One Thousand Gratitudes, Part XXXIII: 200-176

With this installment we dive into the 100s and -- in case I haven't mentioned it -- I've stayed 100 entries ahead of what's posted since the beginning. I chose to do it this way so that I never felt forced to write then post, just for the sake of posting; the writing was meant to fuel the posting of what had already been written.

That said, I am down to the final 100 gratitude entries to write and I hope to carry the momentum of this project into the next project while rounding out the final seven posts to the series.

If I could only figure out what that project will be...

The direction I'm leaning suggests that I'll skinny back on the blog stuff and work on something I might be able to publish in the traditional sense. So in the event that the blogginess falls off as we enter fall, I hope that you'll still visit once in a while. If you don't, that's okay, too.

Thanks, though, for being here when you were.

One Thousand Gratitudes, Part II: 975-951

Here, then, is the second installment to this series. The idea of posting one per week might take me til May before this thing wraps, so who knows what things will look like this time next month. Again, no value in the order of appearance; these gratitudes appear as they came to me. The first installment is here; the original idea here.

Nine Hundred Seventy-Five: Mike Gordon

            The Phish bassist is one of the most unique human beings I’ve ever observed. Having studied interviews conducted with him, print pieces he’s written, songs he’s crafted, his onstage mannerisms, his tweets, and having met him and talked to him once, I think this guy is one of God’s finest works. I believe he is -- and has been for some time now -- the finest working bass player in rock, and if there’s only one more thing I can say about him it’s this: The way he bobs his head with most every note shows that he is in tune with the magic happening around him and his bandmates; he has, in fact, surrendered to the flow, and for that, the audience lives a richer life.

Nine Hundred Seventy-Four: tractors (John Deere, and otherwise, but mostly John Deere)

            I’ve only driven my late Grandpa Beck’s Craftsman, and that was probably 30 years ago. I know I’m not unique in this but I love John Deere shit. All of it, man. All of it. The small units, the big rigs, models, mugs, bibs, key chains, all of it. I love them, what they do, what these machines represent. I’ll probably never own one, never live on a farm, and never even have a riding mower, but I like the idea of all of those things. I’m not infatuated with the idea of humans conquering the earth, but the notion of the amount of fertile soil on this planet being so vast, so gigantic that we keep building bigger and bigger machines to help us harvest its fruits is pretty cool. The idea of a John Deere machine so big that my family could sit and eat dinner inside one of its tires both frightens and intrigues me, and as weird as that might sound, I’m grateful for it.