Month: December 2023

Goes Around

/ ronnyjames / 1 Comment

I’m listening to Sting on a bluetooth speaker upstairs here in our living room. Sting is downstairs in the family room, the album Sacred Love (one of the many I ripped from my CD collection) is playing from my Mac mini. I’m lazy so I’m using the iTunes Remote app on my iPhone to choose my albums from the music library on my computer.

The last vinyl album I purchased new was Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms. According to Wikipedia, Brothers in Arms was the first album to sell one million copies in the CD format and to outsell its LP version. That was 1985, almost 40 years ago. From then on, all I purchased were CDs. But then sometime after the introduction of the iPhone, iPod, and music streaming music services takeover, the vinyl LP began to make a surprising comeback. 

Apparently the CD is now on the decline with a resurgence in vinyl. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) notes that in 2022, vinyl sales topped 41M units while CDs came in at 33M (PDF). But where are streaming services in this musical mixture? Well, streaming was 84% of music revenues in 2022, still the dominant force in the music industry.

I note all of this because, in my desire to continue to downsize and “ronny-kondo” the office, I thought it would be expeditious to rip all of my CDs to a hard drive and get rid of all those pieces of plastic. So in 2017 I ripped all that I had and stored my music on an external WiFi capable hard drive. I had intended to link to the hard drive thru my iPad and treat the drive as if it were a CD jukebox, all of my music available at the tip of my fingers. Glad I saved the CDs! the software to access the mp3 files on my hard drive thru the iPad no longer worked. And when it was working, I had a hard time keeping the two of them linked on my network.

So we are back to playing the CDs on the only remaining player in the house. I had to purchase an external DVD player for the Mac mini since it didn’t come equipped with one. And those albums? The ones we got from my Father-in-law are out in boxes in the shed. I think my wife’s brother will be stopping by to pick them up for his vinyl collection. But I don’t think I will be copying and saving them. What’s old is new and what goes around eventually comes back around.

Oh, Christmas Tree!

/ ronnyjames / 2 Comments

Are you Team Fir? or Team Faux?

I grew up, as I am sure most people of my era (here for us boomers!) with only a “real” Christmas tree in the house.

According to the Nature Conservancy, nearly 10 million artificial trees are purchased each year in the US, manufactured primarily in China. That’s a lot of faux! However, the National Christmas Tree Association suggests that 25-30 million real trees are sold each year here in the US.

The benefits of real trees are numerous: they are recyclable, produce oxygen and provide a home for wildlife while growing, and have a look and smell that simply can’t be imitated with pvc plastic trees. Although I never knew anyone to have one other than my grandfather, the aluminum tree was quite the design essential of Mid-Century Modern homes during the early 1960s. Stylish! but no smell.

One of the cousins sitting in front of an aluminum Christmas tree. Note the rotating lighting display behind the tree!

Growing up our family would cut trees outside of Reno, Nevada. And the tree we brought home was always a pinion pine. Looking back at some of my photos, I wonder now how the bush-like shape of the pinion pine ever qualified it as a “Christmas” tree? But it did have a wonderful smell! Very prickly, lot’s of sap, and a short squat tree was how I remembered ours.

When we were married I hoped to share the same experience of cutting our own Christmas trees with my family. There are several tree farms here in Loudoun County, VA and we’ve tried a couple of them. Ticonderoga Tree Farm wasn’t far from our home and we visited them a few times. Snickers Gap Tree Farm is a bit farther drive but worth the effort. Their Douglas fir and blue spruce are beautiful. Thinking of fir trees, there are Fraser Fir, Noble Fir, Douglas Fir, Balsam Fir, Canaan Fir, and any number of spruce and pines that make great Christmas trees if you are looking for varieties from which to choose. Not all are available locally but perhaps they are in your region.

I love this picture of my son and I cutting our tree at Ticonderoga; now, years later we have switched to artificial trees. As I recall, we stopped buying real trees when we considered the rising costs of yearly purchasing a tree vs. the one-time cost of an artificial tree. And the faux tree came pre-lit! But I miss the excitement of finding the perfect tree, the lingering smell of pine through the holiday season, and the thought of supporting our local growers. Perhaps we will buy real in the future.

Many, many years ago, back in the early 1960s, our family helped my Mother’s sister and her family plant a tree farm on 10 acres near Laytonville CA. It seems an odd location now: Laytonville in Mendocino County is surrounded by forests. And a tree farm isn’t something you can just plant and leave to nature; the trees have to be pruned to shape and there are always deer wanting to eat the younger plants. I asked my cousin and she said they eventually sold the property and never harvested any trees from it. But I am wondering, maybe a tree farm isn’t such a bad idea for an old retired guy? Support our local farmers! Merry Christmas friends.