Left home shortly before noon. Headed to my fellow Hats Off Performers Guild member Rob Peck's home in Greenfield. Met up there with other HOPG member Chris Yerlig. Carpooled to the Burlington VT 400th Anniversary & 4th of July Celebration where 5 out of 7 Guild members were doing "walk-around" entertainment for this huge celebration at Waterfront Park and Perkins Pier.
   It rained most of the way there and was still sprinkling when we arrived. Walk-around in the rain can be a little dicey, but luckily it let up shortly after we began and held off until just before we were done for the evening. So a good time was had by all (and the entertainers weren't miserable!)

   This was my second year in a row at the Burlington 4th of July celebration, and it was GREAT to be back. Waterfront Park is a long narrow park on the edge of Lake Champlain ("The West Coast of Vermont") and it was simple packed with all sorts of celebratory stuff: food vendors galore, glow necklace and other fun things vendors, trampoline gymnasts, a tall-seat unicyclist, 2 roving jugglers from our guild, close-up magicians, two other stiltwalkers (who were both taller than me!), a drum corps, a music stage with continuous performances, balloons, face painting, a mime from our guild doing Charlie Chaplin, and more stuff than I can even remember.

   Shortly after 5:30, the crowds started pouring in and pouring in and pouring in, and were still pouring in at 9:30 when we entertainers were done for the day! There were thousands and thousands of people there! All the entertainers were busy all the time. All the space in the park was full. And all the activities and events ran smoothly and were well-appreciated by the crowds. YAY!

   Happy 400th anniversary, Burlington VT! 



 Saturday, July 4, 2009
 

 
   Towards the end of a small, winding road off of Rte 9 just a few miles from the Connecticut River, several hundred people all converged on the Chakalos family mansion in W. Chesterfield NH today for my third or fourth time at the Chakalos family reunion.

   What a delightful event! The first thing you meet on arrival is security personnel at the front gate checking your name against the guest list. Then it's up the meandering driveway to a huge tent in front of the house where a live band is playing, tables are delightfully set, the bar is open, and family and friends are shmoozing to their hearts content.Three different bands took turns playing on the stage, including my old friend Floyd Patterson who booked me at least 6 years in a row for his daughter Brooke's birthday party in years past!

   Right next to the main tent are the food tents (yes, plural!) where a wonderful assortment of mouth-watering food is gorgeously spread. And throughout the rest of the property is an amazing variety of entertainments for all ages, including a putting green, tennis court, indoor swimming pool, batting cage, pitching cage, low and high basket ball hoops, basketball carnival game that returns the ball to you, face painting, balloons, 3 roving magicians, a stiltwalker (me!), a crafts tent with lots of different activities to choose from, pony rides, and my personal favorite this time: elephants! Yes, I said elephants in the back field!

   For the first couple hours, I stiltwalked the grounds, entertaining folks near and far. Then I did my Aerial Delights Show for a group of children and very appreciative adults in a shady spot next to the crafts tent. At the end of the show, I took off my stilts and pulled out my parachute and lead the group through a whole bunch of FUN parachute games. And for my final hour, I opened up my Big Red Ribbon Suitcase and began churning out ribbon dancers for the children to decorate, play with, and take home as a souvenir.

   What a great party! As far as I could tell, every single person there had a fabulous time from beginning to end! 

 

 
   Very soon after I got home and unloaded my equipment, my lovely wife and I drove down to Andover CT to catch the tail end of my dear darling daughter Myrrh's husband Joe's going away party at his mom's house. Joe is in the military and is about to be deployedfor a year to Kuwait with a logistics unit... not in a war zone, thank goodness.

   We got there a little past 8:00pm and although the party was supposed to run until 10:00, shortly after we arrived, nearly everyone who was still there upped and left within about 20 minutes. So we really didn't get to meet or talk with all these people we didn't know because they were all busy saying their good-byes to all the people they did know. 

   We did manage have a nice little visit with Myrrh & Joe and his mom, aunt, and grandmother though. And since I really like meeting and getting to know my in-laws, that was just fine with me!
   We also caught a whole bunch of fireworks through the trees because Joe's mom lives right near a lake and at least 6 or 7 different people had fireworks they were shooting up over the water. We could have had a much better view if we'd been willing to walk down the little dirt road across the way to the edge of the lake, but evidently we were fine with just sitting in our chairs and watching the festivities through the trees while everyone else said good-bye to each other.

   Joe: We send you off with our love and best wishes. Come home safely and in one piece to your dear wife. She will miss you more than you will ever know. 
 
 
 
 Sunday, July 5, 2009

  
   We had lunch on the top of Mt Sugarloaf in Deerfield MA today. There's a three level lookout tower there. In the triptych at right, each photo is taken from the level below. In the bottom one, the sign says that Mt Sugarloaf is 652' in elevation. (Whoa! Huge!) 

   There's also really gorgeous views in all directions. That's looking east over the Sunderland bridge pictured below. 

   Then we visited our friends Don & Barbara in Bellows Falls VT. Near the end of the evening, Don tried to put on a movie, but Nancy said if he did we'd just go home so he didn't but we went home then anyways. 
 
 
 
 
 Monday, July 6, 2009

 
   It's time once again for the regular monthly meeting of the Hats Off Performers Guild.  This month was a bit unusual: we had a much shorter meeting and it didn't include our usual potluck lunch that I enjoy so much. There were only 4 out of 7 of us there and 2 of them had to leave about half-way through our usual time together. The remaining two of us probably could have stayed for the rest of the time and done something appropriate together but I kind of decided that it would be better for me if I went home and got back to work. 
 
 

   
    And tonight, we had our old housemate and friend Diane Dains over for dinner. Diane lived with us for several months when she was between houses a couple years ago. And she's one of those really nice people that we've maintained contact with. She said she might be between houses again, and we said, "You can live with us any time."  So maybe she'll live with us again for a few more months. That would be good.
 
 
 
 Wednesday, July 8, 2009

 
   It was a clear blue sky with scattered white fluffy clouds kind of sunny day when I left home at 3:20 this afternoon; but when I got to Bellingham, it was severely overcast and had obviously been raining heavily. In fact, it had rained on me several time during the 2 hour drive and there had been tornado warnings and high winds. So for the second week in a row, my show for the Access Bellingham-Mendon Inc cable channel 8 "Concerts on the Grass" outdoor summer performance series got postponed because of rain. The only difference was that this time I didn't find out until I'd driven for two hours. (But I did get the check today!) So we're going to try again next Wednesday.  Keep your fingers crossed! 
 
 
 Thursday, July 9, 2009
 
 
   What FUN to do two(2!) shows for the Manchester Libraries today!  First, it was an indoor afternoon show for about 65 people in the large, old-style auditorium at the Whiton Memorial Library on N. Main; followed by an outdoor evening show for about the same number of people at the Mary Cheney Library on Main St. 
   And indoors/outdoors wasn't the only difference between these two performances (even though I presented pretty much the same show): The adults participated more at Mary Cheney; and the kids laughed more at Whiton. The local cable station filmed my performance at Whiton; and a lot more people took my picture at Mary Cheney. I was in front of a wooden stage at Whiton;and in front of a huge wooden tree at Mary Cheney! The adults mostly stood at the back (but still participated more) at Mary Cheney; and the adults pretty much all sat in chairs at the back (and mostly just watched) at Whiton! At Whiton, my volunteer decided he was all done before I was and just went and sat down before I got all the jokes out; and at Mary Cheney, for no apparent reason my volunteer decided to just run around the entire audience at one point! Both sites, however, had happy and helpful staff along with a whole bunch of people having a whole lot of FUN together!
 

 

   And I hit a milestone on the way to Manchester this afternoon: My little toy(ota) truck turned 275,000 miles on the odometer!
 
 
 
 Friday, July 10 - Tuesday, July 14, 2009

   
   My lovely wife and I spent a 5-day weekend in Island Pond VT at her brother Pete's little cabin in Vermont's NorthEast Kingdom this weekend. We had planned on returning Monday, but discovered to our glee that we didn't have to go home until Tuesday. So we didn't.

   We've been to Pete's cabin lots of times, but this is the first time we went there when Pete wasn't home, so we had the place to ourselves. It was terrific!

   Nancy's been needing a real vacation for a while --- you know, the kind where she doesn't have to do ANYTHING --- and Pete's place doesn't have phone reception or internet service and it's out in the middle of nowhere 20 miles from the Canadian border, so we were effectively cut off from the rest of the world in this little bit of paradise in the middle of the summer for five delightful days!  
   We had dinner with her folks in E. Burke on the way up on Friday. Our good friends Don & Barbara (pictured right) came up Saturday and spent the night. (And now they want to rent the place for their own private  weekend!)

   Other good friends Dan & Lee (pictured left) were bringing their teenage son to orientation at Lyndonville State College about half an hour away, so they met up with us Sunday evening and came to dinner at Nancy's sister Wendy and her husband Jon's (pictured below) place in Brownington VT (only 10 miles from Canada!). Other than that, we pretty much stayed at the cabin and had the place to ourselves the entire rest of the time.

   We visited Pete's waterfall and beaver pond, did several hikes around the property (70 acres), I got a whole bunch of big flat stones for landscaping our yard, Nancy did a lot of reading, and we had LOTS of alone time together... plus we did lots of nude sunbathing on the deck when no-one else was around! A little slice of heaven.

   I even got in some accordion practice every day (top photo). And, as Nancy wrote on her blog, "Just when I've had enough of Trevor's accordion practice, his wrist gives out."

   Q: What do you have when you toss the accordion into the dumpster and it hits the banjo?

   A: Perfect  pitch!

  
P.S. 7/15: Don just emailed me and thanked me for not saying "Don was a poophead all weekend." 
 

   And a note to my faithful readers: I've added copy and new photos to my July 5th entry above.   
 
 
 
 
 Wednesday, July 15, 2009
 

 
   Third time's a charm. After being rained out 2 weeks in a row (see July 8 above), today was a gorgeous sunny summer day in Bellingham MA, so (finally!) I got to entertain the crowds at the Access Bellingham-Mendon Inc cable channel 8's annual free summer outdoor concert series:"Concerts on the Grass" on the Bellingham Town Common.
   When I got there, the band I was opening for, Rising Tribe, was doing their sound check. They were pretty FUN. Acoustic guitar, electric bass, violin, and drums playing "folk rock, country, island reggae, classic rock". Check them out at http://risingtribemusic.com or http://myspace.com/risingtribe.
   I put on my stilts about 20 minutes before I was scheduled to start thinking I'd do a little "walk-around" entertainment before the show, but there was only one family there! Fine. So I entertained the people who were there. That's my job!
   At show time, that number had increase by 300%: there were three families there! So I continued doing my job... and then all of a sudden 5 or 10 minutes later *boom* there were at least 150 people there! I had purposely been standing in one place most of the time to encourage the families with children to spread their blankets near me, so there was a pretty good crowd there for my Aerial Delights Show, and a very full parachute afterwards when we played parachute games. (I call this: "The Outdoor Special".) 

   Afterwards, while the band was playing it's first several songs, I systematically went through the entire crowd giving all the children free stickers and giving my flyer to the adults who wanted one. (I call this: "marketing".)

   While going through the crowd, it was delightful to notice that there were four generations of people enjoying the concert: everybody from grandma & grandpa all the way down to the great grand kids! It was pretty cool.

   ABMI's "Concerts on the Grass"... if you're every near Bellingham on a Wednesday evening in the summer, buzz over to the Bellingham Town Common for a great free show! Check out ABMI at http://abmi8.org.  They've got a Stones tribute band playing in a couple of weeks.
 
 
 
 Thursday, July 16, 2009
 

   
   Got up early for a housemate interview --- we've got several lined up --- and then I did landscaping for the rest of the day.

   For about 3-1/2 hours I set about a dozen of the big flat rocks I got from Pete's last weekend into the hillside in our back yard next to the road. The plan is to get rid of all the grass on the hill and replace it with large flat rocks and various ground covers starting with some myrtle (which I have an unlimited supply of!)

   I put the first batch of myrtle in last week: a a roughly 5' x 5' area about a third of the way across the hill from the back because everything from there on back was kind of messed-up looking so it's the part I wanted to rehab first. 

   Then, I got a few dozen large flat rocks from my brother-in-law's place in Vermont when we were up there this past weekend. I unloaded them directly onto the hillside, sort of spreading them out how they might be.

   And then today I was on my knees on the hill with a trowel in hand moving rocks and digging them into their permanent places. So far, I think it looks pretty good. I've done about 2/3 of the rocks I got from Pete. I'm going to need a bunch more and a whole bunch more myrtle to finish up Phase One: The Rear Third. 
   Right before lunch, I got an email from a fellow Freecycler that I was the lucky winner of a 7' tall purple lilac bush! So right after lunch, I grabbed my huge tarp, long handled shovel, and Nancy's garden cart and drove one town over to Northampton MA where I met a delightful people and enjoyed their company for about half an hour while the two men dug that baby out of there!

   I already knew where I was going to put it: on the west end of our new forsythia hedge across the rear of our back yard. (Thank you Freecyclers and ChlorophylPVers!) Lucky for me, when I got home there were no trucks parked in the way like there usually are, so I could drive right up the back hill to the planting site and unload.

   It took over an hour to get that big baby back into the ground at it's new home... but it sure looks good there, let me tell you!

   Not only did I get that big bush, but Joe and I also dug up all the lilac suckers that had sprung up around it. It was a couple dozen! So I planted those against the back corner of the fence around our compost bin. They will look really good there as soon as they fill out.

   And during all this rock setting and bush planting, whenever I dug up some grass (which was often) I shook most of the dirt off of the bottom of it and filled in some of the big gaping holes in the grass in our back lawn. I managed to fill most of the 4' diameter circle from the large electrical spool we used for two decades as a step up to our old trampoline (which I hope is happy in its new home!)

   I finally finished up around 6:00pm in time to take a shower before a delicious dinner with my lovely wife on the picnic table on our front porch.

   So, my wife says to me, "Today, I'm married to a landscaper." Ain't that the truth, baby. I dig it!
 
 
 
 Friday, July 17, 2009


   My loving wife Nancy's old Nourse Farms work chum Ted invited us to a cocktail party at his lakeside cottage in Ashfield MA tonight. It was a pretty FUN party. 2 flights of stairs from the road up to the house overlooking Ashfield Pond (at left), a rather interesting assortment of people, flashing lights on the porch, lots of alcohol, plenty of food, low ceilings everywhere, a brief bit of fireworks, and a turtle named Myrtle.
 
 
 
 Saturday, July 18, 2009

   For the I-don't-know-how-many-years-in-a-row-it's-been, I performed again today at the Odyssey Book Shop summer children's performance series. It's held in a delightful little sunken brick patio with 2 small fountains, shade trees, and a couple of benches on the east end of the Village Commons directly in front of the Odyssey.

   At the beginning of the show, there were only about 15 people there, but within about 10 minutes that had burgeoned to about 40. The audience included several people who've seen me before including at least on who's birthday party I've done.

   I've been working recently on cutting down the first "half" of my show so that we'll have more time for games. The Aerial Delights Show, that's the first part of my Outdoor Special, has just slowly gotten longer and longer over the past several years and has encroached on the second half, the Games, which is also a lot of FUN. It's been really tough deciding which FUN parts to eliminate --- primarily because everyone seems to like them all! --- but today, I was pretty successful at actually having two relatively equal halves. Yay!
 
 
 
 Sunday July 19 - Wednesday July 22, 2009

 
   We took another vacation to the NorthEast Kingdom again, just because we could. (See July 10th above for Part One.)  No blah blah blah this time... just some of Nancy's great photos.

 

 
   
  
 Thursday, July 23, 2009
 

  
    Back in April of this year, I got a nice call from Jen Perotti, the assistant director at the Westford KinderCare about spending an entire morning in July at her day care cente,r and today was the day! I expected to catch a lot of rush hour traffic on both Rte 2 and 495 towards the end of the drive there, but thankfully, the traffic kept moving right along so I got there plenty early.

   Jen was walking in the door at the same time as I was, so we met in the entryway! : | )>  After she showed me around, we chatted about exactly what I was going to do and in what order. What we worked out worked very well: First gather the three classrooms of kids ages 3.9 and up in the large play yard out back for The Aerial Delights Show, and then about 45 minutes with each age group playing active games on the lawn.
     The show went really well: the kids had a blast and laughed all the way through... and you know what? the staff did, too! Then I worked with the youngest kids first. They were overjoyed to play some Parachute Games together.  Then with the middle group, we did a quick running game followed by a few silly games, and then an imaginative call-and-response game and a great singing game that this age group particularly likes. And then with the olders, we played active running games in their long narrow side play yard the entire time!

   And a good time was had by all!
 
 
 
 Friday, July 24, 2009

  
   Early this afternoon, I got a surprise phone call from our old friend Eric Volheim (pictured left) whom we see once a year at the annual May Day weekend family camp-out that he and his wife Lu host at their wonderful spread in Hardwick MA (see May blog entries of any year for more info on that). Eric said that he's got a packet of scissors of mine and they were about to come to Northampton to see a friend's art piece in a small gallery here, so would I like to meet up with them, get my scissors back, and have a little visit?

   Now, it didn't register when he said "packet of scissors" what in the world he meant. But when I told my lovely wife about it when she got home and she said, "Oh, so that's where they went," it (finally) dawned on me that it was the packet of scissors that's been missing from my Big Red Ribbon Dancer Suitcase all summer! Evidently, I left them on the ground at May Day after making ribbon dancers for the May Pole parade and whoop-la.

   So we zipped downtown, met up with our friends at the Oxbow Gallery on Pleasant St (right next to Northampton Coffee) and had a delightful visit with them there for about an hour before they had to head out.  
   The exhibit at the Oxbow Gallery was a multi-artist show, so besides their friend's stone self-portrait sculpture, there were works by several different artists. My favorite was the life-size elephant mask at the back of the room (pictured right).
 
 
 

  
   Today I did an 11-hour day helping a friend of a friend move from her old place in Greenfield into her new place in Greenfield in the same condo development as my friend. (Thanks, Rob!)

   We had a good crew, good food, and a good time. And I met some new people that I like.

   Plus, I got a super-long heavy-duty extension cord and the new-looking crate it's in!

   Oh, and I got paid, too!  
  

 

 

 

   It was birthday party #930 today!
   I was in Avon CT for Nate Tiffany's 6th birthday party. I perform in Avon fairly regularly, and this time it was just a few blocks away from a day care where I've entertained at least a dozen times already... so it was like being in a familiar neck of the woods.
   Nate Tiffany is a polite, smartly-dressed gentleman of a 6-year-old that his parents have every right to be proud of. From the moment I arrived, until my last good-bye, Nate was well-behaved, helpful, and took good care of his friends. He was an excellent little host!

   So it was a pleasure to see him grinning throughout my entire show, to hear him laughing so much from beginning to end, and to be a brief part of his life. It seemed he enjoyed having me there as much as I enjoyed entertaining him and his friends.

   Happy 6th birthday, Nate!

 

 

 

 

   Yesterday, I was the lucky "winner" of a free pump organ from our local Freecycle group ... all I had to do was be in Uxbridge MA today around 9:00 in the morning to pick it up!

   For those of you who don't know about Freecycle, it's a Yahoo group where members give and receive things completely free! <http://www.freecycle.org>

   So I got up around 6:30, and an hour later my lovely wife and I were on the road. We arrived on time and loaded it without a hitch.

   The owner had a delightful daughter who was intrigued with the whole process. She stood on the stairs chatting with us while he and I lugged it out the door. Then she set up a little folding chair on the driveway in front of the garage and watched us load it into my truck. It was simply charming. 

   Next we drove one town northwest to Sutton MA to see Sutton Falls. (We both love waterfalls!)

   It was a little disappointing, however, because it didn't look anything like the spectacular photos I found on-line. Turns out the photos were of a different Sutton Falls. This one was simply water flowing over a stone dam below a little covered bridge. It was rather picturesque... it just was significantly less than I had expected. Nonetheless, we sat by the waterside on a conveniently located wooden bench and enjoyed it for a little while before moving on.  

   Then, because it was so close and my lovely wife wanted to see it, we drove to nearby Webster MA to see Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaug. Most of the locals call it "Lake Webster" but it's original Indian name means "you fish on your side, we'll fish on our side, nobody fishes in the middle." The lake itself has three very distinct parts, and the name comes from the agreement reached by two conflicting tribes that lived at either end. 

   We drove out to the tip of Point Breeze -- the "penguin" -shaped peninsula in the lower left side of the picture. Several years ago, I performed here for a private party, so I already knew how cool it is. Plus it was FUN to revisit the site of a memorable past performance.

 Just on that little peninsula, we noticed at least half a dozen homes and one little tiny lot for sale, plus one little stone house on the lake that wasn't for sale that Nancy wants!

 

   After we got home, unloaded everything, and got my new organ all set up in my music room, I sat down and played for over an hour! It was GREAT! 

   When I went to look for a little snack afterwards, I discovered that the 5 lb. bag of carrots I'd bought a ways back had a few left but the bag was all wet inside. I don't like food going bad, so I tossed the bag, washed the carrots, and stuck them in the silverware holder in our dish drainer to dry. Nancy thought it was funny, so she took pictures of it.

 

   And the picture of the carrots is actually appropriate, because this evening we had our River Valley Market friends Wendy & Alan over for supper. They're going to feed the kitty and water our plants while we're away on vacation next month.

   We had a really nice visit, a really nice dinner, and really nice conversation with some really nice people who only live a few blocks away from us. 

   Beside, they both have a great sense of humor. Loud laughter was heard regularly.

 

 

 

 

  FNCA Day -1  This morning, my lovely wife and I each got up in our own time  and  each basically set right in on packing for our annual two week vacation in Maine. We finished  pack- ing everything into the truck and were out the driveway by 11:15am and drove 4+ hours halfway up Vermont and all the way across New Hampshire --- stopping only for food and bathrooms --- to the Fryeburg New Church Assembly, our church's family camp on the Saco River in Fryeburg ME that I've been going to nearly every year since I was born... and my mom's been going since she was a kid, too! And, as always, it's simply great to be here again!  

 

 I LOVE THIS PLACE!

 

 

 

 

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