First off, getting files onto a new Kindle Fire is about as painful as giving a great while shark a sponge bath. The shark doesn’t need a sponge bath, the shark doesn’t want a sponge bath, and, in fact, has only gotten into this sponge bath deal for the chance at a free lunch.

I decided to cheer myself up by making fresh pasta. I am not sure what I did, but it cooked up so tough I am saving the bit that I did not throw away to make a pair of boots.

Undeterred, I peeled and cored six apples to make my favorite dessert, apple crisp.

When I was locked up in horticulture in a last ditch effort by my high school to find someplace, anyplace, to inter me, I used to steal flowers from the greenhouse to bribe the lunch ladies for vast trays of apple crisp. I love the stuff. I will fight you for apple crisp.

I peeled my first apple leaving the entire peel as one long strand. Mom said to throw it over my shoulder. The peel will fall in the shape of the first letter of the name of the next person I will marry.

I threw the peel over my shoulder. I turned around.

“What letter is it?” Mom asked.

“It’s not a letter. It’s handcuffs.”

“Oh, don’t be silly… Oh. That does look like handcuffs.”

So, enough of that. I peeled two more apples without breaking the peel, but I not try that fun bit of folklore again.

Anyway, there I was. Making apple crisp and just happy as a pig in poop. As a finishing touch, I dusted the confection with cinnamon.

Wait a second… Why am I smelling Taco Bell?

I look at the jar and read: CUMIN.

Oh. My. God.

There are many spices that you can add to apple crisp. Cinnamon, nutmeg, a pinch of cloves and even allspice if you are feeling daring. Notice that cumin is not on this list? Why? Because the taste and smell is akin to having a toddler eat apple pie followed by a big bowl of really questionable chili and then immediately throwing up in your car. This is the worst thing I have ever had in my mouth, and keep in mind that I once swam my way out of a sewage-filled trench in East Machias, Maine.

Cumin and apple crisp is so awful I would not serve to somebody I hated. It is horrible. This is not an exaggeration. I tasted the crumb batter. Half an hour later, and I am still tasting it. Yeech. Cumin and apple crisp. I have become death, the destroyer of worlds.

If being late with the lamb sauce gets you screamed at by that great doughy hair-plugged British fancy lad Gordon Ramsay, I am sure adding cumin to apple crisp would make the man violent enough to kick me in the groin.

Hell, after tasting that, I wanted to kick myself in the groin!

So, this has not been my day. I am going to go drown my sorrows with hot tea and watch some horror movies.

Tomorrow, I’ll go buy more apples!

Another poem from the great Edgar Allan Poe to celebrate the month of October.

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow—
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand—
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep—while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

The Black Velvet Band from singing the melody, identifying the rhythm, sketching out the chord progression, backing up the voice and working out a simple solo.

If you need to schedule a lesson or ask a music-related question, text (do not call) (410) 713-4044
www.frailingbanjo.com
www.patreon.com/Dobro33H
If you are having a hard time getting this old-time banjo thing down, please contact us. Even if you can’t pay for lessons we will work with you.
Also, be sure to join us every Wednesday for The Wednesday Night Banjo And Donut marching Society. All musicians are welcome! http://banjoanddonut.com/

I made some homemade bread to share with a neighbor. Get my recipe here: https://www.frailingbanjo.com/2020/09/21/patricks-white-bread-recipe/

A new tool for an upcoming project.

I love how Sweetwater included a bag of penny candy with my order.

Jack Scrimshaw in the UK did a dramatic reading of the septic swimming story I used as a Presidential debate analogy…

Having some fun this October by sharing some of my favorite scary stories and poems. For October 1, 2020, we have Annabel Lee – the last poem written by Edgar Allan Poe.

Annabel Lee
By Edgar Allen Poe

It was many and many a year ago,
   In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
   By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
   Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
   In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
   I and my Annabel Lee—
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
   Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
   In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
   My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
   And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
   In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
   Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
   In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
   Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
   Of those who were older than we—
   Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in Heaven above
   Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
   Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
   In her sepulchre there by the sea—
   In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Discussing random things with a friend overseas, the subject of the recent debate came up.

When pressed for my thoughts of this momentous debacle, I did what I often do and came up with an analogy.

Back in the late 90s – what seems and feels like eons ago – I lived for a while in a ramshackle cabin on the grounds of a church run campground in East Machias, Maine.

The campground had a cobbled together septic system, and it developed a massive clog (before you ask, it was not my doing). I teamed up with an old timer named Hollis. We used his front end loader to dig up the sewer line in hopes of finding the blockage.

Well, we found the clog. At some point in the past somebody had cut the sewer line and patched it back together. The black rubber used for the patch was under so much pressure that it was this massive object. A round version of the obelisk from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and infinitely more mysterious. Dangerous. Terrifying.

The trench was deep as a grave. Hollis and I eyed it cautiously. We knew that the slightest touch would make the thing explode and fill the trench with waste.

We were smoking cigarettes, leaning on our shovels and talking of various ways to address the issue when the pastor jumped into the trench and, as we screamed for him to stop, curiously poked the befouled balloon with his shovel.

It… Exploded.

Crap spewed forth like a venomous geyser. Countless gallons of filth shot into the air. I started scrambling up the side of the trench, but Hollis calmly said around his cigarette and in a thick Down East Maine accent, “We won’t make it, boy. We’re goin’ swimming.”

He wasn’t wrong. It was horrible. When I read H.P. Lovecraft’s description of the doors to the ancient tomb of dread Cthulhu opening up I now lazily yawn and say, “I’ve seen worse. I’ve smelled worse. I’ve gone swimming in worse.”

The three of us climbed out of that pit. One or all of us may have been screaming. I am not sure because I had crap in my ears and everywhere else. I am not ashamed to admit that I threw up all over myself – not that it made me any dirtier. The smell was indescribable. The texture was nightmarish and the taste… just remembering as I write this down makes me gag a little.

Hollis called his wife on his walkie-talkie and told her to get ready to clean us up. He ordered me – more like threw me – into the bucket of his front end loader. Leaving the pastor to fend for himself (Hollis said, around a tirade of curses darker than anything from the pit we crawled out of, “He can pray himself clean!”), we drove through rural East Machias – both of us beshitted head to toe, crying, cursing like rabid sailors, laughing like madmen and struggling to smoke with our filthy hands – to his home, where his wife had a garden hose, two towels and two bars of soap waiting for us.

She was completely unsurprised by our ghastly state. We were ordered to strip, and I desperately wanted to clean up, but a small crowd was gathering. The old-timer’s neighbors were having a good laugh at our expense. My shyness was dispelled when somebody pointed out that folks had seen me skinny dipping in Gardner Lake more than once.

So, with an audience, Hollis and I stripped naked and got hosed down multiple times before we were each allowed into the house for a proper shower. It took a while because he used all the hot water. I did not blame him because it took ages to feel clean myself.

While our clothes were in the washer, everybody had a picnic lunch in the cool Down East Maine summer air.

Whenever The Shawshank Redemption is on television Dear Old Dad will say, “It’s Patrick!” as Andy Dufresne crawls through the sewer line.

The recent Presidential debate was much like that awful moment where the trench filled up with swill. The candidates did not, like Andy Dufresne, Hollis or myself come out the other end clean, and they did not have a picnic afterwards.

The debate was all poop and no picnic.

Masking tape and a wooden shim glued to the cover plate. Wow. Just… Wow.
Anyway, it is playable once again. As soon as the strings stretch in I will post some workshops.

Getting ready to re-string my God-cursed resophonic ukulele.

This will end is tears, bloodshed and madness.