Dead

Sitting here on a Sunday morning and thew clouds and drizzle have returned to Bellingham on a wonderful morning. Working my moonlighting gig at my friend’s shop in Happy Valley while writing a business plan while listening to a 1993 Grateful Dead show on Sirius Radio. It has become my Sunday morning routine to sit here drinking coffee listening to a Dead bootleg and for a few hours sitting and thinking and planning my day. I don’t drive very much these days, so much of the time I once spent behind the wheel with an idle body and active mind was to think and daydream. In our society, we are conditioned to act more and think less. Imagine if your boss walked by and you had your feet up on the desk, leaning back in your chair, looking at the ceiling and when asked what you were doing, replied “thinking”? But I find that more thinking and planning usually requires less action. Especially with work -related tasks. And besides, I’m a slacker by nature, so the less ‘work’ I need to do, the better.

But the Dead showed some signs of strain already at this Cal Expo 1993 show. Although I only saw them for a few years, my fondest memories and recollections of the band’s best run was in the Summer of 1989. I was lucky enough to catch the entire summer tour too. I left Scranton, PA with sixty bucks in my pocket and still needed to but two tickets (RFK in DC, I believe – two shows) and worked my way through tour selling bagels and cream cheese in Foxboro, Busch in Deer Creek, grilled cheese in Alpine, and god knows what else in between (although it was all legal, believe it or not; the beer may have violated a few LCB laws, however). But listening to this 1993 show, (and listening to shows on a very frequent basis, even though I have not seen any of the band members – alone or together – since Jerry’s passing in 1995.

“...gone are the days we stopped to decide where we should go, we'd just ride.”

And as I ended that last passage, and old hippie that used to bee a roadie with the Dead during 1979-82 years (probably the best years of the entire thirty-or-so years of the Grateful Dead’s existence, in my opinion) came in to buy some Cisco wine and a Busch forty. I would say it’s coincidental, but he always comes in around ten on a Sunday morning while I am listening to a show on Sirius. A great guy and I always ask him to tell me a story about those years. He just now told me again how he almost put Bill Graham on his ass after an altercation. But Bill always had bodyguards around him and this guy was just a roadie so he always held off 'cause he knew what was right fr him.

“...clank your chains, count your change, and try to walk the line.”

But yesterday was a great day for us in Bellingham. A goup of us had a very successful seed swap in downtown Bellingham. I will write more about this later when I get pictures. I’ve written enough for this post.