Tambourine Rage

I went to hear a band last night, and almost lost my mind. I was aware that the sound of a tambourine can drive some people into an insensible rage, but had never experienced that kind of uncontrolled fury about a seemingly harmless musical instrument before.

It was not so much the tambourine, but the completely injudicious use of it - the tinny, tacky, un-relenting un-rhythmic rattle that never ceased. It was like trying to listen to a serious band fronted by the fucking energizer bunny.

I have absolutely no idea why I became so angry. What's even more ridiculous is the fact that I'm still pissed off about it, twelve hours later. But, honestly, if I'm ever unavoidably trapped at a restaurant where that man is banging on his tambourine again, it will be all I can do not to leap onto the stage, wrestle it from him, jump up and down on it and set fire to the damn thing.

When good things happen...

Whenever I have a really good day, like this one, I wonder why. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but is it just random, or do I have good karma, or am I going to pay for it later when the other shoe drops?

I had a pretty shitty week. It's felt like there have been 'oppositional forces' pushing on me since the week began, and then today - nothing! Like when you've been walking in a strong wind, braced against it, and then the wind stops and it's such a relief. It's so pleasant! And you can enjoy everything.

If today wasn't just a random assortment of happy and interesting events, then thank you, whoever or whatever is responsible. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Blue Monday at the Buckhorn

Oh man. I guess you just had to be there.

Ward Stout at the Stage Door Grill

All week people have been introducing me to this visiting fiddle player from Nashville. He played tonight at the Stage Door Grill, just backing up local musicians , a real angel of a guy. Here he is on MySpace.

Listen to Train Song, it's just beautiful. Buy his music.

Mean Woman Blues

At the Trinidaddio Blues Festival last weekend I bought a small print of this painting called "Mean Woman Blues". The artist is George Hunt. I just love this print, and I can't stop looking at it.

If I could, I'd commission George Hunt to paint a picture of me, the way I feel right now. It would be called Tired Woman Blues. A google search doesn't turn up any song called Tired Woman Blues, so I might have to write it.

Maybe it would have to be called Mundane Woman Blues. Yeah, I'm tired - tired from working all week at a good job with a steady paycheck, tired from driving a gas-efficient foreign car to music festivals just about every weekend, tired from staying up too late every night reading books that I bought new at Borders (that favorite haunt of latte drinking, independent film loving, organic food buying, New York Times reading, sushi eating white liberals like me.)

Okay, maybe it would have to be called "Got No Right to Have the Blues". But, oh wait a minute, over at Amazon.com I find that someone else already wrote that song. Some white girl like me with an insipid voice whose cover of Joni Mitchell's Circle Game could send you into a diabetic coma. (See? I'm mean! I'm a Mean Woman!)

So maybe no portrait, no song. Maybe just a glass of wine and a good night's sleep.

Milestones

There are about 37 different emotions precipitating in my brain, most of them to do with the fact that my oldest daughter turned 18, and starts college next week. I've been doing everything I can to be peaceful about this, but today I'm giving in to the tears.

I wish I could turn back time and make it go slower.

Check out Elizabeth's Calm-a-Sutra of Tea Scholarship Entry

Please watch - and pass it on!

NM in the News

Spaceport in Sierra County - which is the county just to the south of Socorro County. Check it out:

Life is a roller coaster

All kinds of good news today, but the thing that's on my mind is that I have been really stupid in my dealings with one person who I really like and who's good opinion is important to me, and it was through total ineptness...so, blah. Must fix.

The good news come in all descriptions. Had a great time with a friend last night, made new friends today, ordered harmonicas.

New friends are from PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Gays And Lesbians) who are going to help start a PFLAG Socorro chapter. I'm slightly daunted by the basic requirements - have to form a non-profit corporation, have to have officers for said non-profit, no doubt have to have bank account for said non-profit. But we'll have help with all that, from Katherine and Sheila, who are awesome.

I met them at the Manzanares Coffeehouse's 1st Annual Pride Celebration. The Manzanares - also, awesome. I'm hoping we can have our first meeting there on July 19. which is the third Sunday.

So, yay!

good news and good news

We're just back from the Albuquerque Gay Pride festivities - that was a blast! The parade was great fun. And also educational. I have to say, I was momentarily disconcerted by the Albuquerque Leather float, but my kids, who've had a somewhat sheltered life, took the sight of a scantily leather clad man chained to the float and being urged on by a man cracking a long whip and also being poked in the behind with a flag pole completely in stride...good for them, I say! Also the Self Serve Toys float didn't appear to faze them in the least. The enormous replica of a self-servicing device on that float..well, the mind boggles.

We were camped out on the median of Central Avenue not far from a place where I once saw Taj Mahal. And later in the day, we went to Barnes & Nobles and I picked up an awesome Taj Mahal CD, with some choice harmonica playing on it.

I keep my harmonica in a special room in my house, a room I visit several times a day. Instead of reading comics in there, I now pick up the harmonica and blow a few notes. It seems to be a good strategy - the acoustics are good, and I think I'm improving. At this rate, when it comes time for the 2nd Ever Socorro Fest Harmonica Contest in October, I will totally blow!

But that's part of the good news - at this year's Socorro Fest, there will indeed be another harmonica contest. And this year, the prize money may make it worth the drive for out-of-towners.

I feel like I'm ready for something more than a cheap Hohner in the key of C, which is what I've got...but I wish there was some middle ground between the Hohner Piedmont Blues 7 Harmonica Pack with Case at $20 and the Hering USA Kit Master Blues 6 harp set at $130. Then again, when you consider what you could pay for a Hohner Bob Dylan Hand-Signed 7-Piece Harmonica Set ($25,000) it seems that $130 is not so expensive after all. Wonder which key is missing in the Hering Set? B, in case you wanted to know. And if you're in the key of B, you can use your F harmonica anyway, so who needs it? What do harp players do when someone hits them with a song in A#? Is it all about bending the notes at that point?

Well, long day.

Six months go by so quickly

Wow. Almost halfway through this year with no reportage. That's because there's so much to do in Socorro. Seriously. I've never been so busy in my life.

But I feel a bout of self-improvement coming on, which I do better when I chronicle my efforts. The problem with self-improvement is that you rarely want to improve just one thing about yourself. No, you want a sweeping overhaul. If I started making a list, I'd be sobbing over my keyboard somewhere around item twenty-nine. It's the kind of thing you almost don't want to share with anyone.

So I'm going to pick one thing at random from my list and tackle that. I want to play the harmonica. Harmonica Central seems like a good place to start. Free lesson number one - Red River Valley. Nothing is explained. Hmmm. I'll get back to you on this. But in the meantime, this youtube video of Jon Gindick playing Safe Sex with 10 Holes in 12th position (with 3rd position foreplay) is totally worth watching.

Carrot? Or Clarinet?

I saw this on BoingBoing. It's amazing.

First, possibly last, time for everything

What do you do with a worthless book? No, back up, first I have to determine whether there is such a thing as a worthless book. Having been raised to respect the printed word above all, above God even, I have a hard time overcoming the belief that no matter how wretched the prose or rancid the content, there isn't a book that isn't redeemed just by the fact that it is a book.

In all my life I've never thrown away a book. (Thrown away magazines, newspapers, yes, so why should a book be sacred? I've packed them, hauled them, sold them, donated them, given them away, left them behind.)

Yes, I dog-ear my pages, but I don't write in them, in pen or pencil or with a highlighter, or tear pages out, or even parts of pages. I can barely stand to write my name in a book - when I do the handwriting shows how close this is to me to real profanity. (Why is dog-earing okay? Don't ask me. I don't know. This is just how my mind works.)

I've burned a few books - bad ones - romance novels*. Not to prevent other people from reading them. Just to stay warm. But I don't throw them away. Until just now.

Yes, I know all about recycling. Socorro recycles. Tries to make it easy. I threw them away, even though I could have stored them a little longer until the next free recycling drop-off day.

There was something symbolic about it, because they were books belonging to my ex, who is not a reader. They were all crap, Tim LeHaye crap and things like it. They were in my house, and now they're gone. Yay!

The next batch I'll recycle. Okay? Okay.
____________________________________________
* My sister once survived a long journey cross country in a van by reading romance novels. She was desperate. Some one, not a reader, had given her a stack. When she finished each one, she threw it out the window. This was not a stellar time in her life.

Sad news

The memorial service for Ann is today at 2, at the Macey Center. The local bi-weekly paper had a nice article about her, here.

Next time will be better

We got a call at the office this morning. "We thought you should know that Ann is in the hospital and is not expected to live through the day."

I haven't known Ann long, and I don't know her well, but I like her a lot. She's steady and kind, and generous. She has a knack for quiet encouragement, the right word at the right moment. She's always ready to help out and always there to back you up.

Her son Sam is my daughter's age. He still needs her. A lot of people still need her.

I hope she's still here tomorrow.

In Forrest Carter's The Education of Little Tree, when Eastern Cherokees died, they would say, at the end, "next time will be better." I'm not really sure what it means, but it's comforting, somehow.

Next time will be better.

Good Stuff

Okay - this is a great Eric Bibb song - he sings it with Maria Muldaur on Sisters and Brothers which has nothing but good songs on it:

And this is a song by Norah Jones, that I'm working on with The Decanters:


Enjoy.

Ignominiously Scrubbed

It's true - I've been ignominiously scrubbed from Blabberon's list of people who blog about walking their city streets, and I completely deserve it. I don't do that much walking, these days.

On the other hand, I'm getting to know Socorro in all kinds of different ways. In the year since we unpacked our belongings and said "Okay, this is home now" the introvert in me has taken a back seat to the frenetically social extrovert.

Socorro is like that. It's a small town where everyone is literally and figuratively your neighbor. You can keep to yourself to some extent, but eventually you have to go to one grocery store, where you are likely to be greeted by the manager who is also a city councilor, or the other, where you are likely to to be greeted by the manager who is highly involved in the community theater. Everyone is important, and everything is interconnected. There aren't six degrees of separation - more like two.

I should probably change the name of the blog - most of my strolling is highly figurative now - but I'll keep it the way it is. I may eventually walk all the Socorro streets and want to tell somebody about it.

Here's what I've been doing instead. Yesterday I winterized my swamp cooler. That was Big Deal. I don't mind getting up on the roof, but getting back down scares me. And I fired up the furnace for the first time this year, and put that shrink wrap plastic up over a couple of drafty windows. Made a big pot of home-made chicken noodle stew. Started learning some new songs for one of my bands. Read the Funny Times, and took a little nap. It was lovely.

Last weekend I was barely home - played with my new band, Fargo, at an Obama Rally up in Los Lunas (Worried Man Blues, Hard Times Come Again No More, that kind of thing); visited my mom in Albuqueruqe; played kids' music at the coffeehouse with my Bug Soup band (If Pigs Had Wings, There Was an Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly, that kind of thing); and did a two hour set at the Stage Door Grill Sunday night with my band, The Decanters.

If you're in Socorro, check out The Decanters at the Socorro Springs on November 22nd, and at the Stage Door Grill on December 7th.
And don't forget to check out the annual Festival of the Cranes. It's awesome.

Socorro in the morning

Something good to read: an article about The Daily Show with Jon Stewart in the New York Times.

Something good to listen to: Pandora Internet Radio and more specifically a song Morningtime by Sarah Dashew.

Here are some pictures from this morning's walk. A Community Fair, Yard Sale and Farmer's market on the plaza.

Church Street.

This is a recycling place that apparently takes junk metal. No name, or hours posted -
but there is one very interesting sign.

You'd think there'd be something behind that sign besides sinks and restaurant type kitchen fixtures, wouldn't you?

I would love to have a screen porch like this.

If this house were anywhere near an ocean or large body of water, I'd call that Widow's Walk on the rooftop.


If I ever won the lottery, I might want to buy a house like this and make it liveable. I'm a home-owner by necessity, not by desire, but I could totally fall for a house with porches.

And that's all for now - headed south to Truth or Consequences to the RiverBend Hot Springs.

ESP, or useful things I learned on the ranch.

My friend Jim, who keeps his finger on the pulse of the Socorro music scene, here, made me laugh by telling me I have ESP (Especially Senses Precipitation). In the interest of full disclosure, I will share my secret: watch the cows. When I drove to work the other morning, I noticed that the cows were all lying down in the fields. When the cows lie down, expect rain.

It rained this afternoon, so we put a chicken in the oven to roast, and went out to play in the puddles.



There's a new shop on the main drag, where we spotted this fellow -



and this one -



and this one.



He has the whole world in his hands...and while we're doing ellipses, check out this one:



Socorro is lovely after a good rain. We walked around a little near San Miguel. What follows is a few houses that appeal to me for one reason or another.









This has been a tough summer in a few ways, and I have been going a little crazy upstairs in my head. It feels good to be doing again the thing that kept me sane out in Catron County the last few years - walking and taking pictures and posting them on a blog. Also, reading good books and sharing them with people, like this one:

which is funny and interesting and has been a really good read in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics.

So in the interest of sanity, I'm back, and I will be posting more frequently, with pictures. Sure, I could find a good therapist, but this is cheaper, and more fun.

Humidity and mosquitos

One thing you can usually count on in NM is a lack of humidity, but not lately. Walks this summer have been confined to after dark, when it's not so sticky hot, along the irrigation ditches and canals that spread the water out laterally from the Rio Grande. I quit even those late night walks when the mosquitos population exploded a little while ago.

But you can't stay inside forever. Eventually the urge to wander about and poke around overcome the tendency towards inertia. Too buggy still along the ditches and irrigated fields, so loaded the kids and dogs into the car looking for where we left off.



It was starting to get a bit too dim for picture taking, but I got this picture of a house on Neel Street that looks like it's been there for a while. I like the one tiny little window high up in the north wall.