Thirty-nine today. I don’t celebrate it, but other people do, so thanks to those of you who somehow found out and remember what day it is, and to those of you who didn’t know: keep on not knowing, it’s totally cool.

It’s sweet to be remembered, but I neither deserve it nor expect it. I did get this awesome print from a friend at the market that I will post in this space as soon as I show it to my photographer friend at the market (the one who sets up and sells—you still count, Jane, but you don’t set up yet).

Anticipating some questions: I don’t feel older. I don’t care about the number, it’s just an imaginary concept used to measure a non-linear progression. Not dreading forty (couldn’t give a fuck). What else … I didn’t do anything special today (work day, so I worked). No, I really don’t mind. Honest. I had cake on Thursday (mom and dad).

That’s probably all for now. Watch for the awesome print.

Though it only made #16 on the charts in 1958, Link Wray’s “Rumble“ holds a special place in my heart (and not just for its iconic status). I was born in DC, and grew up in Maryland, close by. When I was between the ages of about four and ten, my barber was a gentle, unassuming man named Doug, who owned Doug’s Barbershop in Waldorf. His last name was Wray, he was Link’s brother, and the drummer on Rumble (and most of Link Wray’s music for most of his career). I only discovered this fact a few years ago when I brought up the song at a holiday dinner only to hear my dad say, “Yeah, and the guy who cut your hair when you were a little boy was the drummer on that track.”

After the band’s halcyon days, Doug “retired” from music (do you ever really retire from music?) and opened the barbershop, which he ran pretty much right up until his death in 1985. Doug was a hell of a drummer—they once played a show at a used car lot in Waldorf and people could hear the drums three miles away (apparently someone reported “gun shots” to the police, who tracked the sound to the used car lot, and Doug Wray’s drumming).

By the way, the Wikipedia article linked above is a little inaccurate. The song was performed in Fredericksburg, VA for the first time, but “hot-miked” (Ray Vernon Wray, Link’s other brother, jammed the microphone he’d been singing into right into one of the amps), which produced that really loud, distorted, buzzy sound that hadn’t been heard outside of basements and bedrooms with busted, cheap ass amplifiers of a certain vintage.

Link had a practice “studio” (usually called “The Three Track Shack”) in Accokeek, MD., where I grew up (about five miles south of DC). The studio didn’t have the best equipment, so when they later practiced Rumble, as it came to be called (the song was originally called Oddball), that trademark proto-grunge sound was still there, a result of some pretty blown high-end response. When they went to record it at Cameo Records in Philadelphia, (the song was eventually picked up by Cadence, in NYC, release number 1347), they couldn’t quite get the sound right. Link solved the problem by walking around the studio with a pen, stabbing holes in tweeters (but leaving the woofers unmolested) until the guitar sounded about right.

Link would have been seventy-nine today.

My friend Angela was flying home to Boston yesterday for Thanksgiving with her family; I was her ride to the airport (though I just realized we have no arrangements for a ride home from the airport—A, if you’re reading this, call me with your return flight details). A 12:30 PM flight, so we figured we’d leave around ten and get her there with a ton of time to get through security and boarding and all that shit.

Slight hitch: her flight was actually arriving in Boston at 12:30, but leaving DC an hour-and-a-half earlier. She had read the wrong line on her ticket. After a frantic “fuck dude you’ll never believe what I did” conversation and some chugged coffee, we hopped in the car, played Speed Racer and Fuck the Other Driver for a bit, then a quick round of Zoom Around the Taxi, and got her to the Delta curbside drop off at 10:20. Fifteen minutes later, she was boarding, and a few minutes later called from the plane, much relieved.

Angela self-chastised the entire trip, but I assured her it was not only an understandable error, but probably a common one. She’s an inveterate traveller, and was verging on the inconsolable, but all’s well etc. Oh, and her Bahstahn accent is much more pronounced when she’s excited (”Craaaaahhp!”).

Today, a tanker truck evidently exploded on the inner loop of the Capital Beltway, promising to wrong-hole the travel plans of everyone headed anywhere near, through, or rhyming with Washington, D.C. (the truck driver escaped, apparently without injury). Good luck to everyone we know trying to get out of town for the weekend.

I have some friends and family who will be spending the holiday in places and ways they wish they weren’t. It makes me realize how much I have to be thankful for. You guys are foremost in my thoughts and in what passes for my prayers. I wish words were more useful to you all.

Samhain (an Old Irish (pre-Gaelic) word pronounced “sow en” or “sow een”) marked the end of one year and the beginning of the next, sort of an agrarian New Year’s Day. It was celebrated midway between the Autumnal Equinox and the Winter Solstice (one of the “cross quarter” days), and generally marked the last harvest of the year. It began the “dark” half of the Celtic calendar—the ancient Celts dividing their year between dark and light (the old Beltane, which has morphed into May Day, begins the light half).

Formalized observance of some sort is unquestionably ancient (it was marked with a three-day festival in medieval Ireland, but by that point was a holiday already older than memory), but the exact beginnings and nature of those observances remain in the realm of educated guesswork. One of the nicer versions of “typical observances” I’ve read details the lighting of a communal bonfire in the center of a village and the extinguishing of all other fires and lights. Everyone in the village would then carry lit kindling from this common fire to light their family hearth, uniting every house and hearth with that single fire. I guess if you liked your neighbors, this felt really unifying and reassuring. If you didn’t like them, I bet this would be the ancient equivalent of “Christmas Spirit”—an annual reminder that we’re all in this together, so lighten the fuck up and try not to be such a bastard. It was also (almost certainly) an important rite of thanks to the gods for another year survived, and a plea for help getting through the coming winter months. The English word for “bonfire” is dervied from “bone fire”—the bones of cattle (a few sources specifically mention the bones of every cow and bull slaughtered in the previous year) would be piled on top of these ritual fires as tribute for everything received since the last Samhain.

Everything we now celebrated as Halloween originated with the ancient Irish. In Irish mythology, the warrior-queen Scáthach (whose name means “shadowy one”) would lower her shield on Samhain night, allowing the dead to cross over into the world of the living. The Irish would expect these visitors—the souls of those who had passed away and of those who had yet to be born—and would welcome them with food, drink, and entertainment. Sometimes, evil spirits would kidnap the living and drag them back over to the shadow realm, or cause general mischief and ruin. To prevent the former, anyone travelling at night would wear a mask, fooling malevolent spirits into thinking the traveler was one of them. To combat the latter, turnips, beets, or potatoes would be hollowed out and carved with frightening faces, then illuminated from within by a candle, frightening off anything intent on havoc or making evil spirits think some other bogey was already on the clock at the house decorated with glowing, scowling faces. That so many elements of this holiday have survived intact (even if renamed) is amazing.

I’m sure it’s predictable that this is my favorite holiday. It connects us with the fundamental human problem—what happens after death—and provides the comforting thought of Samhain feasts to come, when we might be waiting on the other side of the dark shield.

Not that I did anything to mark the occasion, other than my own half-assed oddball spirituality (which mainly consists of thinking a specific set of good thoughts and the equivalent of giving dead friends and loved ones a casual “sup?” every so often). The older meanings and significance of these holidays always inspires me to wish I had observed them more formally and faithfully, though the pace and structure of the lives we choose for ourselves tends to be an impediment. Even someone like me, who works at home and doesn’t have much of an external schedule to keep, needs to slow the fuck down and think about being more thoughtful. It’s a fitting time of year to remind myself to embrace superstition in more meaningful ways.

And for anyone who thinks this is coming a few minutes late (just after midnight, local time) two closing notes: the ancient Irish counted the day as beginning at nightfall, so it’s not even afternoon yet, and the original Samhain would have been celebrated on the nearest full moon to today (November 1st). It’s a new moon right now, so we’re almost right in the middle of the lunar cycle. Consult your local druid—I might be two weeks early.