crabgrass and the crows

so my little brother Dan has released an album! His group is called d.d. scoutplane, and I could categorize them as "neo-folk" or "lo-fi", although as he pointed out, the lo-fi-ness of the work isn't exactly intentional, it just turned out that way... :) Anyway, he's put up a webpage for the project, at:

http://people.ucsc.edu/~dmerrill/ddscoutplane.htm

..and a friend of his is also collecting his stuff, along with others' here:
http://www.acgs.ws/

the secret to getting good help (an airline axample)

I called American Airlines back a half-hour ago to re-use my flight credit from last year (the flight to Toronto that I couldn't take since I was in CA for Dad), and I was told that the outbound flight needed to take place within 1 year of the ticketing date - October 29 2004) in order to re-use the credit. That was in direct contradiction to what I was told last month when I called to investigate, when an AA agent had told me that all I needed to do was to *book* the flight within 1 year, and the flight itself could take place later than the 1-year mark. (I had been very careful about this, since I knew that I wanted to use the October credit for my December flight home - but the woman had assured me that it was just the booking, not the flying, that needed to happen before the end of October). So when I called today and was told that actually, according to the rules, my outbound flight would need to happen on or before October 29, you can imagine that I was not happy... The first woman I talked to was nice, but she said that unfortunately, she couldn't change the rules. She recommended that I contact the customer relations office by phone or in writing, and even gave me the name of the current manager. I knew that phone is the right way to go about this kind of thing, but when I called the number she gave me, it was just a recorded infomation line, and it was impossible to get through to an actual human being. It seems that you can only communicate by fax or email to customer relations - I guess they were probably tired of getting their heads bitten off over the phone by irate customers, so these days their actual phone numbers are expressely *not* available. I was at a momentary loss about what to do, since I figured a fax or email was so impersonal that I'd probably just get a polite "sorry, but we cant' help you." So I decided to try again with the reservations line that I had called before, and see if I could either (a) talk to someone who could bend the fules to help me, or (b) get the customer relations manager's actual office number, so I could call in person and plead my case. A nice guy named Raphael answered the phone, and I decided that it couldn't hurt to remain patient and cheerful and explain my situation all over again, rather than just demanding the voice line of the customer relations manager. After hearing my story, he said the *magic words* of customer service (I learned this from Dad): "Let me see what I can do - can you hold for a minute?". Dad used to emphasize that getting to the "let me see what I can do" stage is the holy grail in returning merchandise, getting a rain check for a sale, getting your airline ticket changed, getting a fee waived, or a million other things... When you hear those words, the person is on your side and they're going to try to help you. Raphael came back with some questions about when I wanted to fly (which I could answer immediately since I had looked up the flight online already), then put me on hold again. He came back and asked me about my credit card, my billing address, etc.. and it indirectly became clear that he was actually making it happen! At the end of the phone call with the flight booked, Raphael asked me if I had any other questions or if there was anything else that he could do for me. I told him that I was really pleased and thankful that he was able to help me, and I only had one question: "How did you make it happen?" He said, "well, I understood your situation and just explained it to the right person here, and we were able to do it". I guess he had found the manager or whomever it was within his office at AA who also had the "let's see what we can do" attitude. Anyway, the moral of the story comes from the title of this email. It's more possible than you might usually think to get to the "let me see what I can do" part of a conversation, you just have to be cheerful but persistent.

sunlight on my face on a Sunday afternoon

It's a beautiful day in Somerville MA today. I slept in until almost noon, made breakfast for Amy and I, then went out by myself to walk around and enjoy the pleasant, sunny, breezy afternoon in our neighborhood. Days like this make me feel good about life.. I am reminded of simple pleasures like walking the the street with my eyes closed and sunlight warming my face. After leaving the house, I got a iced vanilla latte from my favorite coffeeshop, and wandered the Davis Square area. I wanted to check out "Rock City Guitars", a tiny music store on Highland Ave a couple of blocks from the center of Davis Square. The neon 'OPEN' sign was on, but nobody was to be found, and the door was locked. I guess commerce is not #1 priority at that place, at least not on a day as beautiful as today. So I checked out the cool botique shop next door, called Magpie. It's straight out of Berkeley, CA - lots of cool, hip little artisan crafts.. Records that are heated and bent into bowls for serving chips or nuts, blank-page notebooks bound with old (large-format) floppy-disc covers, bracelets with strips of aluminum from beer cans riveted to them, and a rack of hand-made 'zines from local micro-publishers. I had a conversation with the owner about where he finds his stuff - mostly craft faires.. He just got back from one in New York that sounded like a productive trip. He had a little bookshelf that was made partially of Atari joysticks, so I told him about my Atari joystick for Paul, and he was pretty enthusiastic about it - he thought there would be a retro-enthusiast market for that kind of things - not a huge one, but something.. That was nice to hear, especially from someone who deals almost exclusively in the 'retro' space himself. On the way back home I stopped by the GoodWill, and found a bunch of CD's - here's the list of gems:

- Boomkat : Boomkatalog one (heard about this duo in Wired magazine & was intrigued)
- The Killer Buicks (what a name! from 1992, and a Boston-based group)
- Vothuong Guitar: Huong Xua (I heard about Vietnamese guitar playing recently somewhere)
- Johnny Lang: Lie to Me (this was in a cardboard sleeve like a demo...a collector's item?)
- P.M. Dawn: Jesus Wept (My friend Mushtaq and I reminisced about this group yesterday)
- The Innocence Mission: Glow (Mike Peterson and I played an IM song for Flann's wedding)
- Don Henley: The End of Innocence (Don Henley rocks, and I don't have this disc already)
- Vowel Movement (A pretty ballsy name - are they a capella? I'll find out)
- Counting Crows: August and Everything After (never bought this, but should have it)
- Red Hot Chili Peppers: BloodSugarSexMagik (ditto)
- Legacy: A Collection of New Folk Music (I might discover something I really like here..)

Anyway, puttering around on such a nice afternoon made me think about my Dad, and how he really brought this love of music to all of our lives - Dan, Amy and I.. He would have enjoyed an afternoon like I just had, and I probably would have told him about it on the phone. Mom called me last night to tell me about how she saw Doc Watson and Joan Baez play in the park in San Francisco. He would have loved seeing that concert. As I walked back to the house from the Goodwill, I closed my eyes and walked down the middle of my street, feeling the sunlight warming my face and the slight breeze tickling my skin all over - I wondered how it ever came about that I'd be having such a pleasant day today, and Dad would be existing in complete nothingness, or complete everythingness, or something else I can't even imagine. Life is strange and beautiful, and I guess we just have to work hard to achieve the things we care about, and enjoy the ride 'cause we don't know when it's our turn to get off the bus.