More specifically or to explain further there is a set of soccer fields at the corner of Oregon Expressway page Mill Road and El Camino and it is Stanford land but was the site of an elementary school at one point years ago before my time and recently Stanford created for Palo alto benefit the soccer fields as payment or thinks for we the people signing off on their plans to do some dance development it was mitigation or a public benefit. I don’t use the fields much but I have a friend who has played there 1000 times literally every day for five or six years. I would say I don’t play much soccer but I’ve played there three or four times. Similar to the fact that today I went and met my brother-in-law out in Hayward and played about 40 minutes of pickle ball for the very first time and then quit after two matches he and I against two younger men strangers— and we won both matches which in pickle ball is to 10 points with a side out affect like in volleyball. And I decided to bow out pretty prematurely but my wind is not great and I wanted to quit while I was ahead and he stayed and kept playing. He was a regular with this group of maybe 40 people — and further I noticed a warning from the health department that was suggesting people play singles not doubles that is to say 40 people might not be social distancing whereas 20 or more precisely 12 would’ve been.  Anyways when I saw the beautiful soccer fields my thought was it would be fun to have a concert there. LOL tell used to have a more elaborate concert series but there are five or six parks in Palo alto that over the years do host free civic concerts. And I had also had a scheme of trying to produce concerts in every park in Palo alto there’s about 40 of them. And a peculiar thing about the new soccer field is that it has plastic turf or Astroturf or artificial turf or whatever you want to call it. And nowadays it’s complex and there is green grass like things but also a little black pebble like things that help a ball bounce more naturally more like grass and less like cement and plastic. And as someone who still feels like art thinking is new to me I try hard and even overdo it I was trying to imagine what the field looks like from the perspective of the little black rocks. And the way they move. (in the way if you excuse that aggression that people think about the famous wave but don’t realize that in the Japanese would cut painting it’s part of the mount Fuji series). I thought it be interesting to get Ornette Coleman himself to play at that soccer field. Then a few years later that became a blog.  

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On Jan 10, 2021, at 8:33 AM, Chris Knipp wrote:

Heard an interview with Bob Dorrough around 7 years ago, when  he was 90.  He said when he first met Ornette Coleman he was playing a plastic alto. So is that where the name of your column comes from?

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