What I'm Knitting....

Mittens out of sock yarn
A funky scarf


An earflap hat
Fingerless mittens


A beret....

Mark Zane and Friends at the Red and White Cafe

Mark Zane and Frankie Diamond played Saturday night at the Red and White Cafe.


The Red and White Cafe, DeRuyter, NY....check it out, it's a great place to go!

Updated Playlist

When I begin a new project (or start getting ready for my annual Plowshares exhibit of my handknit goods) I start burning CDs to help me get through it. Here's what's on my latest playlist:

I'm Not Ready to Play Nice....Dixie Chicks
It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)...Dylan
Casualty Officer...Mark Zane
50 Miles of Elbow Room...Iris DeMent
I Married A Magician....Dust Poets
If I Should Fall Behind...Bruce Springstein
Whistlin' Past the Graveyard...Tom Waits
Motherland...Natalie Merchant
Yellow Coat...Steve Goodman
Watershed....Indigo Girls
In the Winter....Janis Ian
Splendid Isolation...Warren Zevon
Chelsea Avenue....Patti Scialfa
Flying Shoes....Lyle Lovett
Sailing to Philadelphia...Mark Knopfler
Stranger Song...Leonard Cohen
Joy...Lucinda Williams
Perfectly Good Guitar...John Hyatt
On With The Song...Mary Chapin Carpenter
Bone in My Ear...Bruce Cockburn
Free Man in Paris...Joni Mitchell
Have Hope...Mark Zane
Evening Ride...Donna Colton
I Don't Know Anything...Marc Ryan
Sam Stone...John Prine

A Picture's Worth A Thousand Words?

this is why I never took a road test....

Forest Lake

Where Rupert and I would like to be walking again this morning....

Hope

When I stopped working, one of the things I promised myself was that I would surround myself only with people I really liked, who shared the same passions I did, whose politics matched mine most of the time and who I could be with without having to bite my tongue or filter my thoughts when I was around them.

For the most part, I've been successful in my mission. I spend most of my free time with artistic people who understand that staring into space for an hour trying to come up with the perfect word to rhyme with "mustard" is not to be considered a total waste of my time. It's quite refreshing. Occasionally someone will make a comment that I'm too much of a Pollyanna, still too liberal for my own good, or some such thing that I can usually smile away. Differences are okay with me...it's what makes the world go around and I embrace them.

But not when differences become mean-spirited and just plain nasty. I have two dear cousins I don't see often who choose to communicate with me via email...mostly forwarded jokes. I once thought this was a waste of time, but, hey, it's still keeping in touch, and that's better than losing track of them completely. Or so I'd told myself. They're family, after all. I've noticed over the last year, however, that their emails have become much less humorous and much more political in nature. I read some, just deleted some based on the subject line, even dashed off a couple of emails to them asking them not to send this kind of stuff to me, reminding them that I'd been a liberal Democratic too long and they were not about to convert me now.

This morning I deleted 22 -- yes, 22 -- emails all aimed at convincing me that we're doomed to live in a socialist society, that I'll die before I get an operation I need, that all my freedom is being taken away because troops are coming home, etc.....and believe me, the words I've just typed are extremely tame compared to the language found within these emails that are full of language I can only call nasty, combative, racist, and, what's most alarming of all to me, just plain ignorant.

I'll admit I do tend to look at the glass as half filled. I do look for the good in people. I often give folks the benefit of the doubt. I trust. Sometimes it doesn't work out. But I still have faith in President Obama. He's only had a short period of time to undo mistakes that were made over a very long period of time. I wish more people would take the time to listen, to suggest alternative ideas instead of slinging arrows.

If we wish to be outraged at something, why are we not screaming about the reporter who spent nine months in jail for throwing his boot at then President Bush....he missed him.....while Dick Cheney, certainly responsible for the torture of human beings....is off giving speeches and being honored here and there. Certainly this is more unsettling than someone working hard to try to fix our health care system.

I still have hope I'm not alone in feeling this way.

An Enchanted Evening Listening to the Women Sing

I know. I said I wouldn’t attend a gathering that was exclusive. But, hey, I’m a woman, exercising my right to change my mind. And I’ve had several lines of a poem I’m revising rattling around in my head that begins “sister songs, so full of grace”, so I felt an almost urgent need to be within a group of women singer- songwriters, hoping to be inspired to find a way out of that poem.

Their gathering in no way mirrors the Songwriters Woodshed, and that was a nice contrast for me. They take turns playing their own material or whatever else they wish to play. Others play along, add harmony. I so wished I’d learned to play guitar or could carry a tune. At times it was damn near painful only being able to sit there and tap my foot.

It was a delight to hear some songs by songwriters I was not familiar with as I am not fond of listening to the radio. Once I stopped working, buying CDs became one of the vices given up and the library’s selection of music is…well….pedestrian at best. I enjoyed hearing some “new” voices, at least for me.

I hadn’t expected to be taken down two very emotional memory lanes with their music that left me rattled far into the night.

Eugenia played and sang so beautifully in Spanish, reminding me of the month so very long ago….in 1988, in what seems now like another lifetime for me….when I lived in Bolivia for a month as part of my job then. Tony, Kathy and I would sneak out of our quarters at night and wander down side streets we’d been told not to go on to listen to local music. I was instantly taken back to LaPaz when Eugenia strummed her guitar, wondering what had happened to those two old friends and the others who had been with us on that trip. Was the gentleman who crafted one of my silver bracelets still making his amazing jewelry in his tiny little shed? Was his donkey still as ornery? Did it still smell so green there? How was it possible I’d done all that? And why did I not remember more of the Spanish I’d had to learn to exist in those lush surroundings? Why had I never made it back there?

And Jo sang a rendition of Tennyson’s “Crossing the Bar”. She did it in honor of someone she knew who had passed away. I’d never heard it done as a song. I know the poem by heart though. It was Grandma Thelma’s favorite. I recited this poem at her funeral, the first eulogy I was asked to do. I was in my twenties then and foolish enough to believe that this would be the only eulogy I’d ever have to deliver.

I thoroughly enjoyed Joanne’s version of my all-time favorite Lucinda William’s song “Essence” and thank Melissa for playing Mary Chapin Carpenter’s haunting “Grand Central Station”. Although I find the original work I hear from these musicians always to be very good, Wendy’s “Put On Your Seatbelt” was by far the best song I’ve heard from almost anyone in a very long time. I think it knocked everyone’s socks off…..I’m so glad she decided to sing it.

I loved the easy atmosphere found with this group and hope to find myself in their midst again. Maybe by then I’ll have finished my poem and can share it with them.