As some of you know - but some of you don’t - I’ve been working the last few months (most of 2007 now) for a green building company. We’re building a house in the Minneapolis suburbs that’s going to be LEED Platinum. LEED is a nationwide green building certification program, and Platinum is the highest level. In fact, the house we’re building far exceeds even the Platinum standards. My job has been to work on the education aspect of it, which has taken shape primarily in the form of a website - www.livegreenlivesmart.org. I’ve also been the company’s main representative at industry meetings, I’m taking photographs, and giving tours of the home. Most of my days are spent writing for the site, whether it’s words or html code, but during the last few weeks I had a great opportunity to do some work outside, helping prepare the house’s incredible landscape. Wouldn’t you know it, but Don Shelby, the anchor of the local CBS station, dropped by to film his third segment on the house for the news on the very day I was elbow deep in the muck. Apparently they liked my work, and my bearded, muddy visage was broadcast repeatedly over the course of a two-minute segment to homes across the Twin Cities.

See it all for yourself. I’m the sweaty dirt-covered guy. It’s pretty cool, but I’m also a bit embarrassed.

Also, do check out the website I’ve been working on. It’s pretty cool too.

Although we had been thinking about it for months, Drew, Tommy, and I decided to scratch our plans to travel to Europe next summer. But a combination of factors make us even more excited for a different destination. After hearing from Laura about her trip to Alaska (and looking at some incredible pictures she took) we now have our hearts set on exploring the Last Wilderness. Then we hit the movie theater and saw Into The Wild, which had the strange effect of making us NOT want to go to Alaska and to desperately WANT to go to Alaska. It makes sense if you’ve seen it.

Plus, I’ve always wanted to go to Alaska, ever since I wrote about it for my “State Report” in Mrs. Powers’ 5th grade class. The state just seems so…endless.

Based on the fact that we have time but not that much money, our plan has developed an extra bit of quirkiness: we’re planning to drive there. That’s over 3,000 miles. Much of it will be spent on the infamous Alcan, the Alaska-Canadian Highway that Drew’s always wanted to drive on, which stretches from Dawson Creek to Fairbanks.

(I don’t know what it is about me, but something inside makes me want to go to these crazy northern places. Like “Nunavut” up there in the corner. Nunavut! I just like saying it!)

Not many more details at this point, but one thing’s for sure, it will definitely be an adventure.

The wind whips up a gale and green gives way to red and yellow, red and yellow give way to bare branches. The sky is deep and clear, or grey and foreboding, and scarves make their way out from the bottoms of chests and trunks. Sandals give way to socks and shoes. Quilts gain some volume and become comforters. The furnace creaks into life. All this can only mean one thing: time for a new mix! (Oh, and it’s autumn.)

This year I wanted to try something a little different. Past mixes have reflected a certain kind of fall day: the cool, crisp sunny day, the day you get out and rake some leaves and enjoy the last bits of sunlight and semi-warmth.

But there’s another kind of fall day that is hard to pin down. The mixes made for the crisp autumn days don’t “mix” (ahem) well with these different days. These are the days that usher in the cold and bring us closer to winter; these are the pre-winter days, as opposed to the post-summer days. The blustery days, the cloudy days that almost look like snow, the days that bring a sweet melancholy that’s strangely enjoyable in its own way. If you love winter, like I do, these pre-winter days are just as wonderful as the post-summer days. There’s much to love in these days, as you sit inside and watch as the world changes outside. These are quiet days, acoustic guitar days, sad days. I’ve found it’s much harder to find songs for this kind of day than it is to find songs for the post-summer days. I hope, though, with this mix I’ve put together a collection of songs that are quiet yet captivating, icy but warm, solemn but not depressing. Please enjoy. You’ll find a download link at the end of the playlist.

“Leaves Were Falling, Just Like Embers”

1. Richmond Fontaine - Intro/The Border
2. The Microphones - Headless Horseman
3. Red House Painters - Trailways
4. Damien Jurado - Ohio
5. Emmylou Harris - Tennessee Waltz
6. Iris DeMent - Our Town
7. The Shins - Those to Come
8. The Avett Brothers - Find My Love
9. Elephant Micah - Detailed Cathedral
10. Cat Power - Werewolf
11. The Replacements - Rock and Roll Ghost
12. Sufjan Stevens - Vito’s Ordination Song (acoustic version)
13. Darren Jesse - Magic
14. Amber Dust - In Autumn
15. Robert Plant & Alison Krauss - Killing the Blues
16. Neko Case - South Tacoma Way
17. Simon & Garfunkel - The Boxer

You know you want it.

There is a deep and distinct pendulum in my haircut cycle. I swing back and forth over a span of months from very short to very long. The thing is, though, it’s not like a normal pendulum where each swing is a bit smaller than the last, where eventually a middle is found and the pendulum rests. No, my pendulum increases on its ends, mostly the long end, though. Each time I let my hair grow out it grows longer and longer before I get sick of it and go see my barber who almost faints on the sight of my mop. Usually my desire to get a haircut grows proportionally with the number of tangles and curls that start to form. I’ve been focused (or not focused, really) for years on very simple grooming (what’s a “comb?”) because I had short hair. Wash, dry, done. Now I have to invest in things like “conditioner” and “combs” to make my hair manageable. And these things are working. My hair, despite being long, is kind of normal, meaning I’m not bothered enough to get my ears lowered (a great old phrase). So the hair gets longer. Who knows what will happen? I may end up looking like this:

Would that be so bad?

Hello and welcome to the new site, jacksonhays.com! Maybe a couple more of these: !! To everyone who followed me over here, thanks for doing so. Talking to yourself is much more interesting if you have an audience.

It’s taken me a few days to set this all up, but it’s coming together. I was getting a little frustrated over there at bigwhoop - not at the bigwhoopers themselves of course, but with the blogging software the bigwhoop happened to be running on, MovableType. MT upgraded to a new software version and it hasn’t been the same. I haven’t even been able to access my website for about a month, through no fault of bigwhoop. So I decided to cut loose and finally get my own site. Of course I am indebted to Matt Jankowski for giving me the chance to blog and put some of my writing online. But it’s time to move on, as they say. Who are “they”? I dunno. They said it though.

Let me tell you about the new arrangement here. As I ended my career at bigwhoop, my site had almost completely split into two sections: my own writing, and the “sweatshirt poesy” blog which, despite my infrequent updates, was taking on a life of its own as a sort of educational blog about poetry. That split is now permanent. Sweatshirt poesy will become its own blog/website at sweatshirtpoesy.com, where I can continue with theme posts like MONSTERS OF POETRY and Found Poetry, and begin writing posts on meter and rhyme and style and other fascinating things. Jacksonhays.com, then, will house my portfolio and this blog, which I’ll use to write “normal” journal-style blogs about my boring life, introduce new poems (Poemosity ____Day), write about music, and post my mixes.

So there you have it. Double the Jackson, double the awesome. Sweatshirtpoesy.com isn’t quite ready for primetime yet, but rest assured I’ll let you know when it’s up and running.