warmth

When I fell through the looking glass about two years ago and found a home in the magical community loosely arranged around the contra dance scene in western Massachusetts/southern Vermont, one of the things that delighted me most was seeing the ways in which community members really take care of each other in ways both practical and creative. There are many people here with various skills who actually truly enjoy sharing them with friends and neighbors, often spontaneously, sometimes even secretively.

Part of me wants to start down a long winding philosophical road here that would take us through a comparison of the contra dance community and church/religious communities, which would necessitate mentioning the theory I came up with at my potluck Sunday evening that religion, sports, and (to a certain extent) dancing are similar in the way that they bond partners and create strong relationships. But I won't go there (at least not now).

Instead, I'll mention my potluck to point out that, though it wasn't incredibly well-attended, I really enjoyed it once I reminded myself that greater quantity (of people) does not equal greater quality (of interaction) and started seeing it as the unique opportunity it was to sit around a table with a group of people that would otherwise never all be eating dinner together, even though we all see each other just about every weekend on the dance floor. For example, for about the first hour and a half, my guests were:

- a slightly older gentleman who owns a stringed instruments shop in Amherst, MA
- a 23-year-old friend whose major interests include dancing, cars, and the gorgeous art he creates
- a 40(ish?)-year-old carpenter who is my favorite waltz partner north of the Mason-Dixon line (beautifully nicknamed by the fabulous Froggoddess as "the Space Cowboy").

It was odd, and it was lovely. Because of the unique, highly-social-but-not-necessarily-conversational nature of contra dancing (particularly between people of the same gender roles, since you mostly have the chance to talk with your partner, who is usually of the opposite gender) (but doesn't have to be!), I don't know how often, if ever, those three men have actually had a conversation together. I think they learned a lot about each other.

And because every single person in this community (and, you know what? everywhere) has such knowledge and gifts to share, within the first hour of the get-together I'd learned from them about 1) the inner workings of both the old upright piano and the pellet stove that live in our house, and how we could get both to work (though it occurs to me that if we don't get either to work, we could always burn the piano for some desperately-needed warmth in the house), 2) how to repair a broken clutch on a stick-shift car, and 3) that it's the fault of a crooked hinge that my front door sticks shut so badly that you have to body-slam it to open it.

And then when I came home from work yesterday and turned the door knob, preparing for the right-hip-jab that's given me a permanent bruise, the door just swung right open. It was like magic. Or like a magical carpenter had alighted at my door and fixed the hinge.

So now I'm going to buy the Space Cowboy a beer one of these days, and throw another potluck sometime soon to see what else my community is willing to teach me, and hope that I'm successully reciprocating in some small way. I love living here.

shining

What do you know, I walked out to my car today and the whole thing was covered in frost. The fields I drove past on my way to work were shining in the early sun. Almost as if it's autumn or something.

It just occurred to me to make some connection between the Red Sox winning the World Series last night (WOOHOO!) and things (ahem) freezing over... but how could anyone paying attention to the last seven baseball games think The Curse is anything but long gone?

Besides the lack of sleep I got last night (though that wasn't bad either, as it was due to a late-lasting potluck and staying up with friends long past my bedtime), this is a good way to start the week.

so late it's early

Seeing as how it's 4:00am, it's totally against my better judgment that I'm online right now at all, much less that I'm about to blather about the most exciting thing in my life right now, not to mention the danger of this post going very stream-of-consciousness and really just ceasing to make any sense.

I mentioned it in my last post, so here you go, officially: I'm in a newly-created vocal trio, in which I basically get to hang out and sing with two of the most talented musicians and wonderful guys I know. Now and then I feel like they're going to wake up one morning and realize that there are a million more talented people out there that they could choose to sing with, but I'm certainly not going to point it out. Until then, we are having a lot of fun finding and arranging tunes we want to sing - mostly traditional and modern folk, with what I'd like to call a "funky twist," and being silly and creative every Tuesday night. We have a name and all, but I kind of want us to have a website we can unveil before I go posting it, so haha I'm not telling you what it is.

Tonight we recorded a demo album to send to concert and festival organizers so that they'll want to hire us to sing in front of crowds of people. Our 9pm-1am recording session ran overtime, as recording sessions are apparently wont to do, and I just got home around 3:45. Now I am trying to decide if I want to try to catch about 4 hours of sleep, probably in the jeans and t-shirt I'm wearing now, before getting up and going to work, or if I want to just keep distracting myself into wakefulness until it's light out, convince myself that I'm awake, and go ahead with the day. Either way, tomorrow (oops, that's actually today) will be interesting.

But the last six hours have been some of the most educational (and FUN) I've ever had. Recording in a studio is a whole other thing from... well, anything I've ever done. I'm so grateful to have had this first recording experience with two good friends who have been there before and actually know what they're doing, as opposed to stumbling along for the ride. The detail in which one can get caught up, the skills and tricks the sound engineer (and ours was awesome) applies when mixing a track, the time and concentration it takes to record just three songs... and, more than anything, the insight recording gives you into the way your voices sound and blend and carry... it's incredible.

I know I use those words a lot: incredible, amazing, awesome... The thing is, they apply to so many things in my life. I don't know how I got this lucky, and I don't know when my shit's gonna come due, but I sure am having fun these days.

That didn't go too terribly off-topic, did it? I could go back and read it, but that seems like too much work right now. I'd rather figure out why this lovely new demo CD doesn't want to play on my computer, and then... well, wander to bed, or just around the house for a while until daylight.

forget disneyworld

On Thursday night last week (almost a week ago? already!?) I jumped out of work at the earliest possible moment (4:00pm) to hit the road and meet my friends in western Mass. so that we could begin our semi-annual drive-dance-camp-swim-dance-sing-revel-dance-camp-dance-drive marathon, also known as the Lake Eden Arts Festival, also known as LEAF.



Thank goodness this festival is twice a year, because frankly if I had to wait another twelve months - instead of seven - for the next one, I would start sniffling and need a very big hug RIGHT NOW.

LEAF is my happiest place. Honestly? If I believed in a heaven, that's what it would look like. A sweet camp around a lake tucked into the southern Appalachians, where the music of the world is played and celebrated by some of the most talented musicians there are, and song circles and jams just spontaneously start up in the sunshine, and amazing artists and craftspeople display their talents, and there's dancing all day and late into the night. I would be perfectly happy spending eternity there, though I doubt I'm a good enough person to deserve it, seeing as how getting to be there for a few days twice a year feels almost too lucky. Really.

It's a wonderfully family-oriented festival, both in the traditional sense that it's great for families with kids (who are there in droves, swimming and flying down the zipline and trying out the trapeze and being creative and silly) and it's also a place that reunites and creates families. I usually drive with the same three people (who are leaving me after this year, the devils! AS IF college graduation and marriage and grad school are enough reasons to move down South, jeez) and I always see The Cousin at LEAF. We camp with our LEAF family, which is generally made up of The Cousin and me and two couples who are The Cousin's best friends from her Atlanta days and are now close friends of mine as well. We set up our tents within a few feet of one another and share our snacks and gossip and catch up on life since last LEAF. This one was the first since Spring LEAF '06 that we've all been there, and even though we all kept too busy to see each other much, it felt homey just knowing they were around.

I danced less and saw fewer performances this year than in the past, mostly because I spent more time trying to catch up with my ever-expanding group of LEAF friends and relaxing in the sunshine.

It was also because I spent a great deal of time perusing the CDs for sale, which seems like a dumb trade-off for live music and dancing except that the man who runs the CD booth is amazing and ridiculously knowledgable about music, and I find things there that I've never imagined existed. This time I was really looking for some new material that I could bring home to my group, which I don't think I've mentioned here and won't go in to right now except to say I'm in a band! We're good! I am so incredibly thrilled and excited about this! so I totally justified spending two straight hours going through every CD they had. Plus it probably scored me a volunteer position in the CD booth at future festivals, which is not a bad thing. And last but not least, I ended up buying five new CDs of which I love every minute, including a collection of Cajun and Creole drinking songs, because who doesn't need a collection of Cajun and Creole drinking songs?

But I did see Michael Franti, who is so beautiful and inspiring. I saw David Holt and the Pine Leaf Boys (Cajun music! Cajun dancing! I'm in love) and, most incredibly, Doc Watson. The Doc Watson. There's nothing quite like seeing a living legend (who - let's face it - may not be living so much longer) right there in person. [Edit: And I saw the Boulder Acoustic Society, who totally rock (thanks for the reminder, Dan)] And I danced with some of my favorite dance partners, who proved to me once again that people just know how to have more fun (at least on the dance floor) south of the Mason-Dixon line. No offense, Pioneer Valley. But come to LEAF and you'll see.

I also met a boy. A sweet and snuggly boy who is an outdoor educator and group facilitator and world traveler. Who lives, of course, in North Carolina, because God forbid I hit it off with anyone single and available within 800 miles of where I live.

The morals of this long, long story are: I love LEAF, I love my LEAF road trip buddies and my LEAF camping family, I can't wait for spring, and you should come too. Because for those five or six days a year, the world is happiness and love and music. Seriously, what were you planning on doing that's better than that?

proving that anything is possible

Dick Cheney and Barack Obama are related.

No, really.

i love baseball because...

...the who are going to the what?!?

How in the world did that happen?

There are several interesting perspectives floating around out there, but at the end of the day the consensus is still: How in the world did that happen?

And that's why we love baseball.

listen up

My brother has something really important to tell you.

It could save the life and wellbeing of someone you love. Please go read it.

ask for the stories, lest they go untold

I was going to tell you about the magic that is my little Vermont town as manifested this evening in the monthly "Gallery Walk" which highlights the amazing wealth and diversity of art and artists and general community-ness around here.

I was going to tell you about it being my first Gallery Walk since I moved here six months ago, how I've been meaning to go every month but something has always come up, until I finally made it out on this beautiful, freakishly warm evening and walked all over downtown with my friend Wendy and we fought the incredible masses of people - really, it was like everyone in town was out tonight - who were out and about enjoying downtown and the evening and the clowns in the square and the battle of the teenage bands in the River Garden (really).

And how we stopped into the antique store for a while to watch the "fashion show" being hosted by Alfred, our local flamboyant transvestite (though it's somewhat more noteworthy in these parts that he's Black than that he's a transvestite), and then spent a while in one of the local brewpubs running into a thousand people we (well, Wendy) knew and watching the beginning of the Sox game, and then wandered down the street to watch Wendy's boyfriend play the spoons in accompaniment to an excellent (and, might I add, very cute) banjo player and a guy on a washtub bass. (Update: and the guy who came over and - I kid you not - breakdanced in front of them for a few minutes, ending with a scary/awesome backflip.) This is a town where people regularly busk on the sidewalks, and during Gallery Walk you can't go 20 feet without seeing another musician. And where drivers tend to wave apologetically as they slowly make their way through the people spilling off the sidewalk around the musicians, as if to say "oh silly me, driving my car here in the street where you wanted to be standing, sorry about that."

But then I made my way back out here to the woods, where I'm retreating (read: housesitting) for the next week, and I went out to shut the chicken coop door and looked up into a thousand stars and listened to the brook running alongside the house and saw a couple of meteors, because this place is just regularly magical. And I came back in and checked my email, where my mom had responded to my recent email about my new attraction to fiddling with the memory that "Grandpa (my Dad) use to come out on our screened in front porch when I was a kid and it was time for the neighborhood kids to stop playing hide and seek, and he would "fiddle" for us so that the other parents, hearing the music, would let us stay out a little after dark. He'd play things like variations of Pop goes the Weasel and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star."

And suddenly the many excitements of this evening faded a little, and the real highlight of my day became that story, and seeing in my mind's eye my mother as a little kid running around her neighborhood in Memphis, TN just like my brother and I used to do in Normal, IL on warm evenings a lot like this evening. And remembering my grandpa, whose life overlapped with mine only just long enough that I vaguely remember him, but whose violin-playing is, along with his reading me Berenstein Bears books, what I remember best.

And knowing that I could pick up my violin tonight (which is not his violin - that's in my brother's possession - but is actually my grandmother's from the other side of the family) and go sit on the porch and play to the twinkling stars. This "neighborhood" has more chickens and raccoons and deer than children playing hide and seek, and I already gave myself permission to stay out after dark, but I'll play for the beautiful evening and for the pause between running-around and safe-in-bed. I'll play to remember that this music is about something greater than myself. Because I remember enough about my grandpa to believe that would make him really happy.

Thanks, Mom.

comforting thoughts from our nation's security professionals

It's so nice to know that our government has everything under control.

a contest with a really awesome prize that i'm not revealing because i don't yet know what it is. but it will be really awesome.

Imagine, just hypothetically, a singing trio - two men and one woman. They sing traditional folky stuff, some old-time songs, some gospel, some sad ballads and some cheery tunes. A little guitar here, a bit o' fiddle there, a touch of foot percussion now and then.

Now, what would be the perfect band name for this group?

Just hypothetically speaking, of course.

random notes on food and sustainability

1) The Monterey (CA) Aquarium has a really great area of their website full of information about oceans and conservation, including this handy downloadable pocket guide to seafood. Ever stand at a restaurant or grocery store wishing you could remeber which kinds of seafood are safe and sustainable? Now you can.

2) I've been eating carrots from my CSA farm all summer, and this afternoon I ate a baby carrot offered from a big bag a coworker bought at the supermarket. I don't think I can ever eat
supermarket/factory farm carrots again. If they're organic... maybe. I seriously can't even describe the taste difference. All I can think of is that it's like eating a slice of fresh, home-baked whole wheat bread and then eating sawdust.

3) For the record, I've never actually eaten sawdust.