12 questions

Got this idea from the biz-to-biz publication my employer puts out each month:

1. What brought you to Walla Walla? Originally, college. This time, a good job in a small city with great weather where work and a lot of other destinations are a short walk from my house, which is pretty much downtown.

2. Favorite memory: How to choose! Honestly, though, I look forward, not back. If I had to pick one, maybe having dinner with new friends in Redeyef, Tunisia, with the butterfly lady.

3. Current favorite song/CD: CD? What's that? Current song: Carvel, by John Frusciante.

Album: Sea Sew, by Lisa Hannigan


Favorite movie: The Deer Hunter, but it depends on the day. Maybe Heat, maybe Romeo + Juliet.

Favorite food: Well, that is an impossible question, isn't it? I guess it is a tie: Pastrami and swiss on rye with Russian dressing and sauerkraut or peanut butter and jam on country white.

Favorite book: Only one? Wind, Sand and Stars. But seriously, only one?

Favorite hobby: Bird watching. First easy question!

Favorite place in Walla Walla County: In the wheat fields east of the city, in the hills that overlook the valley.

Most recent local purchase: Two delicate drinking glasses with dragonflies from Willow of Walla Walla.

Worst job: Depends on how you look at it. You might imagine the curséd cannery, the miserable mill or the horrible hospital, but you'd be wrong. Worst job? Working at Roth's Vista Market as a box clerk, where the owner would drop by now and then to patronize his low-paid workers and exhort us to run, run, run when bringing those shopping carts back in from the lot. What a jerk. One of my jobs in New Hampshire was pretty high on the list, too.

Dream vacation: Beats me. How about three months in summer to complete the New England 67? (That'd be summiting the 67 peaks in New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine that are over 4,000 feet). I'm between a third and halfway done now, but they're a long drive these days.

Person you'd most like to talk to: Cate Blanchett :)

Wish I'd been at these "shows"

Lisa Hannigan gets a big fat gold star from me for hiding out in broom closets and back rooms to perform. Wish I'd been there!

here, too.

and here, too!

Music at work

Besides everything else, I mean. I was caught unawares that Lisa Hannigan had an album out, but she does, so it's been in heavy rotation at work, where unlike the last factory I worked at, we're allowed to work in something other than silence.

Here's a track:

I never really understood the reasoning behind the ban on music (through headphones, for crying out loud) at the other place, but I think it might have been related to upper management's feeling that what worked best for them is what works best for everyone.

There are a lot of things wrong with typical management practices, but I'd rank that attitude up near the top.

In the past, I tried to explain that while someone else may not work well amidst distractions, I work best when there is more than one thing going on. The usual response I got was something like, " That's what you think, but actually, people work better without distractions. You can't actually do two things at once, so you can't listen to music and edit."

So why is music somehow way worse than listening to you fuckers typing? Or eating? Or whining about the Dow Jones Industrial Average?

I never got a good answer, but as the good reverend would say, the question is moot.

Good separately, but better together

Alas, you could say that about a lot of people.

Who knows Lisa Hannigan?

She is probably best "known" as the lady who used to sing with Damien Rice.