Observing in June
Picking up with my observations, which I have not been completely Johnny on the spot with of late, here are a few interesting ones from the first few days of June. They include some notes about Willie Nelson, baroque music ensembles in Lexington (of twenty years ago), the summer bring on the music and arts festivals that can be so much fun, and lastly my own personal battles with GRUB 2 of late.
- Willie Nelson cut his hair sometime last week. I kind of missed the details on this one and may have heard it the day after. Then again, I am not the type to be on top of the world on such fashion statements. Still, he has had that long hair for a LONG time, to the point it had become one of his trademarks. Hopefully this is not a subtle sign that he is calling music quits or anything of the sort.
- Willing Nelson is still a major force in regards to the Farm Aid program with which he has so long been associated. I suppose this letter to the editor of the St. Louis Today publication indicates that Willie is in New England and the current time. However, the true message of the open letter is that family farms, especially of small and medium size are disappearing rapidly. The cultural strings in rural American that go with those smaller size farms are being torn apart and to that end the fabric of America is similarly under attack. I could say much more, but go read the letter, Willie does a good job with words even without music accompaniment.
- Unsubstantiated at this point (as I have been both to busy and to lazy to pursue confirmation) but several sources have noted that prior to prohibition and especially in the later 1800′s the fine Commonwealth of Kentucky was one of the leading producers of grapes for vinting and indeed Jessamine County had the first commercially licensed winery in these United States. Lacking still more information, it would seem that Henry Clay’s Ashland Estate will be hosting some sort of wine tasting event in September of local Kentucky wines. I will be searching out date information and confirmation sometime soon.
- I was thumbing through a Music Entertainment tabloid the other morning and came across a looking back section that listed musical happenings from 20 years ago (1990) that were happening in June in and around Lexington. One such stated Lexington (back in the 1990′s) did not have enough baroque and a newly formed Back Ensemble was performing just such a selection at Christ Church Cathedral. So, it was not a rock concert, but I love baroque music and did attend the event. Wonder if they still exist? Ironically, I did catch the Kiss show at Rupp that was mentioned below that in July. Talk about feeling old and historic on both accounts.
- It is summer time and the arts festivals along with the live music concerts (a lot of which are free or low-cost) are popping up everywhere. Thursday Night Live in Lexington has been rolling for several weeks now, though I have not seen any acts yet I just can not live without, expecting some soon. Southland has a venue on Tuesday nights featuring bluegrass called the Jamboree, several good groups in the lineup coming up soon. Two big art shows coming soon are the Woodland Arts Fair (good especially for buyers) and the Friday night Gallery Hop, which is June 18th – I am almost certain.
- Just reminded, the farmers markets are hitting a full stride just about now. Go out, buy local (and eat) local food. Keep your money circulating local too. It is better for you and everyone else involved and will undoubtedly taste better to you as well!
- Any idea of the number of tabloid and magazine publications in the Lexington area? I can think of about ten that are published weekly and/or monthly. I was startled to find about fifteen of such things that are online. I will note though that most seemed like a good idea that has stuttered (the online ones mind you) as several seem to be weekly or even daily in nature and have not been updated in several weeks to months. I was sorely disappointed at that, and even more so to find a few of the printed pubs have websites that are out of date based on the current publications they have the streets.
- Lastly GRUB changed my menus today. I am not 100% sure, but I think this is a second offense of these since I installed Lucid Lynx (Ubuntu 10.4). Turns out that my customization process of altering menu.lst no longer works, but I did find a grub.cfg that looked right. Word of warning, do NOT ignore that little warning about not editing that file. Turns out in GRUB 2 (when and where did that happen?), there are some files in the grub.d folder that script what goes in the grub.cfg file, along with the scripting in the /ect/default/grub. Every time update-grub is ran (like any updates to grub and then some it would appear) it regenerates the grub.cfg file. Glad I finally took the time to read it, as I was starting to think my machine possessed.
Despite my overwhelming desire otherwise, no GRUBs were killed or injured in the compiling of this blog posting.
