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Ep 56 Midlife Mixtape LIVE at Betabrand Podcast Theater

“The gift of experience”: Host Nancy Davis Kho, musician Kyle Terrizzi aka M. The Heir Apparent, and SF Chronicle Senior Political Writer Joe Garofoli at Betabrand’s Podcast Theater on first concerts, generational soundtracks, and antidotes for outrage fatigue.

M. The Heir Apparent aka Kyle Terrizzi performs the Midlife Mixtape Podcast theme song, “Be Free”, at Betabrand’s Podcast Theater on May 30th 2019

Nancy in conversation with the San Francisco Chronicle’s Senior Political Writer Joe Garofoli

Stream M. The Heir Apparent aka Kyle Terrizzi on Spotify
M. The Heir Apparent’s website with tour info
It’s All Political Podcast with San Francisco Chronicle Senior Political Writer Joe Garofoli
Betabrand – Crowdfunded Clothing
Pre-order Nancy’s new book, THE THANK-YOU PROJECT: Cultivating Happiness One Letter of Gratitude at a Time

The post Ep 56 Midlife Mixtape LIVE at Betabrand Podcast Theater appeared first on Midlife Mixtape .

                  Related StoriesEp 53 SavvyAuntie.com Founder Melanie NotkinEp 50 Listeners’ Advice to Younger PeopleEp 55 The Hard Times Founder Matt Saincome 

Dining Room Desolation

This is my dining room table. It is also a metaphor.

When our youngest daughter, who will collect her high school diploma tonight, was heading into her freshman year four years ago, she spread her summer reading and writing assignment onto the dining room table to work. There’s nice natural light in there, it’s close to snacks in the kitchen, and the desk in her room is small. I figured it was a temporary thing and didn’t tell her not to.

She never stopped using it as her desk.

Freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior year, our beautiful table has been covered by Spanish flashcards, physics textbooks, AP US Gov homework. There were staplers and scissors, highlighters and rulers, permissions slips I was supposed to sign but only saw after the trip to the museum or performance had passed. Paperclips. A comb. Hanging chads from torn-out notebook pages fluttered to the dining room rug like snow.

Oh, it made my husband, but mostly me, crazy. I like to entertain. I like to invite people for dinner. But with the homework center at the public center of our home, it became too hard to do that. It involved giving her at least a 72-hour warning period to clear everything off, and then the stuff on top of the table just became piles in the corner of the dining room, and really, there were so many notebooks and textbooks that there wasn’t an alternative site for them, so what was the point. With summer assignments and college applications factored in, this was a 12-months-of-the-year situation.

I offered to take her to Ikea to buy a bigger desk for her room. “Why?” she would ask, impish smile on her face. “This works fine.”

So we adapted. I only demanded the table be cleared off for Christmas and Easter dinner; we have a kitchen table, after all.  When we had people over to visit and sat in the adjoining living room, with the view through the dining room/study center, I’d just wave my hand at the messy mound of schoolwork in the foreground and say, “That’s her desk” and hope they’d get distracted by the oak trees through the window beyond.

But when we rounded the bend onto second semester of senior year, I allowed myself to feel excited about the prospect of a clean tabletop and the ability to eat at it again. I finally bought an interesting dining room chandelier after 16 years of wanting to replace the bottom-shelf Home Depot fixture that came with the house. I cracked a few cookbooks looking for inspiration.

Last Friday was her last full day of high school, and my husband had been egging her on all week. “You’re gonna clear off the table, right? You can get rid of everything in the dining room over Memorial Day weekend, right? No need for anything on that table anymore, right?” We invited friends over for brunch on Sunday, the first meal in what I hope will be a new era of entertaining again.

On Sunday morning, in the course of about an hour and with virtually no prompting, she cleared the table. I set it with an old tablecloth in her new university’s colors, and put out matching candleholders made by the mom of her onetime nanny, a whole lifetime ago. It looks so lovely now. I took a picture to remember the moment.

I am so unexpectedly sad about this stupid cleared table. It kind of hurts my eyes. I’m kicking myself for not taking a picture of the table when it was a mess, and our daughter was literally in the center of our lives.

But then I spotted this in the corner – piles. Her messy piles of stuff are still in there, at least until she starts college in the fall.

Phew. We still have a little more time.

Whenever our daughter gets to DJ right now, this is the album that’s on – Vampire Weekend’s Father of the Bride

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CommentsBittersweet ❤️ by VikkiI've been due for a good cry. And then you handed me this ... by KarenLast year I said, “Wow, no more books, papers, notebooks or ... by JillYes . xoxo by MelisaAaaaaack! All of this. All of it. Beautiful. by AnnYAY! Dining room tables…three generations of books and table ... by Kho HelenRelated StoriesDining Room DolefulMake It LastLearning to Disengage 

Ep 55 The Hard Times Founder Matt Saincome

“Try a bunch of stuff”: Matt Saincome, Editor-in-chief of the internet’s most popular music satire site, talks about pursuing the crazy ideas that don’t go away, what makes a good “Aging Punk” joke, and the unspoken punk dress-up code.

The Hard Times
The Hard Times Podcast Network
OutVoice publisher payment platform
Midlife Mixtape LIVE from the Betabrand Podcast Theater in San Francisco on Thursday May 30th – reserve your free ticket here!
Pre-order Nancy’s new book, THE THANK-YOU PROJECT: Cultivating Happiness One Letter of Gratitude at a Time

Here’s one of Matt’s music recs if you don’t know them yet – Turnstile

Thanks as always to M. The Heir Apparent, who provides the music behind the podcast – check him out here!

The post Ep 55 The Hard Times Founder Matt Saincome appeared first on Midlife Mixtape .

                  Related StoriesMidlife Mixtape LIVEEp 54 Giving Circle Founder Jacqueline Jacobs CasterEp 53 SavvyAuntie.com Founder Melanie Notkin 

Concert Review: Tedeschi Trucks Band

photo creds John “Z-man” Lucas

The Band: Tedeschi Trucks Band, May 10 2019. This blues/rock supergroup is led by wife-and-husband duo Susan Tedeschi (of Susan Tedeschi’s Soul Stew Revival) and Derek Trucks (of The Allman Brothers and Derek Trucks Band.) Take some blues, add in a sprinkle of Motown sound, a whiff of the Grateful Dead, top with some of the most virtuoso guitar playing you’ll ever see, and wrap it all up in vocals for dayyzzzz, and you’ve got an idea of why the band’s 2011 album Revelator won the Grammy for Best Blues Album, and why they can easily sell out a two-night stand in Oakland.

The Venue: The Fox Theater in Oakland. I love taking people who have never been to the Fox to the Fox. I feel like I’m showing them my newly refurbished living room. “Did you look at the ceiling tiles yet? Check out the statuary! Oh, drunk people ALWAYS think there’s a staircase here on this low platform where we’re standing, just grab them by the waist and throw them toward the actual staircase!”

The Company: I’m used to driving the concert bus around here, informing people that I’ve bought two tickets to Band X that they may not know but should, and do they want to come with me? So how nice was it to be on the receiving end of that phone call, when my friend John and his wife Kathy invited us to come with them to see Tedeschi Trucks. Even my husband fell in line with the plan, which is a rarity.

Interestingly, he and Kathy spent the time before the curtain fell discussing their shared worst fear: being unfairly imprisoned and having no one get them out of jail. I promised my husband that of course I would get him out, but it might take a couple of weeks, because did he not see how many good bands are on the schedule at the Fox? So Kathy has now volunteered to be Andrew’s one call from jail.

The Crowd: Well, the band itself is diverse, so that should count for something. But out there on the floor it was fifty shades of pale, kind of a weird feeling when you’re in Oakland, California. Or as my husband said, “It feels like we’re in the Western European Arrivals Lounge at Ellis Island.” The age span was pretty broad, but this definitely was the kind of crowd who shouldn’t leave the house without SPF 30, present company included.

Worth Hiring the Sitter?

Because we are mere months away from any empty nest and my kids are almost aged out of even BEING babysitters, I will give you the assessment from the young couple who were our elbow partners for the show. They had a 1- and 3-year-old at home their sitter, had driven in from Danville, caught dinner in Oakland’s Uptown neighborhood before the show, and then were treated to almost three full hours of Tedeschi Trucks blues.

Their answer to whether it’s worth hiring the sitter: hells to the yes.

I was entirely unfamiliar with Tedeschi Trucks’ music before the show, but having read the great Alan Paul book about The Allman Brothers, “One Way Out”, I at least knew from Derek Trucks. John mentioned to me on the way into the show that Trucks is considered one of the world’s greatest guitarists, to which in my head I said “He’s no Prince.” Sorry but that one clip of Prince playing “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” at the George Harrison Rock and Roll HOF induction is the answer to that question, forever. (The only part of that Wine Country movie everyone watched last weekend that I related to was Maya Rudolph’s soliloquy about Prince in the hot tub, TBH. That part felt accurate.)

THAT SAID: Holy cow is Derek Trucks an astonishingly talented guitarist. I literally held my head in my hands at one point in the show, fearful it would explode from what I was seeing. He is insanely, insanely good.

Shot at the Fox during TT’s last trip through the Bay Area…

And Susan Tedeschi’s voice is amazing. It sounds like she has probably never hit a false note in her life. I turned to Kathy at what point and said, “What must their Thanksgiving dinner be like?” You know, “I’ll put the turkey in, and then maybe, since we’re all here, we can just really quickly record a blockbuster blues album, and then we start the gravy.” The rest of the band, from dual drums to a great brass section (I’m a sucker for a trombone) to backup singers, was also incredibly talented.

They pack a lot of music into their show, but not a lot of chit-chat – I don’t think they addressed us even once. They are professionals at the top of their game, their focus is on musical precision, and they’re there to play you music – Tedeschi Trucks didn’t even have an opening band, just started at 8 pm, took a short break at 9:15, and were still playing when we slipped out the door a few minutes before 11.

If this is what letting someone else drive the concert bus feels like, I’m ready to take my seat in the back row.

 

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Midlife Mixtape LIVE

Three weeks from tonight, Midlife Mixtape is going LIVE in the Mission neighborhood in San Francisco! Betabrand, a really rad clothing line that is based in San Francisco, converts its factory/store into a Podcast Theater every Thursday night, and they’ve invited me to record the Midlife Mixtape Podcast there on Thursday, May 30th from 6:30-8:00 pm.

To make it worth your while to come out, I’m packing a lot into those 90 minutes.

First, the doors open at 6:30 and there will be free beer and wine. So, it’s a cocktail party.

Second, we’ll kick off the show promptly at 7 with Kyle Terrizzi aka M. The Heir Apparent aka the incredibly talented Bay Area singer/songwriter who plays the Midlife Mixtape Podcast theme song, “Be Free” . He’s going to play it and some of his other music live that night. So, it’s a concert.

Third, my guest for the evening is The San Francisco Chronicle’s senior political writer, Joe Garofoli. Talk about someone whose choice of a career may have taken an unexpected turn or two by midlife…I’m hoping he’ll have advice from the front line about how to pace ourselves during the upcoming election cycle, and how to pivot when life throws your industry a few curve balls. So, it’s an interview.

We’ll have some audience participation games with prizes. So, game show.

Finally, can you believe the gorgeous posters that Betabrand creates for each podcast event? You can see mine on the wall now if you stroll by their 780 Valencia Street location… so, Art Show.

photo creds Ann Trunko

And when it ends at 8 pm, you will stumble out into the Mission, smack dab in the middle of one of the best restaurant/bar scenes in the Bay Area. So, cooking show? Not really. Unless someone invites you into a kitchen.

Still, this cocktail party/concert/interview/game show/art show night should be really fun. I hope that if you’re in the Bay Area – or have friends here who you could send my way – that you will reserve your seat soon! Tickets are going fast – they’re free but Betabrand has limited seating, so click through here and register for your free ticket.

(The recording of the show will go up as a future podcast episode so those of you who can’t make it will still get to hear M., Joe, me, and various audience shenanigans.)

See you on the 30th!

The new Vampire Weekend album came out last week and it’s all we’re listening to. Love this one with the sisters Haim.

The post Midlife Mixtape LIVE appeared first on Midlife Mixtape .

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Ep 54 Giving Circle Founder Jacqueline Jacobs Caster

Rich Schmitt Photography

“Count me in”: Everychild Foundation founder Jacqueline Jacobs Caster on the age-old “Giving Circle” approach to collaborative giving, its value for deepening friendships and meaning at midlife, and how life is more malleable than you think.

UPDATED: The Everychild Foundation has actually given away almost $18 million since its inception in 1999!

Everychild Foundation
Everychild Foundation on FB
Nancy’s Giving Circle Basics – a public Google Doc with ideas to get you started!
Midlife Mixtape LIVE from the Betabrand Podcast Theater in San Francisco on Thursday May 30th – reserve your free ticket here!
Pre-order Nancy’s new book, THE THANK-YOU PROJECT: Cultivating Happiness One Letter of Gratitude at a Time

My suggestion to Jacquie for a 21st century band with a Nitty Gritty Dirt Band feel: Band of Horses. Do you agree?

This particular song, “In a Drawer,” features J. Mascis from Dinosaur Jr., and sometimes I worry that I like this song so much that I may actually have lost my mind. As soon as it ends I hit replay, sometimes four or five times. It’s not healthy.

Thanks as always to M. The Heir Apparent, who provides the music behind the podcast – check him out here!

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                  Related StoriesEp 53 SavvyAuntie.com Founder Melanie NotkinEp 52 Author Mary Laura PhilpottEp 51 Grown & Flown Co-founder Mary Dell Harrington 

The Thank-You Project – Now Available for Pre-Order

Well, Happy Birthday to me! I have a book cover, a launch date – December 3, 2019 – and three ways for people to pre-order my new book:

From IndieBound
From Amazon
From Barnes & Noble

I feel super lucky to be able to share the story about the year I wrote thank-you letters to 50 people, places, and pastimes that had shaped me, inspired me, and helped me become the person I am. The letters were written to family and friends, of course, but also teachers, bosses, mentors, authors, cities and yes, a handful of ex-boyfriends and former friends. (Don’t worry, you don’t have to mail every letter you write to yield the happiness benefits of gratitude

Ep 53 SavvyAuntie.com Founder Melanie Notkin

www.anaphoto.net

“A life beyond my expectations”: Melanie Notkin talks Generation PANK (Professional Aunts, No Kids) aka women who are childless by choice, chance, or challenge, the complex feelings raised by modern fertility science, and the wonders of Aunt-hood.

SavvyAuntie.com website
SavvyAuntie on Facebook
Melanie’s latest book, OTHERHOOD: Modern Women Finding a New Kind of Happiness
How Generation X Could Change the American Dream, Trend Magazine, from Pew Charitable Trusts

Speaking of aunts…

The post Ep 53 SavvyAuntie.com Founder Melanie Notkin appeared first on Midlife Mixtape .

                  Related StoriesEp 51 Grown & Flown Co-founder Mary Dell HarringtonEp 50 Listeners’ Advice to Younger PeopleEp 48 Concert Photographer Aimee Giese 

Great Garbage Can Debacle of 2019

When my dad passed away in 2016, there was a visual someone described to help me think about the way that grief would present itself over time. (Sorry, I was so addled I don’t remember who – raise your hand for credit if it was you!)

The way grief works, I was told, is like you are standing in the shallow water on an ocean beach, with the waves lapping at your calves. Sometimes the water gets a little higher, but for the most part you can keep your footing, carry on a conversation, feel the sun on your face. Then BAM! Out of nowhere, a big wave surprises you and knocks you down, so you’re sputtering for air and scrabbling to get back to your feet. That’s when you’ll look up and down the beach and realize that there are lots of people on the beach, everyone in their own phase of exactly the same process – hanging in ok, until for a few moments, they’re not.

The visual helped me. When the grief wave comes out of the blue, when I miss my dad with a sudden fierceness that is physical, I don’t fight it too hard, and I recognize that eventually I’ll get back on my feet. I try to remember that people around me are all grieving something in their own way, too.

But what I have noticed lately is that when these giant waves of missing my dad arrive, they don’t necessarily make me cry. Sometimes they make me laugh.

And that is my long preamble to the story of the Great Garbage Can Debacle of 2019.

See, my parents lived in a townhome before Dad died and Mom moved into senior housing, and my siblings and I haven’t gotten around to selling it yet. It’s pretty much no-maintenance, a good place for out-of-towners to stay, and it’s been nice to clean it out one room at a time, on our schedule. So in the division of labor that exists between my brother, my sister, and me, I handle emails from the townhouse homeowner’s association. And I have received approximately 243 of those email in the past ten days, all related to changing, changing back, and changing back again the garbage company that services the townhouse complex.

Please put your cans out on Tuesday! Ok, we heard from the company that they’re actually coming Wednesday! We’ve had complaints that the new garbage cans are unwieldy so please leave those out on Wednesday, wait make that Friday, so you can get the old ones back! The old ones weren’t returned – we’ve decided to switch back to the first company! Don’t forget, now the recyclables go into the same bin! No, not the garbage bin, sorry if we were unclear about that, there’s a separate recyclables bin!

And that’s just Monday’s batch. I picture a young woman writing these emails on behalf of the association board (the community is mostly older folks, so I’m guessing she’s got a hepped-up batch of 75-year olds milling around her) just crumpling under her desk from the strain. Seriously? I have to send another email about separating the recyclables?

And here’s why I’ve been thinking about my dad. This is the kind of logistical, analytical, common-sense problem he could tackle with both eyes closed and one hand tied behind his back. Whatever my father did, he made sure it was done properly. He was a measure twice, cut once guy in every area of his life. He did it for thirty-five years at Kodak, he did it for the fire department and camp where he volunteered, he did it for the townhome association board when he was a member of it.

He especially tried to do it for his family. Exhibit A: the “easy to use” chart he created for converting microwave times and affixed to a kitchen cabinet so we could all nuke our food properly when we were at his house. Can I just take it out after 90 seconds and see if it’s warm? No. Consult the chart.

So every time another one of these town home association emails comes in that makes it clear that someone didn’t ask the right questions before hiring the garbage company, someone fell down on the job communicating the change to residents, someone at a garbage company made a hash of their new contract – all stuff Dad would have anticipated and fixed three miles off, boy howdy – I miss my dad and I laugh and think the same thing.

If he weren’t already dead, the Great Garbage Can Debacle of 2019 woulda killed him.

***

I introduced Dad to the Avett Brothers and he liked them a lot. This song comes from “May It Last,” the documentary about the Avetts that is on HBO. So worth the watch.

Hey! Fun news: I’ve been invited to do a live episode of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast at the Betabrand store in San Francisco on Thursday, May 30th! Every Thursday night Betabrand, purveyor of super cool and comfy clothes in the Mission neighborhood, turns its retail space into a live podcast theater seating 60-80 people. We’ll have live music, audience participation games, and my guest is Joe Garofoli, senior political writer at the San Francisco Chronicle. (“Hi Joe, how has writing about politics since 2016 aged you? Hahhahahahha sob sob sob.”)

You do have to get a ticket, but they’re free, so make sure to register ASAP –more details and ticket info here!

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CommentsOh Dear…… you got me again. I actually have such a vivid ... by JBYES. One of my cherished objects of my dad's is a little tiny ... by Nancy Davis KhoThis made me a little teary. Your dad's handwriting looks a LOT ... by Jill WearRelated StoriesHigh School Musical ReduxWhat Was YOUR Most Memorable Teenage Job?Mixtape Memories 

Ep 52 Author Mary Laura Philpott

“Permission to change”: Mary Laura Philpott, author of the new memoir-in-essays “I Miss You When I Blink,” talks about incremental reinvention, finding the courage to quit and realizing no one else cares, and making peace with not having the answers.

MaryLauraPhilpott.com
I Miss You When I Blink
Sign up for Mary Laura’s newsletter
How Prince’s death stirs fans’ concerns for their heroes who are still living, Los Angeles Times, April 22 2016

Well it obviously wasn’t going to be a Hootie video.

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