Harvest of Hope, Saint Augustine, Days 3

I know you're on pins and needles, having waited, both of you, so patiently for my review of day three of the Harvest of Hope festival. I arrived around 1:30, since there were few acts I'd wanted to see in the morning. I only have two ears, and I'd almost used up both of them the night before, so a quiet morning was a good way to prepare for the day and night ahead.

Canada's Tokyo Police Club was first up for me. They'd rescheduled their Friday performance due to a "minor health issue" according to their website, and I was grateful for whatever effluvium delayed them because they provided probably my most pleasant surprise of the festival, with their upbeat sound and clever lyrics. Maybe it's the English major in me, but when they sang "Give us your vote" in "Your English is Good," I was ready to. I don't know, maybe think of kicking them through the goalposts of The Decemberists on one side and Los Campesinos! on the other. Oh, Canada, indeed.

Israel's Monotonix was next up on stage one, or, rather, in front of stage one, since they're renowned for performing in the crowd, for being "chaotic." I didn't last long, though. The music was unremarkable, and watching a hairy Levi Elvis wipe his naked ass crack with the mic filled me with ennui. Junior varsity G. G. Allin schtick on a beautiful spring day was as wrong as the hype. Nevertheless, the tight donut of cultish fans morphing around the trio seemed to be enthused, malleable to every one of Levi's commands. I just hope, for the sake of the acts to follow, LE brought his own mic.

So I wandered a bit. Stage two mostly featured rap on Sunday, and I went to check out Inspectah Deck, but he was late and some guy was stalling with his own soul, which wasn't bad, but the crowd was restless. Monotonix thankfully gave way to Holy Fuck, an electro band that interestingly features live precise bass and drums to nail down all the throbbing computer riffs. The musicians around (including aformentioned fellow Canadians TPC) were impressed, but the music seemed suited to more chemical moods than my state at the time.

I wandered back to stage two briefly. Inspectah Deck had finally shown and was rapping while GZA watched and helped. It was hilarious to see the large crowd of all white suburban indie kids from St. A and Gainsville raise their skinny fists like antennas to Compton when ID said, "This one goes out to all my homies in the 'hood," as though he meant them. ID was congenial and I enjoyed watching, listening, but I needed to head to stage three, where my real homies, Ninja Gun, were going to play. I passed through the nearly non-existent crowd for Tiger City, pausing to hear what they're like. It seemed their crowd hadn't made it out from the 80's to hear their legwarmedover Duran Duran/"Mr. Roboto"-era Styx tunecraft.

Tim Version, another of Gainsville's gruff punk mainstays at HOH, was up on Stage three, likable guys with a sense of fun. Gainesville punk is essentially good, Irish-inspired drinking music, and these guys can fuel a good beer binge. I wandered from the stage to say hello to Jessie and Marie, who were "manning" the merch table with Coody and Thad (when they weren't checking in on TV) before the show. (Thanks for the T-shirt, Coody.)

In SAT analogy parlance, Gainesville style, Tim Version is to Gaslight Anthem as Ninja Gun is to:

a. Fake Problems (ok, they're from Naples. You got me, but who said the SAT was fair?)
b. Against Me!
c. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
d. Grabass Charlestons

The answer is c. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

Of course, I have to qualify this some. Ninja Gun is from Valdosta, not Gainesville (even though they're bigger in Gainesville), and, while Tom Petty might be more their entree than any of the Gainesville bands I've heard, their sides would have to be the Kinks and T. Rex. Maybe some Buzzcocks or early Beatles for dessert. That is, their blend of country punk is sweet tea cool, and their songs are wryly observant and well-written. "Eight Miles Out" showed off their angular guitar-drenched driving rock capabilities, while "Darwin was a Baptist" revealed their strong sense of regional irony in its beautifully satiric chorus: "Can I get a little more church in my state?/" (and this is an enjambment to make an old poet like me jealous), "give me one more reason to hate/ everything around me/baby it surrounds me" John Coody is a bona fide, Johnny Cash lib'ral, and it's a pleasure to listen to him weave his words through classic rock and country territories, sounding both familiar and brand new at the same time. They're going on national tour starting this month. Look for them.

Grabass Charlestons and Whiskey & Co. were up next on three. Grabass is a longtime, popular Gainesville punk outfit, a little slower, grungier than most Gainesville bands, and they're good live. Whisky played a fine drunken country sprawl of a set, a nice follow-up to Ninja Gun. "Happy Hour" could be a bar anthem if it wasn't so short. Set it on loop and watch out for the floor, honey.

I stepped over to one to check out Ra Ra Riot for a couple of songs. They weave violin and cello nicely into their new-wave inspired sound. Fortunately, they refract the more interesting side of the 80's with updated, sophisticated, multi-layered pop and clear vocals. If you typically like who NPR recommends, check them out.

Heading into the heart of the evening, stage one featured Jacksonville's Pitchfork-darlings-then-rejects The Black Kids (they sold out SO FAST). They were more enjoyable than I expected, having downloaded their initial ep and, sure, it's clear they requested "Love Cats" and "Let's Dance" often on 80's dance night and they probably have tapes of Talk Talk and Culture Club somewhere in the back seat. "I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance with You" is genuinely fun, but the next new thing? Pushing that pile of expectation on top of them could have ruined them. They're virtue, after all, was their uncritical, charming enthusiasm, and I'm pleased to say that, live, their enthusiasm still shows through as they project a nerdish affability.

But I left The Black Kids to check out KRS-One, and he was preaching the virtues of old school (90's, not 70's, the real old school) hip hop, arguing that it's not dead, showing off quick rhymes over anything. Dixie said she admired him for his experimentation, bringing any musical genre into rap, and when he freestyled over "In the Mood," I was convinced.

So when she and Camille said to check out Paul Baribeau over at stage four, I tagged along. I'd never heard of him and I knew what Gaslight Anthem was gonna sound like. PB put out some fine, amusing, observant acoustic guitar, coffeehouse music perfect for thirty-somethings who like a little wisdom and experience along with their sound. Paul would have fit nicely in Saturday's Vanderslice/Darnielson mix with his simple voice and humorous banter between songs. "Think of all the things that are wrong with your life and fix them." He makes it sound easy and fun.

We lingered for acoustic punk-folk activists Ghost Mice, and enjoyed their energy, which flowed nicely after Paul B., but I'd had enough enthusiastic acoustic and headed after a few songs back to stage one, where New Jersey's Gaslight Anthem was finishing their crunching mainstream blue-collar punk set. They've played in Valdosta and they're nice guys.

I wandered over to three briefly to check out the Young Livers, yet more Gainesville punk, maybe angrier, but I needed something slower, so I went back to one and waited for The National, the last act of the evening, while the Ninja Gun crew were headed to three to support Fake Problems, whom I'd seen in VD.

Brooklyn's The National were professional, serious, passionate, which was why I wanted to see them live. The crowd knew the songs, reflecting aging worldliness underlined by music that can ring melodic fatigue or erupt into a frontal guitar assault. They played exactly an hour, and, while it's easy to put them in the Springsteen revival pigeonhole along with The Hold Steady, these songs fit me better, since I've enjoyed that slowdive baritone style via Tindersticks and Arab Strap for some time. I nominate "All the Wine" to the top ten wino list just for its chorus ("All the wine is all for me"), and "Fake Empire" still stirs with its reflections about what we've become, those optimistic horns prophetic at the end, I hope. Unfortunately, they had to cut their set short due to the 11 PM curfew, and so "Abel" didn't make it into the warm spring air that night. I left with the image of Matt Beringer banging together two white wine bottles (which he'd dutifully emptied during the course of the set) along with the beat to one of the songs, but I don't remember which. "All the Wine?" "Squalor Victoria?" "Mr. November?" "Apartment Story?" I think it was "Apartment Story." It punctuated nicely, sounding about to shatter. I left feeling "tired and wired," somber and wanting wine myself, but red, not that white Matt was drinking.

I ran off the festival Monday at Anastasia state park, the waves my music, the white beach my stage.

Harvest of Hope, Saint Augustine, Days 1 (sort of) and 2

Large music festivals are always crucibles of noise and odors, and clearly the allure of wonderful noise makes us tolerate the portapotties and the unshowered aromas of musical sophisticates pushing against you toward the stage. Year one of the three-day, four stage Harvest of Hope Festival (schedule), a benefit for migrant workers, was no different. The Saint John's County fairground location was reasonably accessible and spacious, and it was a quick drive from lovely Saint Augustine (and my hotel room; I like showers).

While I had to miss Friday's shows and headliner Girl Talk (not well-received by those I talked to), I did catch two of the acts, Cheap Girls and Failure's Union, the Wednesday before the festival at a local shed show. Excellent bands both, and friends of Ninja Gun, so we were lucky to have them until the cops showed up and shut us down. Michigan's Cheap Girls played a set pleasurably ensconced between 80's Minneapolis punk and 90's Ohio indie, while Buffalo's Failures' Union crunched through a healthy set of blue collar punk. FU's Jason also plays bass in Lemuria, a terrific band my Pandora station introduced me to.

I arrived Saturday, early afternoon, in time to catch Her Space Holiday's last two songs, and then I headed to stage three to hear Alabama blues vet Willie Green sing and blow harp for a small but enthusiastic tribe. Excellent grounding for what was to follow, though he deserved more than the twenty minutes they allotted him. I rambled over to stage four to catch some of Gainesville's excellent Towers of Hanoi (thanks for starting with fave "Empty Chapels" ) before checking in on Pitchfork darlings Deerhunter. They were pleasant enough--sort of Ian McCullough fronting Saucer-Full-of-Secrets-era Pink Floyd pleasant--but it was 2:00 pm, brightly sunny, and there weren't any chemical enhancements save beer around to chill the crowd into the kind of nodding acquiescence toward ecstasy the music suggests.

Midafternoon's S1 acts didn't appeal, so I headed back to S4 and its regional punk flavor for Saturday. Moutbreathers were loud and raucous, and Hometeam featured sloppily affable beer-fueled punk, so, drunk with that noise, I headed over to catch some of Strike Anywhere and touch base with many of the Valdostans who attended, but left quickly to S2 to catch the end of Alabama's Wild Sweet Orange's set (definitely worth listening more into) in anticipation of John Vanderslice and Mountain Goat's John Darnielle's back to back sets. Vanderslice made it feel like he was home, and he was close, playing his well-crafted and intelligently penned unplugged pop. I checked in on Bouncing Souls between the sets, and they pleased their crowd, but I left quickly to hear Darnielle, accompanied at times by Vanderslice, play his Mountain Goats nerd-chic witty or wry song narratives concluding with "The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton," giving me the chance to yell out "Hail Satan" and smile big.

Among the most anticipated Saturday performers, Bad Brains took over stage one and proceeded to lecture the crowd into irritation. I mean, just play. You don't have to explain to those who don't get that you're covering all of your genre-bending oeuvre (hardcore, reggae, and metal). Who cares if they get it? Nobody goes to music festivals for the lectures.

I left to go hear Nebraska's Tilly and the Wall, at Dixie and Camille's suggestion, and I wasn't sure at first. I have what I hope is a healthy skepticism about the new wave revival; I think most of the groups are listening to the wrong bands, the sappy, superficial leg-warmer synth-pop of the 80's played to excess at so many 80's dance parties. Tilly also features, to my knowledge, pop's only tap-dancer as a key percussion component. She's cute and keeps the beat, but she made me feel a little like I was at a dance recital. Still, the band managed to win me over. I think it was their cover of Yaz' "Only You" that finally won me over, and "Pot, Kettle, Black" has a nice, hard, anthemic, nasty adolescent edge.

I caught some of Gainesville's Against Me!, much lauded and big supporters of the HOH cause, on the main stage. It's the popular punk style these days, and they're enjoyable enough, but after a few songs I gravitated back to S2 to catch Lucero's driving set. The music is honest and you feel it in the belly and the heart: "I kissed the bottle when I shoulda been kissin' you." Pedal steel slide and Ben Nichols worn out voice found that front-porch moonshiney place that hadn't been touched all day, and the crowd love it. I headed back to stage one for the last act, Propaghandi, but it was the wrong energy after Lucero, so I took that with me out to the car and the short drive back to St. A. and a night's sleep before Sunday's musical feast.

Listen Up

The Kids are Alright: House Shows, Georgia Style

Somebody posts a bulletin on Myspace, flyers the walls at school, texts a few people, and we show up. Jason and Eric's. Ria's House of Sin (bring some paint for the walls). Jackson's shed in our many warm months. Or Bobby and Tina's (especially if she's baking cakes). Bonfire and trees and Spanish moss, kids on porches, lots of vinyl against the wall. Drums and guitars. Music in South Georgia happens in homes, because the bars want cover bands so drunk sorority girls and jocks can sing and swill along. It's not that we don't like covers at the house shows--a good song or two in a set is expected. But there are few places for original bands to play in this town, which surprisingly boasts much excellent original music. In this blog, I will summarize the last few weeks here, why I stay.

Last Friday Madeline came into town on her way to Gainesville and she played a solo set at Jason and Eric's. John G. opened and sang his childlike, offbeat songs and strummed pleasurably as the crowd grew inside and on the porch. One might say that he's our version of Daniel Johnston, but John is finishing an MA degree in Biology, so whatever madness compels him comes most likely from a bottle. (Later he was excused after excess overcame him and he accidentally put Bo's head through a window, but usually there's no drama, and even so, all is quickly forgiven).

Madeline Adams of Madeline was lovely and her voice bell perfect as she belted out songs of love, loss, grief, and the classic conflict between desire and faith ("the bible or the bottle" indeed). Her new album, White Flag, set for release this month, boasts some of her best songwriting to date. And as listeners to the album will discover, surrender isn't necessarily a bad thing. Even in the face of death and despair and lost love, desire remains her touchstone. So surrender. Maybe it was because it was a house show, but she looked up into the audience while she sang, asked for suggestions, seemed, well, at home, hanging out with friends. They knew all her songs and she played until she ran out of ones she remembered the words to.

Trailer of Tears (affectionally known as TOTs) played next. TOTs is a side project of local music godfathers Ninja Gun's drummer Jeffrey Haineault, and blends doo-wop, psychedelic rock, glam, and punk with exciting results. He and NG's talented frontman Jonathan Coody recorded the Myspace tracks at the infamous trailer, though now Jeffrey has surrounded himself with a live band of local talents. Travis of Gainesville veterans Towers of Hanoi remarked at their Gainesville debut last week that Jeffrey seems to be in one of those amazing creative zones. He doesn't know what he can't do yet, and let's hope he never finds out. Travis said Pavement and I said Roy Orbison and we both said yes. And we could have said Brian Ferry and Jerry Lee Lewis and T. Rex and Chuck Berry and Replacements and we would have said yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. The Myspace songs are just the tip of what has been coming down from their DiCaprio-killing iceberg, given the new songs they've added to their oeuvre that aren't even recorded yet. When they play house shows, it's loud and fun and the crowd is effervescent with energy (and PBR). Taylor Patterson keeps a steady beat on drums along with Bobby on bass, while Jason adds deft lead to Jeffrey's punked up doo-wop/glam croons.

No More Analog closed out this night, Taylor back on drums along with the Captain on bass and vocals and Jackson on lead and vocals, and this fine trio played a strong set of pumped up punk and power pop. NMA isn't afraid to raunch it up, and so if songs about pregnant sex ("No Vacancy") and hermaphrodites ("Pseudosexual") offend, well, you wouldn't have been invited in the first place. But their sound blends bass forward fist pumping punk with classic 80's and 90's guitar pop sensibilities (think Replacements, Cracker, Soul Asylum, Pixies) with an irreverence only a place this deep in the south could produce. They're newest song, "Fresh Romance," sounded especially fine, as its chorus screams, "Tonight."

Just a week before that, pretty much the same lineup of locals showed up at Jason and Erik's in support of Greenland is Melting, a "fauxlk" band featuring banjo, an old suitcase fitted with a bass drum pedal, mandolin, the occasional guitar, and lots of vocal enthusiasm. It's hard not to get caught up in their downhome upbeat songs laced with irony and humor. They're fun and coming back here next month for more and I'll be there.

P.A.W. (Pinnacle of American Weaponry) played their two songs that night. P.A.W. is a new project featuring Nick Riggle of VD veterans Second to Edison along with Jake and Jeffrey from Ninja Gun and Jason Storer of TOTs. Still too new to characterize, so far I've heard driving guitar-driven rock and I'm looking forward to more from them.

And a week before that, Ria opened her House of Sin to a ten-band show featuring most of the local bands above, along with False Arrest and Mandala.

False Arrest is a phenomonal band of four young men intent on resurrecting 80's hardcore, if only to pull its brain out by the stem and smash it to the floor. I missed them at the House of Sin show, because I was hosting David St. John's poetry reading, but they play all out. Jimi is a gymnastic frontman screaming out vocals and slamming his slim half-naked form all over the floor ("I don't even know what's going on in my own head"). Teddi and Bo handle guitar and bass, and Anthony machine guns on drums.

I walked into the show while Mandala was playing their psychedelic instrumental space jams. Some of their extended guitar riffs remind me of Hum or Quickspace, dense and throbbing and complex, at times majestic in their sound scape. I love "Readheads, Huh," which I can hear Dave, bass and guitar, saying in poetry class quizzically and without irony. They've threatened to write lyrics, but it's the guitar interplay and complex rhythms that make this more than acid jams.

Meanwhile, people are coming and going, painting on the walls, a sudden Francis Baconesque figure at the back of the house, pixies and cartoon balloons, the obligatory naked manikin hung from the ceiling. Or vinyl Joe Jackson spinning while folks are still arriving, or the hot shed full noise and mirth when it's warm. Tina will be usually be dancing and everyone is welcome, even the police officers if they happen show up to shut us down, and they occasionally do, but not before a lot of good music has fed our local starving ears. Ya'll come over for the next one.

Los Campesinos! and Titus Andronicus, Jan. 19, Jack Rabbits

Multiply literate existential anarchists Titus Andronicus, from New Jersey, could be the bar band in a Thomas Pynchon novel. At Jack Rabbits in Jacksonville, Patrick Stickles perched above the rest of the band, impassioned channeler of the songs, more medium than singer. It's the only way I can explain his remarkable range of vocal influences, from Lou Reed to Replacement's Westerberg to Clash's Strummer to Pogue's MacGowan, though he's slight and jerks around sometimes as though possessed by Ian Curtis. The band lays a storied sonic tapestry underneath Stickle's voice, woven through with rich influences from sock-hop and surf-rock, classic punk, jig and dirge, grunge and 90's indie, even the Boss. Two of them have literature degrees, but, while allusions from Brueghel (clearly Auden's) to Hunter S. Thompson and Albert Camus to Cormac McCarthy punctuate their work, they're working class scholars and know that when the revolution comes, they'll attack the ivory tower first. That is, their songs are accessible and ironically intelligent anthems for the meaninglessness of life, which I suppose boys from the New Jersey suburbs know more about than the rest of us. The pinaccle for me was "Fear and Loathing in Mahwah, NJ," as Stickle hammered out a long closing jig crescendoing into collapse and a bleating recorded reading from the darkest passage of the bloodiest Shakespeare play. Fuck this description, which is just lists and lame comparisons. If you like nothing, you will love Titus Andronicus.

Envoi: After the Los Campesinos! finished, while fans milled about groveling for autographs and conversation (myself included), Patrick started playing around with Los Campesinos!' glockenspiel, fascinated, picking out a melody, utterly absorbed. Perfect.

Los Campesinos! followed with a strong and strikingly upbeat set (despite the absence of ill Harriet [get well] and her violin), but certainly not diminished in enthusiasm or dancibility. They're difficult to describe, but think Toy Dolls backed by Arcade Fire (on nitrous oxide) singing songs Robert Smith and Siouxsie Sioux might have composed chronicling their various beautiful dissipated difficulties and darknesses. LC! threw out their ironically, clashingly upbeat symphonic tight pop in all its exuberantly desperate yearning. No matter how fucked up the situations in the songs, it's hard to be sad when you're dancing, and everyone was, from the "classics" like "Death to Los Campesinos!" through the new songs dealing with love and loss and the sad, shitty state of the world we're all slogging through. I especially enjoyed the "Box Elder" intro into one of their songs. Which one? I can't recall, but we should all be happy that, as the title song posits, "WE KID OURSELVES THERE'S FUTURE IN THE FUCKING, BUT THERE IS NO FUCKING FUTURE." And we collectively were, carried by Garreth's bright cheery vocals and Aleksandra's Elizabeth Elmore-ish countervocals and the band's perfectly timed chaos and even that one girl on the dance floor who never, ever stopped dancing.

After the lights came on, the band hung out and chatted and signed merch. Garreth is personable, charming, and as cheerful as the band sounds. Aleksandra is absolutely lovely and a bit shy (I mentioned my fondness for Elizabeth Elmore's Sarge and The Reputation). Tom, lead guitar and song writer, turned out to be a fellow Califone fan, so we had that, you know, irritating to anyone not in the know, whole nerd fan conversation.

Stuck in the Office

It's raining outside and I'm stuck in my office, so I'll make the most of it by writing my first blog of the year, two days before Obama takes office and even as the sigh of national relief begins its slow release, not toward rest, but to regather for the hard work ahead--so much damage to undo, more than we even know of, no doubt. Expectations are high, but I'm just hoping he can crash land this mother like Sully into the Hudson. Extracting the tendrils of incompetence (i.e. ideological hires in career positions) from so many institutions is going to prove tricky, at best, but here's to hoping for the best. But he can change the American ethos.

Two of the members of my Harlem Renaissance class are attending, and they will offer their first-hand accounts in class. It's a good time to be teaching a Harlem Renaissance class with its theme of liberation and free expression in the face of a nation besotted so long in bigotry and lynching. Harlem in the twenties offered hope through literature, art, and music that carries through all of this, and so, as the music plays and as Elizabeth Alexander reads her poems this week, I have to think those early voices speaking out, those humanizing voices, have finally won their argument.

Year End

It's been a long one and over too quickly at the same time. Much has happened that I skipped because love needs me to for now or because I was too busy. Importantly, I failed to record my parents' 50th anniversary, which I attended in Fresno, and the trip to get there, which took me through Santa Barbara and visits with many of the friends and fellow writers about whom I've written previously in this forum--my hosts George and Amy and Chryss and, since it was Amy's birthday and she had a party, a cavalcade of Santa Barbara's elite (well, they're elite to me). There was an all too brief side trip to visit Chris and Nadya in Lompoc to deliver my tiny book. Then on to Fresno, a warm and lovely trip, topped off by my surprise arrival to the celebration that my sister Kelly organized magnificently, and which included many family members, cousins and uncles and aunts, including my brother Todd and his family, and even one old high school buddy, Mark Driscoll--some of whom I hadn't seen in years. Mom and Dad were radiant as I've ever seen them, even youthful. Then the next afternoon, I drank another bottle of wine and conversed with Peter Everwine (I wish everyone this new year the gift of a fine bottle shared with an imminently wise friend), and then briefly visited Charles Hanzlicek and his wife Diane and talked about life and politics and their war of election signs with their neighbor. In many ways, this trip was both time travel and another coat of laquer over the grain.

Time is weird. It passes largely outside of us, around us, because in this moment we feel largely the same, fizzing away in our acuities and abstractions, ebb as flow, so when we re-arrive into a bubble of familiarity many years later, its passing is writ in wrinkles and frailty on others and to them, I suppose, on me. But for me (and, yes, you), now is always now, and I feel much as I did back in school, a kid with a new piece of chalk or worried about Daisy Wallace and would she be all right after the fire that took so much from her. It never leaves, the senses of possibility and concern. Certainty and uncertainty swirl, and the un becomes one like Schrodinger's cat and you open the trunk and, looking right at it, you still aren't sure if it's dead or just sleeping. Yearning mediates each moment still, if not as uncontrollably, and loss accumulates irrepressibly, and to what end is always the wrong question to ask anyway. There's never an end. There's just stopping, and there's just going until you do. So, go.

On the Road Trip that Never Ends: Skipping Woodstock

I like writing about road trips, car full of scraps of places I've been, things I ate, windshield the best movie I ever saw, skies and skies. Asphalt and shoulder and exit and merge and falling rock. That painful self-extraction from the driver seat after three and a half hours at 80 miles per to buy gas and a bag of m&ms.

But I can't go to Woodstock the way I've gone everywhere else. I can't just report on the KTD monastery and my hike up the mountain, Bread Alone, beautiful Devil's Kitchen (and the black trumpets I picked there), The Poet's Walk on the Hudson, my crappy motel, buying a little Tibetan carpet, coffee and ice cream, Annadale and Rheinbeck. You see, I was with Amy those three days, and to try to report on all these moments, sweet as they were, makes all this too complicated for here. Love is not a tourist. I can't separate it out, and so I won't.

I went to Woodstock, and then I went home, spent one more night in a Virginia motel, sauteed those trumpets in butter with pasta, and arrived home to three cats and looming fall classes. I've been waiting for distance to kick in so I could narrate all this, so I could take what's inside and put it out here. I can't.

It's a Girl

Results

We guess http://sensesworking.blogspot.com is written by a woman (57%), however it's quite gender neutral.

Thanks to George (Georgia?) and the Gender Analyzer and Julia Kristeva, and yes, we just gotta have fun.

Seven Squared

Birthday starring two classics: a 1982 Leoville Las Cases and The Big Lebowski. Thanks to Rob for the latter. Thanks to my patience for the former.

Finally

For the first time in my life, I feel that I have a president. His speech moved me. His humility and grace, his sense of purpose, his refusal to bask in the glory of his triumph and instead point to the tasks ahead, well, Yes We Can.

McCain's concession flashed a return of a candidate I once admired even when I disagreed with him in 2000.

It's good to see the results closing very late in Georgia, even though it won't be enough.

We cannot rest. We cannot rest.

(But I can't resist celebrating with a good Barolo for Barack.)

Lucky 100 for Change and Hope: Random Thoughts.

Rest in peace, Toots. I hoped you'd be around long enough to see your grandson become president.

Polls show Obama with a large lead, but polls don't vote, so you have to. I "voted," but on Diebold machines, so who knows? Mark Crispin Miller and others say maybe I didn't. And even if I did, no one can prove it. If Obama wins Georgia, it'll put me at no end of ease, and I'll have to direct my paranoia elsewhere.

Sadly, a student reports a bunch of Obama signs stuffed behind the local Baptist Student Union and supposes they were stolen from people's yards. I guess "Thou shalt not steal" can be trumped by political self-righteousness. Funny how secular humanist relativistic reasoning comes in when these otherwise absolutists need a little ethical wiggle room.

What will I do with my time now that I'm not glued to fivethirtyeight.com, watching numbers rise and fall, trends dissected, etc.? If Obama wins, I'll start looking for the next Newt Gingrich. If he doesn't, I'll be looking at election returns the way I did in '04.

On a thoroughly pleasant note, it's Andrea's birthday today. Hope Atlanta is treating you well.

South from Vermont

I headed south through rural Vermont toward Massachusetts, where I passed Mt. Graylock, Melville's whale, and the rest of the Berkshire's, beautiful country at the heart of 19 century American Literature. I wanted to get out and climb, but I had no harpoon, so I Ishmaeled it out of there and stopped at the MassMOCA museum for a stroll in converted industrial buildings to absorb whatever they were showing. The best exhibits included Anselm Keifer's sculpture and paintings. The controversial sculpture (Connecticut courts forced the owners to remove it) filled a room with concrete and rebar, contemporary ruins to complement the giant landscapes exploring war. Earth erupts in blood and flowers. Jennifer Holzer's Projections pleased as well with its elaborate use of space to project bilaterally the poems of Wisława Szymborska into a dark warehouse-sized space filled with giant amorphous shapes. Words shined on me and seemingly through me. Eastern Standard: Western Artists in China was more problematic. Some of the images were stunning, but some photographs and video installations seemed rather to sneer at the environmental degradation occurring in China. Art revealing the obvious isn't art, and it's useless as journalism. Regardless, it was a fine way to spend a morning on my way to Woodstock.

After the museum, I passed through Stockbridge along with a plethora of vintage vehicles there for some kind of auto show. Because of the traffic, I didn't stop to find Alice's restaurant or wander through the antithesis of MassMOCA, the Norman Rockwell Museum. I had to go to Woodstock. I had to find my way to the Karma Triyana Dharmachakra monastery. I had to find Amy.

Interregnum: Trip Interrupted by Trip and Cold Water and Politics

I promised to blog but I'm so far behind I'm trying to remember remembering the details of my journeys--devil's horns under my seat--but it will all come out, Woodstock and California and the adventure of living without hot water for 6 weeks. Stay tuned, loyal reader. But in the midst of these interruptions, I interrupt myself with a rant:

I. The Free Market is My Weakness

Economic crisis? What crisis? A serious depression would have been the free market solution they've been promising all along, because a true free market is absolutely Darwinian and mercilous. Now we find out how those free marketeers react when they step out into the real wild: "Help me, mommy." Every promontory leads to an abyss and woe to those without precious metal parachutes. Most of us carry lead and bears are at the bottom, snarling, hungry.

In summary: capitalism, of course, capitalism, Capitalism, Capitalism!, CAPITALISM! CAPITALISM! CATACLYSM! Oh, socialism. . . . Better red-(faced) than bread (lines, that is). Just think of the "bailout solution" as, like, ANWR's for banks, where cash can still run free, protected by fiscal rangers to keep out the greed poachers and the financial "drill-baby-drillers."

I suppose. Better if someone had figured out ideas of balance and fairness, you know, like, rules, like, say, in baseball, where competition reigns, but you generally don't get four strikes and you have to stop at second if the ball you hit bounces over the center field wall.

Look, the free market isn't all bad. It's great for ipods and fast cars and boner pills and giant fake breasts and anal bleaching and baldness and cell phones and single malt Scotch and reality TV and make-up and golf clubs and fine, leather fetishwear and all things chia.

It's just lousy for antibiotics and health care and education and nation building and natural disaster recovery and our voting procedures (those softwares are a protected trade secret, your honor). You don't want someone looking in your jaundiced eye saying first, "We've got a spectacular new ocular peroxide treatment that will take that yellow out, pronto, Susie. No one will ever know you have scirrosis." You don't want Blackwater thugs on the streets of New Orleans with semi-automatics and immunity and no clear chain of command (that's a trade secret, your honor).

Yes, the free market can do some things better, but certainly not everything. And it's funny how so many of those so-called free marketeers adulate the military so much, despite the fact that it's the biggest social(ist) program in American history, despite Donald Rumsefeld's attempts to auction as much as possible to the least competant but most well-connected bidder. It's hippocrazy season again.

II. Christian Fundamentalism (What would Jesus Do [without you]?)

Clearly, if you were are a born-again, fundamentalist evangelical Christian who believes that global warming is God's will and Barack Obama is the anti-Christ, don't you have to vote for him? I mean, if you're completely right about prophecy included in a selected anthology compiled a few hundred years after quasi-historical events? Don't you have an Obama sign in your yard? Clearly, God isn't omnipotent enough to handle Armageddon without your personal intervention, which is why you're so interested in Israeli politics, after all. Clearly, that "Render unto Caesar" detail wasn't about separation of church and state. It certainly was not about that Roman governor who sentenced your community organizer to death. So, yes, a true believer and avid reader of Left Behind books would have to vote Obama.

III. Rovey Wade

This is the most egregious fake political issue in history. This is where liberals are most conservative, and conservatives most liberal. Roe vs. Wade is a conservative decision. It keeps government out of your decisions as long as possible. The government has no business, as it were, in your lady business, period (no pun intended), or lack thereof (ok, intended). I'm pro-choice and anti-abortion with respect to my own personal decisions (nuance alert: I don't believe life begins at conception, nor do I confuse seeds with trees, and I am, to follow through, snipped), but I don't presume to impose my personal values out of inspired self-righteousness on others. In fact, I have yet to meet anyone who is truly pro-abortion, who would like to see abortion figures increase (though many pro-lifers are for the death penalty and would cheer more executions; go figure).

The problem is, pro-lifers are being manipulated (Karl). No one tells pro-lifers that Roe vs. Wade also protects women from forced abortions. No business in your business? Why should it work for the free market but not for your body? Ok, it doesn't completely work for the free market (see above), but I don't think anyone advocates late term abortions as a method of birth control, either (though, ironically, post-term abortion [capital punishment] remains popular). A significant personal and spiritual ambiguity exists here, and a decision should respect a woman's choice and her faith, whatever it is, and should ultimately strive to preserve her health. Roe v. Wade does that.

Leaving Vermont

The next morning was wine-slow and blinky, but we ate breakfast and I packed to leave. The plan was to head to New Hampshire and stop at an amazing wine store Wyn had talked about where you could get free Ch. Haut Marbuzet and we looked at maps and drank coffee quietly, weary of the previous evening's celebration. It was time to leave Wyn and Shawna's lovely home and company and head south, toward Woodstock, then home, but I had a day to kill before Woodstock.

I got in the car and drove down the hill, the gravel drive, and at the end of it, I made a financial call and decided not to go to New Hampshire. Decided to head back toward Bennington where I had spotted a motel that boasted of $35 rooms, and it was near enough to Bennington to explore the town a little more and to enjoy hiking and the view of the small lake across the road. Cash only. I liked the guy that owned the place, his hat and his moustache. "Cash only," he said, but he let me go into town to get some.

The hike lacked the beauty or views of the hike up Hogback, but it was exercise and I needed that. I stepped in mud. Later I went into town for coffee and people were gathering. A woman was chatting familiarly to several people and then she announced that she would read poetry, so I stayed in solidarity. She even read a few about central California, where I'd moved to Georgia from. Spring wildflowers and I even heard her say "Oxnard." I smiled, thought of Jackson Wheeler. She read about it as though the coastal mountains were exotic and amazing. It is. They are, but if you live there, Vermont is exotic and infinitely greener and the towns are small and Vermont seemed a liberal paradise.

I applauded the poet's efforts and went searching for something to cook in the room that night for dinner, found a nice grocery store with decent wine selection and purchased a few things for dinner, naan and a good Spanish wine and cheese and headed back out of town to make dinner (naan pan pizza and pasta and salad) and enjoy the spartan room. It had the same shower my house in Georgia had when I bought it, something plastic and cheap, suitable for summer camp. I smiled at that. It was a quiet place, a quiet night. I sipped a little of the Spanish and thought about Woodstock, about seeing Amy.