Giving Bluegrass A Second Chance

I've been living in bluegrass-obsessed communities for awhile now, all up and down the Rocky Mountain corridor. My response to this mania over the past decade has been to dismiss bluegrass out of hand.

This despite the fact that:

1. I love an old man playing a fiddle as much as the next gal.
2. I fancy the moonshine.
3. I have a soft spot for music best played on a porch or stoop.
4. Those are some fine-looking instruments.
5. Bluegrass covers of songs like Gin and Juice make me smile.

Even so, even so. A boycott was clearly in order (ever the reactionary, this one).

Then what happens? I fall in love with a guy who majored in bluegrass in college. MAJORED in the stuff, for heaven's sake! A hairline crack appeared in my defensive fortifications (which Fort Scott has done nothing but exploit, let me add). Life's funny that way.

So it's a Sunday afternoon and I am painting the house and I'M LISTENING TO BLUEGRASS. By myself. And it's hitting the spot.

OK, these songs may not be straight-up bluegrass per se. Maybe they're bluegrass-lite, but I've made it this far and that bolsters my hope that tigers can change their stripes.

1. Catherine McCellan / Take A Break
2. The Avett Brothers / Kick Drum Heart
3. Bearfoot / Time Is No Medicine
4. Carolina Chocolate Drops / Hit 'Em Up Style

Not that I'm saying I'm a tiger. Students on my last course said I was more of a hare.

The Advent Of Fall

IT'S DECORATIVE GOURD SEASON, MOTHERFUCKERS. BY COLIN NISSAN

I don't know about you, but I can't wait to get my hands on some fucking gourds and arrange them in a horn-shaped basket on my dining room table. That shit is going to look so seasonal. I'm about to head up to the attic right now to find that wicker fucker, dust it off, and jam it with an insanely ornate assortment of shellacked vegetables. When my guests come over it's gonna be like, BLAMMO! Check out my shellacked decorative vegetables, assholes. Guess what season it is — fucking fall. There's a nip in the air and my house is full of mutant fucking squash.

I may even throw some multi-colored leaves into the mix, all haphazard like a crisp October breeze just blew through and fucked that shit up. Then I'm going to get to work on making a beautiful fucking gourd necklace for myself. People are going to be like, "Aren't those gourds straining your neck?" And I'm just going to thread another gourd onto my necklace without breaking their gaze and quietly reply, "It's fall, fuckfaces. You're either ready to reap this freaky-assed harvest or you're not."

Carving orange pumpkins sounds like a pretty fitting way to ring in the season. You know what else does? Performing an all-gourd reenactment of an episode of Diff'rent Strokes — specifically the one when Arnold and Dudley experience a disturbing brush with sexual molestation. Well, this shit just got real, didn't it? Felonies and gourds have one very important commonality: they're both extremely fucking real. Sorry if that's upsetting, but I'm not doing you any favors by shielding you from this anymore.

The next thing I'm going to do is carve one of the longer gourds into a perfect replica of the Mayflower as a shout-out to our Pilgrim forefathers. Then I'm going to do lines of blow off its hull with a hooker. Why? Because it's not summer, it's not winter, and it's not spring. Grab a calendar and pull your fucking heads out of your asses; it's fall, fuckers.

Have you ever been in an Italian deli with salamis hanging from their ceiling? Well then you're going to fucking love my house. Just look where you're walking or you'll get KO'd by the gauntlet of misshapen, zucchini-descendant bastards swinging from above. And when you do, you're going to hear a very loud, very stereotypical Italian laugh coming from me. Consider yourself warned.

For now, all I plan to do is to throw on a flannel shirt, some tattered overalls, and a floppy fucking hat and stand in the middle of a cornfield for a few days. The first crow that tries to land on me is going to get his avian ass bitch-slapped all the way back to summer.

Welcome to autumn, fuckheads!

Fly Fishing Is Sexy

This video by Felt Soul Media is by far one of the better movies I've seen of late. I wish the trailer captured it's brilliance (which would melt your face off), but it doesn't. Suffice it to say that the phrase "man carpet" is used in this fine film. Thank god. Someone had to do it.

The Tempering Influence Of Nature

"In short, it was glorious, beyond the contriving of nature or art alone, but possible only when they join forces, as happens when nature gives a final touch to man's accumulated and frequently senseless labour, lightening the heavy masses, eliminating a crudely-felt symmetry and man's unimaginative elaboration of it, through which peeps an undisguisedly naked design, nature imbuing with a miraculous warmth everything that was created in the cold light of calculated purity and precision."
-- Nikolai Gogol

A long sentence, to be sure, but good words to remember as I head into the field again (until August 18th) and even finer words to describe the art of Marlana Stoddard-Hayes who works by capturing the leavings of mushroom spores and Laura Gurton who finds her inspiration on a cellular level.

Abundance

I've begun eating fruits and vegetables. That's right-- veggies too.


This is what happens when you're almost 33 and you're me-- a revolution in your GI track. A number of factors have led me to finally embrace fresh plant matter as a viable food source:


1. Living with a veritable rabbit who munches on anything that's green and living like it's his job.


2. The advent of summer with its riotous gardens proclaiming, "Health!" Foremost among them is Annie's Butter Bean Greens-- a Northside outfit renown for its beetdowns, fresh-baked holler bread, and bicycle-delivered bounty.


3. Sandy, our wonderful local psychic, confirmed for me that my carbohydrates/fats/sugar diet wasn't working for my body. "Roughage," she said. "You need roughage."


4. As I aim to transition out of field work, I may have control of my diet for extended periods of time in the foreseeable future. This is exciting. Makes me want use my new-found power for good.


5. This food is simply too beautiful to ignore.


No --sigh-- these photos are not from Wyoming. The good people of Hither and Thither are kind enough to visit NYC farmers' markets and post droolworthy food shots for the rest of us.

See?

Us. That's you and me. Eating veggies.

It's a new world order.

The Deep End Of The Pool

I've been MIA of late because I've been busy treading water in the desert of my own fears.

Ridiculous you say? Tell me about it.

Thing is...

The overabundance of new blessings in my life has left me prone to the occasional meltdown. And by "occasional" I mean every couple of days.

They come in waves:

I'm grateful. I'm relaxed. I'm confident. Oh, and now I'm crying. In Evan's arms. Again. Reminds me of an article Amy passed on to me ages ago.

The latest trigger? Which couch to buy from Ikea.

I know. My life is very, very difficult.


Clouds passing in front of the sun. The name of this metaphorical cloud?


And the moral of this story?

It's o.k. It really is.

So exhale. Relax. Enjoy.

The Hunger

The artist Cal Lane reminded me today to keep the work of life beautiful.


To let go of my hunger to force the doing, to rush the process.


To cultivate the foodstuffs yielded by serendipity, trust, and attention to present joys.

Those that sate the appetite.