Michael Perry's Voice Mail

Howdy folks:

This episode is free to all subscribers, and random. Did a lil’ soliloquy up there in the garage and decided to share it.

Thank you. All of you.

Mike

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Howdy folks:

Welcome to Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, episode 263. This one’s available to free and paid subscribers alike. Click the player above to listen.

In this episode I explore the evolution and nuances of the Menards rebate form and why some of us are so excited about the new version. Then I tell the story of the exploding pink tape measure. And then it all ends up back at Menards again.

If you happen to be in the Eau Claire area on May 15, I’m doing a live event with my friend Frank Bures to promote his new book. If you can’t make it, the book is available at Bookshop.org and Amazon.

All of my live events can be found here.

Thank you for subscribing and listening.

Mike

MARGINALIA

(Annotations from books Mike is reading, or annotations related to the episode)

I have so many annotations related to today’s story that the regular book marginalia is on pause for this episode.

Below, a sampling of my personal tape measure inventory. Note nothing in pink.

The photo below diagrams the flight of the exploding pink tape measure. This image originally appeared in Voice Mail episode #223, “The Writing Shack.”

The image below is a slide taken by my father the day our Menard pole barn arrived in pieces on a truck.

Below you can see the pole barn as it stood completed on our farmstead:

There are more Menard pole barn photos in Voice Mail episode #174 “Ashley C. Ford and Pole Barns.

In this passage from the essay “A Way With Wings,” from the book Off Main Street, I refer to the crew who built our Menard pole shed:

This snowy picture of the peak of our Menard pole barn (which I can see from my little room above the garage) is the central to the birth of the book Forty Acres Deep.

The Menards jingle. You grew up around these parts you know that baby by heart.

An icon in the Midwestern pantheon: Ray “the Menards guy” Szmanda.

The passage about the Menards jets is in Coop.

Then there was the time I did this.

If you’d like to receive all episodes of Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, click on the button below (it says “Subscribe Now” but you won’t actually be subscribed until you review your options and confirm):

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See y’down the road!

Howdy folks:

Welcome to Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, episode 262. This one’s available to free and paid subscribers alike. Click the player above to listen.

In this episode I sit down to read about canoes with a cup of coffee at hand, wind up reading an essay about autodidacticism and have my day lightened by a line about dandelion fuzz I wish I woulda wrote.

If you happen to be in the Eau Claire area on May 15, I’m doing a live event with my friend Frank Bures to promote his new book (pictured above). If you can’t make it, the book is available at Bookshop.org and Amazon.

Thank you for listening. We don’t take it for granted.Forward,Mike

MARGINALIA

(Annotations from books Mike is reading, or annotations related to the episode)

Random notes made while reading the Elisa Gonzalez piece mentioned in today’s episode:

If you’d like to receive all episodes of Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, click on the button below (it says “Subscribe Now” but you won’t actually be subscribed until you review your options and confirm):

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Mike’s signed books, recordings, T-shirts, and more available at The Sneezing Cow store.

Information on the May 15 event with Frank Bures. The book is available at Bookshop.org and Amazon. Those are affiliate links, we get a couple cents.

Howdy folks:

Welcome to Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, episode 258. This one’s available to free and paid subscribers alike. Click the player above to listen.

In this episode I talk about a brief and impromptu neighborhood get-together, then head off in a slightly different direction than usual and request your input. I also reveal the phrase I used last week to describe why I’ll never be a fashionista and why there will always be limits to my refinement.

In random news, a few years ago we gave the chicken coop from Coop to the neighbors. They have since moved and the new neighbors have offered to let us have it back. So I’m gonna head down there and see if it’s still in any shape to be moved. This is how we moved it when it was brand new:

From Coop:

The tractor moves across the yard with the coop in tow. In a rare moment of foresight, we removed the windows so they wouldn’t bust in transit, and Buffalo is riding crouched in the window waving at the kids like an underweight troll, his head of curls and big black beard flopping in the wind. For my part, I keep ’er steady with the tractor, one arm raised and pointing to the distance as if I am Hannibal headed for the Alps.

As ever, I remain grateful for your time and attention.

Thank you.Mike

P.S. Scroll down for MARGINALIA section.

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This episode mentions Population 485 and Montaigne in Barn Boots.

Other signed books, recordings, T-shirts, and more at The Sneezing Cow store.

MARGINALIA

(Annotations from books Mike is reading, or annotations related to the episode)

Had some airplane time recently, and began re-reading Eric Linklater’s Magnus Merriman on my Kindle.

Looking at what I highlighted in the Introduction, I chuckle how some of it winds up being relevant to today’s Voice Mail episode:

Magnus Merriman is available via Amazon. That’s an affiliate link. If you use it I am compelled by law to let you know Sneezing Cow gets something in the tip jar.

In the department of additional full disclosure, the photo at the very top of this episode was taken back in June of 2023. The sun was filtering through Canadian wildfire smoke. Two days after I took it, I took another, in New York City.

Howdy, folks:

Welcome to Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, episode 253. This one’s available to free and paid subscribers alike. Click the player above to listen.

In this episode I start out to share my latest dunderheaded derp-stunt only to realize I already covered that in this episode, which we have switched to free so you can access it without a subscription.

Then I switch gears to discuss eggs and chickens and then why I’m not a farmer which leads me to a passage from Visiting Tom about harvesting oats with a scythe while my toddler daughter eats windfall apples. The piece concludes with Tom (figuratively) yanking me back down to earth when I wax a tad too poetic.

Many related photos below.

Thank you for giving this your time. I don’t take it for granted.

Forward,Mike

Signed books, recordings, T-shirts, and more at The Sneezing Cow store.

If you’d like to receive all episodes of Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, click on the button below (it says “Subscribe Now” but you won’t actually be subscribed until you review your options and confirm):

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Here’s another free episode about how DERP!!! is a way of life with me.

MARGINALIA

(Annotations from books Mike is reading, or annotations related to the episode)

Sneak peak of a new thing I’ve got coming out. Just sent the manuscript in with final corrections:

Signed books, recordings, T-shirts, and more at The Sneezing Cow store.

If you’d like to receive all episodes of Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, click on the button below (it says “Subscribe Now” but you won’t actually be subscribed until you review your options and confirm):

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Howdy, folks:

Welcome to Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, episode 250. This one’s available to free and paid subscribers alike. Click the player above to listen.

In today’s episode I go from talking about snow to talking about a first responder call I just made to talking about the mockumentary “Best in Show,” then share an essay about dog shows, as if I know anything about that. And tell a funny story about me and my merchandise manager Tony.

Lots of dogs in this episode, so I went with some dog photos.

Also, this is Tony.

And here’s more info on the Zoom event. We’d love it if you joined in. I’ll be broadcasting live from the little room above the garage.

Thank you for listening,Mike

MARGINALIA

(Annotations from books Mike is reading, or annotations related to the episode)

Signed books, recordings, T-shirts, and more at The Sneezing Cow store.

The mushing story is in this book.

The Zoom event info is here.

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If you’d like to receive all episodes of Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, click on the button below (it says “Subscribe Now” but you won’t actually be subscribed until you review your options and confirm):

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Howdy folks:

Welcome to Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, episode 245. In honor of the final week of the NFL football regular season, this one’s available to free and paid subscribers alike. Click the player above to listen.

In this episode I explain how the very first time I attended a professional football game, I was on the field with the team. As has often been the case with my career, I got there by coming at things from an angle.

For the rest of the story (and to find out just how big them fellas look up close), please click the player above to listen. For a photo series of how the game ended and to see this week’s marginalia, please scroll down.

And thank you for listening.

Forward!Mike

If you’d like to receive all episodes of Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, click on the button below (it says “Subscribe Now” but you won’t actually be subscribed until you review your options and confirm):

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To shop all of Mike’s books, recordings, and Sneezing Cow merchandise (including the small town T-shirt) (freshly replenished after selling out), please visit the webstore.

MARGINALIA

(Annotations from books Mike is reading, or annotations related to the episode)

Thanks to a gift from my wife, I spent much of the week reading this:

Okey-doke, folks. See y’down the road.

Howdy folks:

Welcome to Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, episode 243. This one’s available to free and paid subscribers alike. Click the player above to listen.

In this episode I start out to wax poetic about my snow plow truck then detour into talking about my tour van instead. There is also a hubcap update. And be sure to scroll down

…and finally, please scroll down to the Marginalia section where I share a few highlights from a book I started reading out in my deer stand.

Forward!Mike

Today’s episode draws on the essay “Van Again” from the book Hunker.

DVD copies of Mike’s PBS documentaries (including “Michael Perry On The Road,” starring the van in question) are available here.

The subject of today’s marginalia, the book Daughter in Retrograde, is available from BookShop.org and on Amazon. (Law requires me to let you know we catch a little commission if you order through those Amazon and BookShop links. Are we good, law?)

You can give a Voice Mail gift subscription:

If you’d like to receive all episodes of Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, click on the button below (it says “Subscribe Now” but you won’t actually be subscribed until you review your options and confirm):

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MARGINALIA

(Annotations from books Mike is reading, or annotations related to the episode)

I’m just a few chapters in, but am enjoying Kersten’s take on Midwestern culture—for better or worse.

I highlighted the line below because I wish I’d’a thought of it first:

And here we get into the idea of discernment as opposed to doubt, and where it leads us.

For the record, I’m not cynical about midwestern pleasantries. There’s a lot of sincerity to be found hereabouts, especially when we work face-to-face and neighbor-to-neighbor. But I also know what it is to smile benevolently whilst curling my toes and grinding my molars, and the passages above convey that nicely.

I’m eager to see where the rest of the book leads. Off the cuff, what I think I’m liking is I like to read critical takes on the culture I’m immersed in as it gives me food for thought, a reason to look in the mirror a little more closely, and above all I like it when those critiques arise from within as opposed to the election-season local cafe parachute job we are so often subjected to.

Okey-doke then. Nice ear muffs.

Howdy folks:

Welcome to Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, episode 242. This one’s available to free and paid subscribers alike. Click the player above to listen.

Ten years ago I wrote a book called The Scavengers. Then I started the sequel. And then…well, as you’ll hear in today’s episode, some life came up. But I’ve kept pecking away at it, and am currently powering through, bound and determined to hand it in before my editor retires.

Also in this episode: A couple of sneak peeks into the sequel, including a passage written after I discovered the nickname I had quite innocently given one character had some other…connotations.

Scroll down for additional photos. And marginalia.

As ever, thank you for listening.

Forward,Mike

MARGINALIA

(Annotations from books Mike is reading, or annotations related to the episode)

The poetry of Emily Dickinson plays a central role in The Scavengers (and does in the sequel). Maggie and her mother bond over the poems, but Maggie (Ford Falcon, as she prefers) also draws strength from Emily’s example. As this passage from Brenda Wineapple’s White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, indicates, Emily was up against it:

The highlight in the passage below echoes what I tried to create in the character of Maggie/Ford Falcon: a young girl who loves and craves solitude, values her independence, is stubborn, and takes no guff:

Okey-doke folks, off I go. Thanks again.

The Scavengers is available in hardcover, paperback, and audio. The sequel is available…well, we’ll see.

White Heat is available through BookShop.org and Amazon. (Law requires me to let you know we catch a little commission if you order through those Amazon and BookShop links. Are we good, law?)

If you’d like to receive all episodes of Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, click on the button below (it says “Subscribe Now” but you won’t actually be subscribed until you review your options and confirm):

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Howdy folks:

Welcome to Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, episode 236. This one’s available to free and paid subscribers alike. Click the player above to listen.

Today I found myself drawn to revisit a piece I wrote about a song called “The Healing Day” by Bill Fay. It’s the piece from which the title of the book Peaceful Persistence came. And because the piece mentions sheep—and in particular my father’s sheep—I dug into the family archives for some of my favorite sheep pictures.

Thank you for listening,Mike

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The song by Bill Fay:

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Mikes’ books, recordings, and related merchandise available at the SneezingCow store.