Stormin' Bob Swanson

Category: Blog Posts

StarMan Bob — In a reflective mood

telescope

Today I completed my 51st trip around the Sun. Even if I manage to stay healthy, I only have a couple of decades left, which, on an astronomical time-scale (make sure to check out my YouTube playlist of astronomy-themed songs), is vanishingly small. But I’m fine with that — I’m one extremely lucky dude. I […]

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Non-essential existential blues

Henry and I finally free from COVID-quarantine

There’s nothing like a breakthrough case of COVID, a week of isolation, and couple of weeks of quarantine to give this philosophy major/songwriter plenty of grist for the mental mill. I have to give a lot of credit where it is due — the scientists who developed the vaccine, and the nurse practitioner who prescribed […]

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Battlin’ Bob takes on COVID-19

I’ve always been a little (or a lot, depending on who you ask) behind the times. I’ve waited until 2021 to start a blog, I’ve never posted a photo of my food to social media, and it’s taken me until August 2021 to contract COVID-19, which has been plaguing our nation and the world since […]

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I pick, therefore I grin

picking and grinning tshirt

I’ve been doing a lot of picking this summer. Some of my picking will come to an end in a week or so, some more picking will end at the end of September, but I hope that some of my other picking goes on for years and years. Let me explain . . . When […]

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I Wanna See a Flying Saucer

SOCSD space camp

Because I teach astronomy (in fact, I’m currently teaching an asynchronous online summer section of “Descriptive Astronomy”), I am sometimes asked my opinion about UFOs. Well, yesterday the government released its preliminary assessment about UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena). If anything should be able to shed some light, it is a government report, right? While you […]

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Happy Father’s Day

Father's Day gifts 2021

If you’re like me (and I know I am), you take a lot of pride in being a father. And if you are lucky enough to have a great family like mine, being a father is super easy. The secret ingredient — thyme time. I’m lucky enough to be able to spend a lot of […]

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Stick with it

Nate drummer

This week my family (sans my eldest son — he’ll be at camp) and I will be on the road again — playing two shows (Tupelo and Fulton) on Thursday. If you come to a live show, you’ll see that my family members are really important to a successful program — they help haul in […]

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Stormin’ Bob summer shows are starting up

In my last post, I mentioned my first virtual shows of the year (Joyner Elementary in Tupelo, MS). This past Friday, I played my first live show in a looooooong time. It was my pleasure to be part of history — my boys (at least the two older boys — DJ & Nate) and I […]

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Cinco de Mayo

In celebration of the holiday, my dad used to like to go to the grocery store, line up five jars of mayonnaise, take a picture, print it out in a card and send it along to me. My dad and I have no Mexican heritage (that I know of), just a shared love of puns. […]

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He’s safe!

baseball uniform

The infield dirt and baseline chalk have washed out, and his powder-blue uniform looks good as new . . . . It’s taken me a couple of days to process the events of Tuesday evening so that I could write about them with less emotion and more objectivity. Not being about songwriting or my science […]

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