political affiliation. The clear first place winner is the Wall Street Journal, with the BBC and Google News tied for second.
With summer upon us, we moved the singalong to Barton Springs to beat the heat Sunday, July 3rd. It was a wonderfully windy and somewhat overcast day beneath the trees, with a good holiday-weekend crowd of bathers on the hillside. I am happy to have finally delivered a new songbook, covered, bound, with the lyrics to fifty songs.
The Songs
1. ACROSS THE UNIVERSE by The Beatles
2. ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE by The Beatles
3. HELP! by The Beatles
4. HERE COMES THE SUN by The Beatles
5. LET IT BE by The Beatles
6. MOTHER NATURE’S SON by The Beatles
7. RAIN by The Beatles
8. STRAWBERRY FEILDS FOREVER by The Beatles
9. THE WORD by The Beatles
10. TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS by The Beatles
11. WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIEND by The Beatles
12. YELLOW SUBMARINE by The Beatles
13. HALLELUJAH by Leonard Cohen
14. TAKE ME HOME, COUNTRY ROADS by John Denver
15. THERE IS A MOUNTAIN by Donovan
16. A HARD RAIN’S A-GONNA FALL by Bob Dylan
17. BLOWING IN THE WIND by Bob Dylan
18. FORVER YOUNG by Bob Dylan
19. I SHALL BE RELEASED by Bob Dylan
20. MR. TAMBOURINE MAN by Bob Dylan
21. THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND by Woody Guthrie
22. GIVE ME LOVE (GIVE ME PEACE ON EARTH) by George Harrison
23. CLOSER TO FINE by Indigo Girls
24. DAYS by The Kinks
25. WHAT’S SO FUNNY ‘BOUT PEACE LOVE AND UNDERSTANDING by Nick Lowe
26. IMAGINE by John Lennon
27. GIVE PEACE A CHANCE by John Lennon
28. ONE LOVE by Bob Marley
29. REDEMPTION SONG by Bob Marley
30. THREE LITTLE BIRDS by Bob Marley
31. PEOPLE GET READY by Curtis Mayfeild
32. AMAZING GRACE by John Newton
33. RUNNIN DOWN A DREAM by Tom Petty
34. ONE WORLD NOT THREE by The Police
35. SPIRITS IN THE MATERIAL WORLD by The Police
36. SHOWER THE PEOPLE by James Taylor
37. WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD by George David Weiss and Bob Thiele
38. RAINBOW CONNECTION by by Paul Williams and Kenneth Ascher
39. ALL I REALLY NEED by Raffi
40. IF YOU WANT TO SING OUT, SING OUT by Cat Stevens
41. MOONSHADOW by Cat Stevens
42. MORNING HAS BROKEN by Cat Stevens
43. THE WIND by Cat Stevens
44. I STILL HAVEN’T FOUND WHAT I’M LOOKING FOR by U2
45. LOVE RESCUE ME by U2 (Bono and Bob Dylan)
46. INTO THE MYSTIC by Van Morrison
47. SWING LOW, SWEET CHARIOT by Wallis Willis
48. A PLACE IN THE SUN by Stevie Wonder
49. HEAVEN HELP US ALL by Stevie Wonder
50. LEAN ON ME by Bill Withers
For a bit of background, here are the criteria I used to choose the songs.
Is it about higher love? Usually about charitable love (not romantic/sexual), brotherhood/sisterhood, unity, peace, wonder, mystery, gratitude
Is it eccumenical, non-denominational? (No particular faith, all inclusive)
Do people know it? (Is/was it popular? Or can they learn it easily?)
Can people sing it together? (Is it rhythmically regular and melodically feasible?)
Is it appropriate for all ages? (Does it make references that are too adult?)
We have a family tradition of going to lunch afterward where Maile and I usually review how it went, laughing and cringing and trying to learn how to make these better. Because this one was both such a good one, and fraught with the missteps created by the new songbook (and my slightly different version with chords), there was a lot to go back over. But overall it was a great morning, and in order to not obsess I made these three rules for myself as the essential job I must remember to do:
Show up. (My main job.)
Get into it. (Put my heart into singing.)
Let it go. (Don’t obsess.)
Here was the view from our hillside spot.
Thanks to Sarah W. for the great shot at top of the whole crew (with our girls running around).
The music just below is one one of the recordings I made in Paris, this one of an accordion player on a pedestrian bridge. Hit play now so that the sounds of Paris will accompany you. OK. Can you hear the melancholy French jazz?
accordion player on the Ponte Nuef playing a melancholy Autumn Leaves
Maile and I originally planned to travel to Paris together for our 10th wedding anniversary. Two and a half years later we made it, by ourselves, for a full week. We rented a wonderful loft appartment on AirBnb in the Marais, from which we sauntered out an back every day.
I took about 1600 photos with my little Canon G7X and got it down to about 250 favorites shots that I’ve posted as an album on Flickr. See the slideshow at the end of this post. I’ll try to whittle it way down here and tell the story of our trip primarily in pictures and captions.
We arrived on Saturday morning and took the train into the city (with Charles Beaver, Anais’s envoy).Walking from the Metro to find our apartment we stopped at Le Petite Marcel for lunch.the beautiful blue door to the building where we stayedthe reflection of our front building in the shiny black van oppositeThe beautiful classic bicycle that was always locked outside our door
The Pompidou
We stayed two blocks from the Pompidou, passing it every day, eating across from it. Here are a few of the outside and then a few of my favorite works inside.
Pompidou plazaseven people sitting in front of the Pompidoumy reflection in the window of the line and houses oppositeMan Ray’s room of art and beautiful objectsshiny spinning metal shape with divets in a black and white lined boxGiacometti people
I particularly liked the Gerard Fromanger exhibit, his use of monochrome figures and infographics.
There was so much great street art everywhere, from centuries old sculpture to  to stickers, art sellers and graffiti, chalk artists and street musicians. Hardly a block went by that I didn’t notice a gorgeous door. I was always stopping to snap something and then running to catch up with Maile.
statues throughout the city had been secretly blindfolded in scarlet (an art stunt meant to draw attention to the ubiquitous – and easily overlooked – statuary)i love this chalk drawing, a face made out of squares, making eyes out of cracks in the wallwonderful street art everywhere. vandals with a nice sense of colorHUMANITY shakes hands with POWERTrust The Classicsturquoise pattern with clothing cutoutsa cup of shit (by Space Invader, I think
Now listen to the slow funky Flamenco sounds of a guitarist echoing in the Subway.
