What a beautiful day we had today for a drive down Highway 1, the Pacific Coast Highway, from Silicon Valley back home to Pismo. Including a very special lunch at Nepenthe, once a private home of Orson Welles.
Cheers,
B
Journal
Locks Of Love
The haircut pictures I promised over a year ago, when I offered up over a foot of ponytail to a very worthy cause. Locks Of Love.
For anyone who wants to mourn the ponytail, here’s your companion album.
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| Locks Of Love |
Hanging out at the coffee shop with Spider-Man!
I know, I expected him to be taller as well. But in fairness, I do have that effect sometimes.
So this is where we’re living for the winter.
After four months in San Diego, we headed a few hours north and are living in Pismo Beach, CA for the next three months or so. We are about as close to the ocean as is possible this time around, and loving it. Pismo is in the Central Coast region, in between San Luis Obispo and Santa Maria. It’s warm weather meets beach town vibe meets ocean meets mountains meets small town feel. As close as we’ve found to our kind of place and pace. After failing to skip winter last year, I’m feeling rather content with today’s high of 77°….
Practicing for Tomorrow With The @southbaychurch Band In My Bootleg Studio
A couple details to highlight: (1) Wires every direction–one earbud running from computer (audio) and the other going to the keys… can’t wake the youngling! (2) Like my music stand? But hey, it works, and im actually playing. Cheers, Turkeys, hope all are well! -B
Herbalicious Produce Surprise™ [Recipe]
Figure 1
Herbalicious Produce Surprise TM
Preparation time: Unlimited.
Ingredients:
Fresh cucumbers
Fresh strawberries
Cinnamon
Garlic powder
Crushed red pepper
Fresh ground black pepper
All-purpose greek seasoning
Directions:
Thoroughly clean cucumbers and strawberries. Remove strips of cucumber peel with vegetable peeler. Cut into slices. Trim greens from tops of strawberries. Place in unnecessarily large mixing bowl. Give child access to herbs and allow slightly too much license.
Serves four.
N.B.: This recipe reflects the included photo (Fig. 1), but different produce and herbs may be selected to suit taste and seasonal availability.
Just built this wall and dual birdfeeders out of pure snow.
Classing up the yard. The terracotta pot on the left and the top of the homely snowman on the right are both loaded with top-grain birdseed. (In the interest of full disclosure, I did NOT make the terracotta pot out of snow. And the snowman’s head has an embedded tupperware dish.) A male cardinal and some of the other winged neighborhood runts have already been by for a snack. Whats the coolest thing you’ve ever made out of snow?
Thank you, @SaraBareilles
Trying to sort receipts and catch up on a month of paperwork. But thanks to Sara Bareilles’ “The Light” I’m just sitting in the library mopping up tears. Absolutely beautiful. Makes a man look forward to his next chance to make some music.
Thank you, Sara Bareilles. Well done.
B
PS – Don’t take my word for it. Check it:
http://www.last.fm/music/Sara%20Bareilles/_/The%20Light
Borrowed Time and Earnest Desires
Have you ever noticed how there’s only so much time in a day, a week, a life? I have: I love the creative arts and I love sharing my artistic activities with each of you. Meanwhile, though, life is short, days go quickly, and the fundamental priorities of a responsible life prevail, often leaving little time for creative pursuits nor the opportunity to properly connect with you.
I want to take a moment today to express my gratitude for your support and involvement in my work and art and life, even when things are ostensibly quiet in the Bob Padgett camp. I hope you will hear in these brief words my ongoing desire to make and share with you my music and other creative projects, though they are the fruits of borrowed time.
Merry Christmas! I’m glad you’re a part of my world and I of yours.
Back At The Keys
For any of you not hip to the details of my daily life, it may seem a bit like I’ve dropped off the face of the planet. Beginning in summer of 2008, I started a new career as a stay-at-home dad for our incredible son. And now, two years later, I am looking back at a sweet, rich time of new adventures, seasons of sleeplessness, wonderful new pages in our family’s life together—a lot of great things I wouldn’t trade for anything, and very little performing or writing.
This February we embarked on another new adventure as a family. Travel nursing. We are tracing an itinerant path all over the country, exploring new locales as my wife jumps into short-term nursing positions. Which brings us here to Crescent City, California, a land of mysterious morning fog, summer days with highs in the upper 60′s, cows grazing a few hundred yards from the rocky pacific shoreline, and, for this man, a window back into a musical life.
I am grateful for these last two months—wonderful neighbors, peaceful cul-de-sac living, slow driving, a sky so full of stars you’d think it was cookies-and-cream ice cream, and, perhaps most of all, our time and our new friends at Cornerstone Church. What a warm welcome we have found, and what a gift it has been to sit at a piano once again, jamming with the band on Sunday mornings and enjoying practice time at my (occasional) leisure. Really looking forward to sharing more of my music with everyone here in a concert in September, before we wend our way on to the next port of call.
Thanks, Crescent City. Especially YOU, Cornerstone. All of you.
Cheers,
B
Life Lessons from The Love Boat
While researching website-login options recently, I stumbled onto a FoxNews article/slideshow featuring a Then-And-Now look at the cast from 1980s television’s legendary The Love Boat. (Yes, I can still tell you it was on ABC at 9:00 PM on Saturday nights, right before Fantasy Island. And YES, I can still sing the theme song top to bottom… even though I was barely alive for the show, of course.)
Seeing present-day pictures of these celebrities–older, and, naturally, without some of the youthful sheen of their younger celebrity selves–was a striking reminder to me of how fleeting our achievements and lives can be. Not that they had gone on to unsuccessful or ignoble lives–more or less to the contrary, in fact. But simply that the ostensible glory of celebrity (and the accolades that may be attributed to even the most successful and famous among us) can so easily be forgotten or discarded by fickle hearts or a new generation of fans. It was a good reminder to me about keeping priorities straight and keeping myself small in my own eyes.
One final thought. It intrigued me that the cast member who received perhaps the most gracious nod in the FoxNews article was Gavin MacLeod, the actor who portrayed Captain Steubing. Their short caption on his life since The Love Boat honored achievements and success that spoke mostly to MacLeod’s character rather than fame or celebrity:
“During the show, Mcleod [sic], now 79, became a born-again Christian, and eventually remarried his first wife. Most recently, he starred in the Christian film ‘The Secrets of Jonathan Sperry.’ He’s also the honorary mayor of Pacific Palisades, California. Not bad!”
May the celebratory refrain of each of our biographies be less about the achievement of fame and glory and more about our obvious character growth, the spirit of reconciliation and healing that marks our relationships, and the unlikely respect and esteem of the watching world that we have made better.
Love,… exciting and new,
Bob
I Love My Family!
My wife and I watched Sunshine Cleaning tonight. Kind of an odd movie, offbeat, occasionally graphic and grisly, unsettling and sometimes slow-moving, but there are some tender moments, some delicate musings on loved ones and lost ones, even a couple of redemptive moments, and for those, I appreciated it. Particularly burned in my memory is an eight-year-old boy being tucked into bed. It reminded me how blessed I am to have such a precious family. How much I love them, and how much more important they are than the work that might deviously distract me.
Work, goals, achievements, even the most creative and noble of these, are sometimes sneaky foes. We can spend our lives chipping away at the things that claim to be urgent, that allege importance and significance, even the achievements that are truly great and the prosaic tasks that are truly necessary. And if we are not careful, we may end up looking back to see that we’ve been fooled into backburnering the very things that we hold most dear, the dear creatures for whom we would say we were doing all the things we were so nobly doing.
As I (currently) attempt to return to my work as a creative and performing artist, I find myself taking pause to realize how easily a good goal can steal from a better one. There is so much I would like to do right now, both in terms of website and business tasks as well as (even more!) in terms of beginning to write, perform, and record again. So much more than can fit in a day or a week, or, I fear, a month. These things, though–these good things–may sometimes need to have a seat and wait their turn.
I’m excited to share this life with each of you in the ways that I do. And I’m glad for the ways that you are a part of my extended family.
My love,
Bob
