can our government be competent?

a few years ago my entire family banded together to get me my best birthday present ever; a spot at Lynda Barry's brilliant writing workshop when it came to pittsburgh. i took a lot away from the class, including the deep satisfaction of having *made Lynda Barry laugh*, but one thing that i'm really happy i learned about that's not really writing related is the existence of the american song-poem anthology.

in the 60s and 70s, ads on matchbooks and in the backs of magazines offered "your poem set to music" and this cd documents the results. a lot of the songs are awkward recordings of awkward poems, but the song we sang to kick off each day of the workshop is a bit of a soul explosion. and for some reason it makes me a bit misty about a president who makes obama and clinton look like vladimir zhirinovsky.

for oakland....

blind alfred reed

blind alfred reed is one of my favorite old-timey musicians because he was just SO GRUMPY. most of his songs are about things you'd better not do if you want to go to heaven, from drinking alcohol to being a woman with bobbed hair who talks back to her husband. and how heaven is a wonderful place because they don't have such sinful things there.

"you must unload", the track below, is pretty much the epitome of that kind of song - it's just a list of things not to do, one thing per very short verse. there's the requisite drinking, cards ("there'll be no playing euchre in the land where all is pure"), being overly concerned with fashion, cigarette smoking, but also.... greed? who put that in there? i mean, sure, jesus seemed to hate greed quite a lot, but i can't remember the last time i heard a modern-day christian (except for the weirdo lefty communist kind) say anything about it.

maybe....

i will start posting in this blog again. real posts, with writing in them, mostly about music that i like. it will have to involve a name change i suppose.

for now, here's a totally bizarre anti-drug film from the 70s with a nice catchy theme song, starring some realistically annoying pre-teens and anita bryant:



my favorite part (besides the song, the kids saying "whaaat" and the moving drug collage interstitials) is when a little girl is climbing onto a counter to get a cookie jar - "it's like it's against the law! drugs are against the law too". then she falls and hurts herself - "maybe there was a good reason for that law". but.... if the cookies weren't up on that shelf in the first place, the girl could safely enjoy them. it's not the cookies that hurt her! i think they accidentally put in the wrong drug law metaphor.

sprung.

i took so long to take this picture that it's no longer all that amazing, but those crocuses came out of the ground in early february, got 2 feet of snow dumped on top of them, and emerged from the snow a couple of weeks ago practically blooming already.

also note old corn to the right.

more pist practice

during a brownout.

horrible ct weekend

well semi horrible.

finished a scarf, just in time for spring:



pist practice (and tiny jayne hat):



no pictures of the horrendous flood that frizzled our car's computer.