State of the Attic midsummer report

Looking north from the new "attic"

We are on track to complete the new house, with its new Uncle Warren's Attic, by early August. The outlook from our temporary quarters is remarkable! I do miss my stash and have not had an opportunity to visit it in its storage unit.

It is now two years since we started packing our belongings away to put the old house up for sale, and 10 months since we actually moved out. Ground was broken May 22 on the new place, and it's been quite an adventure watching it emerge from our dreams after all these years.

The plan is still to launch the "fall season" of Uncle Warren's Attic, the podcast, in the area of late September, or about the time you are getting accustomed to the new season of network television madness. I just gave another listen to the preliminary work I've done on UWA #78 and #79, and I'm kind of excited to reassemble the studio and get going again. But all things in their time.

I have not been standing still, of course, as you know if you've been regularly visiting the new blog, ImagRev: The Imaginary Revolution. There, the long-awaited followup to The Imaginary Bomb is unfolding in the form of Ray Kaliber's memoirs. Speaking of "years in the making," I have been meaning to tell the story of Sirius 4 independence since I wrote the first novel in 1988, since I podcast it in 2006, and since I published it in 2008.

It took the death of Ray Bradbury to at long last release the muse and get The Imaginary Revolution started. You may recall a false start or two, and you may even detect the rewritten sections from those early efforts, with some essential changes. I have been known to drop the creative ball over the years, but as sure as Buffalo Springsteen has reservations about being called "Buffy," I think this time the story will finally be told in its entirety.

First Ray has to finish his memoirs, and then the blog needs to be edited into more or less chronological order. He's tending to jump around in the time continuum as he decides what he wants to write about day-to-day. There's a lot of key moments this week as Ray completes his first month of entries.

Sometime this fall or winter – depending on when we conclude he's finished with the story – The Imaginary Revolution will appear in book/ebook form. Sooner than that, I'm planning a podcast version. Stay tuned.

I appreciate everyone who's been around during 12 episodes of The Imaginary Bomb, 77 episodes of Uncle Warren's Attic, 150 episodes of Ikthuscast, a small pile of books, a couple-three blog identities, and various other odds and ends. If you're liking what you see on ImagRev or hear from the Attic, I'd sure appreciate your sharing it with your friends. My main motivation is to entertain and/or express some big ideas, and I'd do it for a handful of friends or even just one, but the more the merrier.

New buttons ------------>

You may have noticed there's now a handy-dandy button linking you to ImagRev: The Imaginary Revolution, the daily memoirs of Ray Kaliber, who is considered the founder of the stateless Commonwealth of Sirius 4. This would be a good week to drop in, because he's talking about the development of his philosophy of nonviolent civil disobedience and the early moments of his courtship with the love of his life, Buffalo Springsteen.

It's still early enough that it would take just a few minutes to catch up by wandering back to Entry 1. You also have an opportunity to look like a trend-setter by being one of the first to get hooked on this interplanetary tale of freedom, rebellion and romance that no doubt will have all of cyberspace talking one of these days soon. The blog is updated at 5 a.m. every day, so go ahead. Make it a habit. Click the button! Start the conversation! Tweet and retweet! Get the buzz buzzing about ImagRev: The Imaginary Revolution.

I've also replaced the text descriptions of my books with buttons featuring the cover art. Click on whichever catches your fancy to learn more about what's behind the covers.

An update: Our new home has a roof over it, bathing stations have been installed in the bathrooms, and the electrician has wired the place. Someday soon they'll hook the place up to the electricity grid and sink a well. We're hoping to move in by early August and resume podcasting in September.

While the aural stash is in storage, I'm pleased to be sharing the long-awaited story of Sirius 4, which has been waiting to see the light for a long time.

It's an exciting time! Use the buttons!

A tribute to Robin Gibb

Guy and Brad Gilchrist have done a great job restoring the old Ernie Bushmiller comic strip "Nancy," including making Aunt Fritzi a pop music aficianado. On Thursday Nancy danced a tribute to the late Donna Summer, and today Fritzi salutes Robin Gibb.

Live Forever!

"Zest. Gusto. How rarely one hears these words used. How rarely do we see people living, or for that matter, creating by them. Yet if I were asked to name the most important items in a writer's make-up, the things that shape his material and rush him along the road to where he wants to go, I could only warn him to look to his zest, see to his gusto."

That's the start of Ray Bradbury's essay "The Joy of Writing," in which the master reveals how he did it. Actually, and in words more poetic than this, he distills writing down to this: If you love to write, and you want to be a good writer, then write. Write every day, and keep writing until you get good at it.

I've been tinkering around the edges of a book called The Imaginary Revolution for, oh, at least four years, when I assigned the tale to the works of my erstwhile alter ego, B.W. Richardson. But truth to tell the story has been in my mind a lot longer than that. For it to still be in my mind and not out in the world on the day Ray Bradbury died – Ray, to whom my lead character's name is an obvious homage – is not just embarrassing, it's shameful. Because this is the kind of story I have wanted to tell all my life.

"Live Forever!" said Mr. Electrico to young Ray Bradbury, and the books are how he will fulfill that directive. Another way is through the thousands of writers who became writers inspired by the zest and gusto in his work.

I always thought I would write an essay when Ray Bradbury's mortal vessel finally ran out of steam, but a better idea came to me. For several weeks I considered telling the story of the Imaginary Revolution through the words of Raymond Kaliber himself, and not as a novel but as a series of blog posts. Still, I let the idea just sit there in my mind. Sitting down to write this week, I realized the world does not need another essay about how great and influential a writer Ray Bradbury was. The way to celebrate the life of Ray Bradbury is to write, write every day, and keep writing until I get good at it.

Wednesday, I learned Bradbury was dead.

Thursday, I launched the blog.

30 seconds of typing

And there, sitting on the chair by the window, pretending to look out at the sun  but in  fact yearning for his attention, was a golden retriever.

Not just any retriever, mind you – this is the small beast that he had declared to the world was The Best Dog There Is, the most loving bit of fur on the face of the planet, looking forlorn and lonely as he poked absentedly at a keyboard and words appeared magically on a glowing screen.

Feed me. Hold me. Love me. Don’t type! she pleaded.

And so he left the screen and complied.

And there never was a man like Doc Watson

To me Doc Watson was the star of Will The Circle Be Unbroken, the incredible 1972 three-LP country-rock-bluegrass collaboration spearheaded by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. That gentle and kind voice casting friendly praise in every direction, that great picking – I was a fan for life, especially after I heard "Tennessee Stud" (Jimmie Driftwood wrote this thing) for the first time.

Our time on this sphere is finite, so this day was going to come, but I'm still sad that Doc has moved on. At least I had an excuse to give his stuff another listen – not that we ever need one.

Coming this fall: UW Attic #78 and beyond

I mentioned in the now-legendary Uncle Warren's Attic #77 that my ability to deliver a weekly podcast may be temporarily hampered by the fact that we're moving into temporary quarters while we build a new Attic.

Well, the most practical thing to do turned out to be to move everything from the Attic into temporary storage!

Therefore, We move the podcast - but not the blog - into another hiatus, but never fear pilgrims: I already have begun planning the next series of UWA adventures. Coming this fall, after living a bit of a nomadic life for a couple of years, Red and I plan to be settled into our new home and able to unpack shtuff, some of which has literally been in boxes since July 2010. And, once unpacked, some of this shtuff will amaze and astonish you.

I'm guessing that around the time the fall TV season rolls around, you'll have the additional option of gathering around whatever electronic device you use to listen to podcasts and hear a new season of Uncle Warren's Attic, more eclectic than ever.

In the meantime, monitor the construction progress and otherwise keep in touch with your favorite eccentric uncle by visiting this little place in cyberspace. And feel free to rifle through the archives when you have a strong desire for a UWA episode. Thanks for listening!

As always, you can contact me directly at warren@warrenbluhm.com with questions and comments.

Building a new Attic

Monday

Well, I must say this is rather exciting.

What you are looking at is a view from outside the window of the new Uncle Warren's Attic, which should be a reality in mid-August, Lord willing and the creek don't rise. Red and I have owned this land for about six years, and circumstances finally have arranged themselves in such a way that we can begin building a domicile on the property.

Tuesday

Late last week stakes went into the ground marking where the house will go, and Monday I positioned myself in the corner where there'll be a bedroom that I plan to convert into my office/studio space. That's the top photo.

Tuesday morning, the diggers arrived. At the end of the day, I went to approximately the same spot on the property and snapped approximately the same photo.

Wow!

I have attended my share of groundbreaking ceremonies in 37 (!) years as a reporter-type person, and today I finally understand why they're so excited. The hole in the ground is a symbol of the future, a positive act toward something new. Hurry up, tomorrow, I can hardly wait to meet you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, there are bound to be snafus and disappointments and stuff that doesn't happen the way we hoped it would happen. But mostly there's a hole in the ground where a home will be.

How to live to be 100

Cleaning out the old Attic in anticipation of moving the new one we hope to occupy by mid-August, I found my notes from the 100th birthday party for Herbi Hardt, which I mentioned back in Episode 72.

He had some good answers to the inevitable question of how to live to be a century old, and before I toss the notes into the recycling bin, here they are – to be preserved for posterity! (These are the exact notes – in parentheses I fill out what I remember of what they mean.)

Don’t clutter up your life (with things like hatred, anger and rigid beliefs).

Live now (not in the past or overly worried about the future).

I’m not political.

(Live in ways that will leave) This world to be a better place.

Keep learning and moving on; keep on adding to your knowledge.

Uncle Warren's Attic #77

THIS IS YOUR DIRECT DOWNLOAD LINK FOR UNCLE WARREN'S ATTIC #77.

But seriously, why haven't you subscribed to the RSS feed yet?

Ernest Hare, Floppy the Rabbit, Sir Laurence Olivier and Wolfman Jack - Dare ya to find another podcast that will mix that mix!

In this corner:
"Hello Hello" - Tiny Tim on WABC, New York (1968)
"Dixie Highway" - Ernest Hare
"Floppy" - Mervyn Shiner
"Because" - Julian Lennon (from "Dave Clark's Time")
"Beauty, Truth, Love, Freedom, Peace" - Sir Laurence Olivier (from "Dave Clark's Time")
"Breaking Up is Hard to Do" - Lenny Welch
"I Ain't Never Seen a White Man" - Wolfman Jack

Thanks for spending a half-hour a week rifling through my shtuff with me!

Uncle Warren's Attic #76

Click on the pod icon or this link to download/listen to Uncle Warren's Attic #76.

What does a romantic ballad from the 1920s have in common with a gospel cover from 2006? You'd be surprised how well they fit together in the same pile of shtuff. At least they seemed to be part of the same flow as I cobbled together this visit to Uncle Warren's Attic.

Likewise, you wouldn't think Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Casablanca, Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD, The Prisoner and Firefly have that much in common (except that Joss Whedon produced the first and last), but they made for a pleasant enough opening montage.

That's just the way it is up here in the Attic. You got yer boxes of LPs, the 45s on the top shelf, the 78s down here by my feet, and miscellaneous CDs, DVDs, floppy disks, reel-to-reel and cassette tapes, books, comics, magazines and whatnot all over the place. I still haven't hooked up the 8-track machine, but I know there are a few of those in a box somewhere, too ...

And the result is a fun little mix like this one:

"Rocka My Soul" - Miss Behavin' (2006)
"Sail On Little Girl Sail On" - Leadbelly (1940)
"The Night Sky and A Telescope" - Tara Leigh Cobble (2006)
"Ramona" - Gene Austin (1928)
"Get Together" - Randy Stonehill (1986)
"Country and Western Songs" - Larry Lujack & Tommy Edwards (1982)
"Don't Let Your Sweet Love Die" - Reno & Smiley (1961)
"Orange Blossom Breakdown" - The Stonemans (1964)

Click on the pod icon or this link to download/listen to Uncle Warren's Attic #76.

Catch up to the last 10 visits

Coming up Monday, Uncle Warren's Attic #76 will take us back 90 years, 70 years, 25 years and five minutes ago. But there's a weekend ahead, and here's a fine way to pass at least five hours while you're waiting for the new show. Sure, you could spend that time by going to see The Avengers twice, but this is free! free! free!

If you didn't realize I had settled back in the Attic again, you can catch up with the rest of us by clicking on these links to listen to/download the last three months of excitement (not counting the two weeks of reruns) ...

Uncle Warren's Attic #66 - re-establishing the series with the likes of The Crows, Jimmy Davis, John Cale and Sunny Gale.

Uncle Warren's Attic #67 - Awesome old movie music with Beverly White, Louis Jordan and the King Cole Trio, plus a segment of the immortal "Flick's Tongue" narration by Jean Shepherd.

Uncle Warren's Attic #68 - The original Betty Boop and famous songs recorded by other artists before the big hit versions. Seriously, "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)" by Jerry Lee Lewis?!

Uncle Warren's Attic #69 - Excerpts from the 1912 presidential campaign, World War I music, and translating the dialogue from Star Wars I. To be honest, this one looked better on paper.

Uncle Warren's Attic #70 - St. Patrick's Day the way it may have sounded on the Victrola.

Uncle Warren's Attic #71 - The premieres of "This Terrifying Report" and "Poetry Corner," plus a lot of songs with food themes, like "Pumpernickel," "Hotta Chocolotta" and "Sweet Potato Piper."

Uncle Warren's Attic #72 - The Academy Awards for 1942-43, "Barney Google" and "16 Old Ladies Locked in the Lavatory." What's not to love? Here's looking at you, kid.

Uncle Warren's Attic #73 - An especially swingin' episode with Scat Man Crothers, Glenn Miller, Raymond Scott and some other happy stuff.

Uncle Warren's Attic #74 - A fun hodgepodge from the late 1950s and early '60s, including the immortal "Manhattan Spiritual" and a followup to "Hey Paula."

Uncle Warren's Attic #75 - The story of meeting Barry McGuire and how it inspired me to write and record an album and then write a book.