Old Crow Medicine Show!

Finally, I saw these boys live. Oh, I love them so much! The first time I heard "Wagon Wheel" was fall 2004, and I heard it once on the radio then couldn't get it out of my head for 3 months and finaly caved and bought their cd. Now, three years later, they are every bit as good as I could have hoped, although I'm disappointed Kritter the Dobro Player was absent from the show. Willie Watson, their guitar player/singer, might be the best thing ever. For this song, one of my favourites (I was obsessed all last year), I got to be right up front and center, dancing like a fool next to the stage. Yay!

California!

Popped up to Los Angeles for the weekend for long-delayed Grandmother time. I flew out at 6 AM, got there at 8:30, and we scuttled right out to the Huntington Gardens. Scuttled is perhaps the wrong word. My mother's best friend's son MP came over to help us, and we manouevered our way to, and around the beautiful gardens.



The rest of my trip was mostly low key, talking with Herself and enjoying her company while she recovered from the trip out. But what a grand time!

back in NM

There's so much to say about Spain, and so many pictures! I learned -so- much. Spanish language, Spanish culture, a load about theatremaking... it was exciting and fun and stressful and terrible and marvelous and all those things. I got to visit Salamanca and (briefly) Segovia, had a visit from a Belgian friend, and, well, put together a show with Antxon. More, actually, that he put together the show and I helped. I'm still waiting for the promo dvds to see how it turned out!



I am, however, glad to be home.

Nueva Entrada

quick note to say, I´ve made it to Spain. I´m completely exhausted, so I won´t write about the last days in Santa Fe or the misadventures (which, thankfully, were slight) of the trip, or how odd it is staying with strangers, lovely though they seem.

I´m here, all is well, I´m going to sleep!

Bandelier

Bandelier National Monument is my favourite nearby place to take visitors. It's the site of an ancient Anasazi community, with cliff-dwellings carved into the volcanic rockface. The formations themselves are beautiful, and it's one of my very favourite places. There's a cool stream and lots of Ponderosa pines nearby, so after climbing through the caves and cliff dwellings, you can walk back through the pines.
It'd on high mesa, near the San Idlefonso Pueblo, so it's high and dry and the sky is incredible. We watched a thunderstorm come in for hours. It caught us in Santa Fe, but when we drove to Albuquerque and took the tram up Sandia Mountain, we could watch it keep creeping across the state.

Fiestas! part 2

All weekend there are parades and other events for Fiestas. I took my friend Sarah, who was visiting from San Francisco, to the Hysterical Historical parade. Every year there is a Fiesta Court, featuring Don Diego De Vargas, his men, his monks, the Princesses, etc.
there's singing and dancibg and mariachis, who I really only like at this time of year... I kid you not, they thre Green Chiles to the crowd!





QUE VIVA LA FIESTA! QUE VIVA SANTA FE!

Fiestas! part 1

The burning Zozobra is the kick-off to our annual Fiestas, celebrating the founding of Santa Fe. My city pride never gets higher! Zozobra himsef is Old Man Gloom, and by burning him we burn all the gloom of the previous year.


What happened instead was that I ran ahead of my friends to try to get into the park where the burning happens, failed, and watched from the outside, meeting a woman who is usually a Fire Dancer in the event. We both felt like outsiders and watched Zozobra from the outside. We screamed and shouted as he burned and it was kind of wonderful. Afterwards, a whole bunch of old friends came to my house for ice cream, wine, and sparkling pomegranite juice.

Que Viva la Fiesta!

Scorpion??

Yes, folks, this is a "Sun Spider" or a "Wind Scorpion" and it was under my couch last night. Scared the bejeezus out of me. They bite but aren't poisonous. What the heck? We're too high up for these!

Guess it's time to go back to Europe...

and I'll still write your name in the sand...

Last Saturday I went to an amazing bluegrass festival, remarkably close to my house. There were old time bands from Virginia, Cajun bands from Louisiana, and my favourite: David Peterson and 1946, from Nashville. They played with a guy named David Talbott, who apparently usually plays banjo for Dolly Parton, and blew my banjo-lovin' mind. Hot damn.

My other favourite moment from the festival was climbing a tree that a couple of old musicians were playing under, and listening in the ahade for a bit.


In related news, I have been given a tenor banjo by my friend Adam. It's 4 string, so that's violin/mandolin tuning, and not excellent bluegrass banjo, but hey. It's a start! Here's Harold, my new bed, and my new banjo.

I'll light the fire, if you place the flowers in the vase that you bought today...

A quick tour:
This is my house.


This is my yard.


Not shown is the big wooden living room (read: rehearsal space) and my new pretty bed and all sorts of ways it is very slowly but surely becoming a home. This is the print hanging in the living room (shamefully the only art I have up yet):

And lastly, this is my beautiful guard spider Boris.


Visitors are very welcome. New Mexico is lovely and fun and wild and lonesome.

Sweet sweet Santa Fe

And again the wind rose up and the thunder struck and the rain leaned out across the canyon. It drove into the open end of the porch like shot and glanced off her bare legs. At the source of the rain the deep black bank of the sky swelled and rolled, moving slowly southward under the rock rims of the canyon walls. And in the cold and denser dark, with the sound and sight of fury all around, Angela stood transfixed in the open door and breathed deep into her lungs the purest electric scent of the air. She closed her eyes, and the clear aftervision of the rain...

Luna

Once, Luna was my kitten. My beastie.She is still ferocious like no tommorow, and will not hesitate to claw your face to wake you up, or do weird things like bite your toenails. Her name, Luna, comes from Spanish for moon, referring to the tiny white sliver above her ear, in contrast with her black fur. Or so you think. Really, it's short for Lunatic.

At this point in time, she is the size of a very, very large zucchini.
That is all.

Swarthmore, revisited

On my last day in Philadelphia, Kate came with me to revisit the campus. We got a nice locally-grown food picnic and went out to the much beloved adarondak chairs on Parrish Beach, and looked out onto the completely scorched lawn and, my favourite, the belltower. Later we went over to ML (our dorm of 3 years) and startled a number of current students who wondered what these strangers were doing, gasping at run-down things and gaping at improvements, climbing out windows and sitting on the roof... Weirdly, I ran into Julie from Mixed Company, in the room next to my freshman double. She was doing well, and had a rubber duck wristband to give me in memory of our mixed company days. It was sweet and sad and bizarre. I wouldn't want to go back, but I have so much affection for Swarthmore. It was lovely to revisit it with Kate. If you'd told me the last time we were on that roof that the next time she'd be married and I'd just be back from France, I would never have believed you. Well, maybe the france part.

Philadelphia Freedom, 1 of 2

My last week in Philly was crazily eventful, and in the chaos of moving back to Santa Fe on Sunday I can't find all the right cords and cables and things to get pictures from once Kate was back. It was a wonderful week, though. Highlights included:

A pub quiz with a belligerant drunk Irishman Quizmaster and a pretty tough team of Good Looking Bastards (US Edition) Adam and Cameron did College Bowl back in the day, so their trivia was pretty incredible. The bar was chaos and the poor quizmaster had no mic, leading him to get rowdier, drunker, angrier, and sounding more and more like Forrest Gump as the night went on. Gave me Auld Alliance nostalgia, but was a great night out.

Fruit Picking and Emu/goat petting with Brody and Megan! We picked blueberries, blackberries, peaches, and rasberries. The blueberries, though prickly, were just gorgeous. Another highlight was definitely the hayride. I agree with Megan that the hayride could have been much longer and we would have stayed very happy.

Next: Night on the town with Joanna, featuring ice cream at an old-fashioned ice-cream place! Joanna and I have been leading fascinatingly parallel lives for the last, mm, lots of years? Lately she's been into the Buy Fresh Buy Local campaign which is striking my fancy so I'll be off to the farmer's market Saturday. She also shares my taste in Snape and general other men. She understood that I would find the employees of this ice cream soda shop incredibly attractive in their bowties and suspenders. I miss her already.


I miss Philadelphia already.

Gogol Bordello!

There aren't really words for this show, except that it was a bouncy, sweaty, salty, sticky mess of fun and great great music and the best fiddler ever and all in all, one of the best live shows I've seen. I'm wearing purple, are you?

Girlyman

What a beautiful show! At the famous WXPN Live at the World Cafe, at slightly awkward tables with dozens of Swatties from various eras, all quite lovely company.
This song just stopped my heart:


The harmonies these three churn out are really something, and the gender-stuff and really good stage banter and touching lyrics... yeah, I'm a fan.
And this song, well, I need to know the story behind it. Needless to say I take it quite personally.

Sunday Morning Bird
by Ty Greenstein
(© 2006)
Little Sunday morning bird yelling at me to wake up
Screaming at the top of its blue lungs, at the top of its blue lungs
Northern New Mexico feeling like the driest of dry land
Keeps that Rio grand

I've been wondering, wondering, waiting for you
Since the day you came through
Fare thee well, every day I do

You're that stretch of spaceship houses on the mesa past the bridge
So far off the grid
You're a score of a score inside of some great opera years gone by
You are given to goodbyes

Now and now and now I'm losing
Always chasing, always choosing you
In the car the car because you always go back to what you know
Feel that tailwind blow
Thursday Sunday morning thinking nothing's gonna get me to give up
Baby no such luck

Elbow Lane

Since I last updated, I've spent a fair amount of time bumming around the Philly area, My old friend Heidi drove down from New York for two nights, so we spent the weekend adventuring. We went to my much beloved Mutter Museum, and since she's in medical school it was all the more exciting! We also saw the Liberty Bell and wandered through Old City. We also decided to visit Elbow Lane and take the obligatory elbow picture, at which point a guy in colonial garb walked by and looked at us like we were crazy. We didn't mind since he was in, you know, colonial garb.

In case I get too nostalgic...

I'm guessing this will be hilarious. And no, I wouldn't miss it for anything!

Bastille Storming and French Revolution performance Saturday, July 14
Media Borough
Presented by Hedgerow Theatre
Free!Kid-Friendly!
· · ·
Get prepared to help actors from the Hedgerow Theatre storm the Bastille in Media! Hedgerow will rally the crowds to the Armory building, where the Bastille will be stormed.

Then the activity moves down the street to the Olive Street Stage at State and Olive Streets, where the Marquis de Lafayette will give the key to the Bastille to General Washington.

Then Hedgerow will continue its performance with two songs and brief scenes from their original 1995 musical, The Scarlet Pimpernel written by Margaret Royal with music by Philadelphia composer E.A. Alexander. The show was set during the French Revolution. The songs are ''No Mercy'' and ''Liberty, Fraternity & Equality''.

This is all part of Media's Second Saturday Independence Celebration. France's Independence Day (July 14) falls on Second Saturday this year. Media will celebrate the anniversaries of French and American Independence, and the historical links between those two countries. There will be events for the whole family!

This is presented by the Media Arts Council and the Media Business Authority. The Independence Celebration sponsor is La Belle Epoque Cafe.

Dates:

* Saturday, July 14, 2007 @ 6:00 pm


edit: Oh Media. You're adorable.

Mid-Atlantic

I am sitting here in Media, PA waitching a true mid-Atlantic downpour. After spending the morning doing geneological research (I'm going to get copies of birth and marriage certificates tomorrow for the Important Passport Application) and eating far more leftover potato salad than I ever thought possible, the dark muggy sky finally opened up and it is raining with as much force and fury and heat as I've only seen here.

It has been incredible to be back. After the Heathrow debaucle, getting re-adjusted to being surrounded by friends and wedding madness was lovely if disconcerting. Especially since my first day back we bought Spackle and powertools to assemble a giant cake Nick had designed and built in san francisco.
)
We then frosted and decorated it with stolen flowers from around the hotel, then inserted some topless boys.


In some sort of summary, it was a great weekend. After the party Friday there was a picnic Saturday, an exciting rehearsal dinner Saturday night (with a literature explosion I'm -still- excited by) and of course Sunday was the rehearsal, the getting ready, and the wedding. Absolutely beautiful ceremony, and Kate and Rob are very much in love in one of the healthiest relationships I've ever seen. It was a pleasure to be around them together, and that makes me deeply happy.

When I first met Kate at the Swarthmore ice cream social, the first words I said to her were "Oh! Kate! Like the Taming of the shrew. I'll remember that." And I did. Is she tamed? Unclear, but doubtful. Same goes for Rob. What good people. And now I guess we're all growing up...

Anything to declare? Yeah. Don't go to England.

Heathrow, Terminal 4.

However, soon after the Pilot announced that they had evacuated the terminal due to suspected terrorist activity and that we were going to be on the runway for an undetermined period of time, he reassured us that the flight attendants would be coming through shortly serving hot tea. He promptly turned on some generic classical music.
Oh, England.

Come, Come whoever you are, wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. Ours is not a caravan of despair. Come even if you have broken your vows a thousand times, Come, come yet again.

-Rumi

Goran Bregovic

Amazing concert last night. I'm still a little too exhausted to write about it properly, but it involved a lot of wine, a lot of dancing (almost a mosh pit, which was a little weird given that it was in a jazz festival in Fontainebleu) and finally lots of singing and hugging and saying goodbyes entre nous.

Today I was chiropracted and had a lovely breakfast with Heloise and her boyfriend, then found Deb and Steffi to go up Notre Dame. It was beautiful, visibility was great, the gargoyles were better than I'd expected (especially the elephant and the swamp thing!) and afterwards we frolicked on the playground and looked at shoes at the soldes and it wasa thoroughly lovely day.

Tomorrow must be more practical...

catacombs!

These videos (hilariously from "World's Scariest Places") use our entrance, and make safely fenced off things like wells look really scary. They also don't tell you about the fact that big parties are down there on the weekends, and we ran into 5 or 6 groups several hours into the catacombes when we went on a Saturday night. So, even if these guys don't find the "lost man," if he could hang in for a few days he'd probably be able to find a group. Obviously going down either alone or with just one flashlight is pretty dumb, and I've always been glad to have our Fearless Leaders. Anyway, these videos give me a warm and fuzzy feeling, and I'm really going to miss our underground adventuring.

Little girl, little girl, where'd you sleep last night?

Last night Deb and I went to an extraordinary bluegrass concert. It was much needed after waking up in a pile of white styrofoam balls (it was as if my commande exploded) and after a lovely goodbye lunch with Avye. These goodbyes, even though I know they're not permanant, are wearing and are leaving me raw. This class has been the most extraordinary group, and to watch my friends get scattered to the ends of the earth is just hard.

This meant that Deb and I were particularly open to sitting back and hearing 4 hours of excellent bluegrass with a little blues scattered in. Check out les Ol' Timey Messengers if you ever get the chance. Just a great show. A hilariously serious clogger stationed herself next to us, and they had guest artists like one woman who sang like a 1920s record, and a Georgia bluesman named Danny Mudcat. Afterwards we chatted with the musicians (turned out we sort of knew two of them already) and met a few other friends of friends in the crowd. I had that dreadful and wonderful moment of realizing I really am a part of the Expat community here, and I'm going to miss it like crazy.

After said concert (and a lovely metro ride with the percussionist) Deb and I went round to say goodbye to Emil, and played music until 5 AM. I learned spoons! We got to play a lot of the songs we'd written together a last time, and that was great too. Thus ended the "Weekend After."

and in the end...

My command went well. avye, Danny, and Deb were extraordinary, and it was seamless and mysterious, even if it was too short. The commands I was participating in were also very successful and beautiful (ParticularlyAvye's, Whitney's, Heloise's and Deb's) and now it's all over. Tearful goodbye's with the profs and the first years, purchasing photos and getting our certificates were all trumped by gleeful dancing in the Grand Salle for the last time. What a beautiful space, and what a glorious two years.

Whisky

Last week I saw this fellow (AJ Rocha) in a really excellent concert with Anais Mitchell and this song hasn't left my head since. His songwriting is really incredible.


They say that love is just a chemical reaction
I say that makes this all too hard to explain
Chemicals for me have been my only safe bastion
They maketh me numb whene'er they run through my veins

When you get featherdusted
you're dirty and desperate
Not desperate, mind you, for a woman's sweet touch
Just desperate to feel like you belong to something
That something will own you when you want it too much


It's just a great song style, simple and poetic and talking about a simple kind of heartbreak and a simple kind of fix. It all makes me ready to rediscover the poetry I've shied away from in the "country" music I grew up surrounded by. And to drink the unopened bottle of whisky in my cupboard.

Cold poetry

Fire and Ice
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
-Robert Frost



The Cold River

by Michael Gullickson
Source: Bridges (2002) p.18

Whatever two people do
as moving closer they
plunge into icy waters
trying to learn hypothermia
and the two distinct stages
of death which are 1) almost and
2) quite which are oddly enough
the two stages of life
and being
that two people
have enough blood to transfuse each other
while the winter river pushes them on
almost drowning
but not quite
and the difference is
buddy - breathing
sharing enough air for one
making it suffice for two
which is the miracle of loaves and fishes
when a hillside full of people can be fed
from lunch- for -one
and Christ anyway told me
it was ok to love anyone
even strangers, except stronger
as he ran my mind on fast-forward
showing me what was love and what was not
as the cold river moved on
as the sky surged and the wind bellowed
a limb to hang on to and each other
and at last nothing more
than one voice from two
loudly against the storm.


Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening by Robert Frost
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.


I'm still struggling with text in my piece. And all this winter is heavy business, and lonesome frightened nights are too relevent and I'm loving every minute, but where is the line I'm looking for?

on a different note...

Man I've got a long way to go...