Every year for most of the past two decades, the first weekend in May finds me gathering with a whole bunch of  long-time friend in a couple of small fields surrounded by woods in Hardwick MA for our annual May Day Celebration that's been going on for over 30 years hosted by our dear friends Eric & Lucinda. It's a family-campout, cookin'-over-fires, banging on drums, making pizza in the outdoor pizza oven, and sit around the campfire yakking with friends kind of weekend, complete with what I think of as "the Big Sunday Whoop-La" which includes a little May Pole parade;  a May Pole "dance" with 49 people weaving in and out, over and under, around and around to live music played on a fiddle, mandolin, guitars, and drums; followed by parachute games; and with lots of ribbon dancers everywhere all the way through. I LOVE MAY DAY!

   Instead of giving you the play-by-play for the whole weekend, I'm just going to post a bunch of Nancy's pictures of the Big Sunday Whoop-La!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Monday, May 4, 2009

   I made a new page for my website today. Although I do promotional stiltwalking regularly (not a lot, but regularly), it doesn't actually say that anywhere on my website. So I had to fix that little problem. So now I have a page on Promotional Stiltwalking on my Stiltwalking menu.

   It's not quite done yet, and I'll be adding a  link or two at the bottom soon, but it's there! Exciting, huh?

   Granted, there's a few businesses I wouldn't really want to do promotional stiltwalking for, but in most cases I don't mind at all helping someone else's business do well. As I learned from marketing and peak performance maven Mark Victor Hansen (quoting Cabot Robert): "It's not how big a piece of the pie you get, it's how big you make the pie." That's my motto.

 

 

 

 

 

 

   "Promotional Stiltwalking Quotes"   

 

   And now my new Promotional Stiltwalking page has a link at the bottom to Promotional Stiltwalking Quotes from satisfied customers.  Even more exciting, huh?

 

 

 

 

 Sunday, May 10, 2009

 

   My lovely wife and I were thrilled to discover that some of my maternal cousins were going to be in the area this Mother's Day weekend visiting my local cousin Andrew (pictured right) and his wife (pictured left) and son. So we were even more please when we arrived at church this morning (where said cousin's wife is the preacher) and discovered that several of them were sitting in the second row on the left, just one pew in front of where we usually sit. So we plunked down behind them and began to chat. 

   So it was my Uncle George (pictured left) and Aunt Lois, and two cousins Alicia and Sarah (below right). Cool. We talked until it was time for the service to start. Then we talked all through coffee hour afterwards. Then the nine of us all went out for lunch together, where we, of course, talked through the whole meal. And then, most of us went back to Andrew's place -- where another cousin, Bruce, was waiting for us -- and chatted for another hour or so before all the out-of-towners had to hit the road. We stayed a bit longer, and then took off ourselves.
   It was great to see this terrific group of relatives again. I usually see my aunt and uncle at camp each summer, but some of the others I haven't seen in years and years, maybe even decades, because they live in places like New York City (Bruce), waaaay northern New Hampshire (Sarah), and south central Maine (Alicia, UG & AL). The fifth  maternal cousin I haven't seen since the 70's because he joined the military straight out of high school and then settled in Colorado afterwards. 
   Anyways, it was great to catch up with everybody and spend time together again. And it seemed to me that it was just like old times. You see, when we were kids we saw a lot of each other because we lived in the same town for quite a while and went to camp together in August. But then we all grew up and went our separate ways and, except those that live close, rarely see each other at all.
   I have to relate one little incident that still amuses me as I write this. (It has nothing to do with my relatives.) When we were ordering lunch, I decided on some black bean soup. The cashier asked if I wanted some bread, and when I said no thanks, she said, "Would like like an apple or some chips with that?" to which I instantly responded, "What?!?" because in my entire life no-one has ever offered me either an apple or potato chips to go with black bean soup! What?!? I don't get it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   With special thanks to free tickets from dj Katie Wright, host of "Katie's Rhythm & Blues Review" on WMUA, my lovely wife and I got to see Shemekia Copeland at the Iron Horse Music Hall in Northampton MA tonight. What an awesome show! What an awesome entertainer! (Thanks Katie. You rock.) Shemekia and her band did a wonderful two-hour show that earned her two -- count them: 1, 2 -- two  very well deserved standing ovations.

   This reviewer is not the type who goes through the whole show song by song. I'm more the type who gives his over-all impressions and then fills in some of the more meaningful details. And let me tell you, this woman can SING! She's been aptly compared to Koko Taylor and Etta James, so no wonder I love the way Shemekia sings. This girl belts it out like nobody's business!

   She claimed to be a "blues band", but her musical stylings on stage ranged from straight-up blues to funky rock & roll with a few salutes in between to folk, gospel, and country.  She sang several songs from her new cd "Never Going Back" including "Dirty Water", "Never Going Back to Memphis", a spacey version of Joni Mitchell's "Black Crow", "Born A Penny", and "Big Brand New Religion". She also did a gutsy version of "Salt in My Wounds" off her first album "Turn the Heat Up" somewhere in there among the other songs. 

   Between tunes, Shemekia told us a little about her life, her family, her band, places she's played around the world (including her recent shows in the Middle East for our soldiers there), her love of shoes, that she just turned 30, and then right before her final number she announced that she was "finally, after waiting patiently for six years" getting married this December! Congratulations, Shemekia!

   I loved this show from beginning to end; however, two parts stand out for me the most. Surprisingly, both are songs by her dad, the late great blues guitarist Johnny Copland (pictured right).

   For the first one, most of the band left the stage, and she and her long-time guitar player sat down and did a powerful version of "Circumstances" as a guitar and voice duet. It was absolutely wonderful to hear this amazing voice unencumbered by so many other sounds getting in on the act. I kept hoping she'd kick the guitar off the stage next and do something a cappella.

   And the second stand-out was even more powerful. For the closing number, she belted out a stinging version of "Ghetto Child". After singing all the verses, the band quieted down just a little and Shemekia left the microphone and we got to hear this sultry and sophisticated voice easily fill the entire hall with all the warmth, grit, and blues sensuality that we've come to expect from the sensation that is Shemekia Copeland. And then, even more wonderfully for all present, for most of the next 10 minutes, with the band playing the chorus over and over behind her, Shemekia left the stage -- still singing, easily heard by all -- and slowly moved around the entire Iron Horse (even upstairs in the balcony!), interacting with her fans in between singing the last two lines of the chorus each time they came around.  It was terrific to see her as she really is, giving hugs, joking around, "borrowing" someone's drink, and just being her delightful, entertaining self.

   And after the show was over, along with the rest of the very satisfied crowd, I was thrilled to find her sitting on a stool by the exit, signing autographs and giving hugs to everyone who was willing to wait in line. Now THAT is Shemekia Copeland, ladies and gentlemen!

 

 

 

 

 

 

     We drove up to Vermont's Northeast Kingdom (NEK) to visit Nancy's brother Pete while he was in the area. He leads a dual life with home, family, and work in both Vermont and Michigan. He spends more time there than here, so when he's here, we always want to make sure we schedule a visit if at all possible.

   Weekend highlights include: Daddy-Daughter Disc Golf (pictured above); finding a large glacial erratic with 2 big birch trees, 2 small fir trees, and 2 even smaller striped maples  growing on top of it (pictured left); dinner at Nancy's sister Wendy's house (her husband & daughter pictured below) visits with 6 of Nancy's family members; the "white & orange" dinner at the folks place; and getting back both my Grammy's old gateleg table which Nancy's dad (pictured below left supervising Pete) has gorgeously refinished for me, as well as lots of tools he refurbished for the FNCA. Thanks George!

 

 

 

 

 

 

   First a little whine; then the cheese.

   I had a grand total of one(1) gig booked for May... and it got cancelled two hours before showtime. So I've had absolutely no income this month.  So instead of going up to Maine for Memorial Day weekend with my lovely wife and hanging out with lots of old friends and doing some manual labor to help out the camp I love so much, I decided that it was pretty necessary for me to stay home and bring in some cash so I can pay my bills.

   So I decided the best option was to have a GIANT Tag Sale. (For those of you not from around here, that means a yard sale or garage sale). Here's the play-by-play:

   TUESDAY (8 hours)  Got up and immediately went up to the attic and started bringing things down the steep, narrow attic stairs that the bottom step is 3 feet above the 2nd floor so you have to use a step stool to get up and down. 

   Many of you may not know that we rent out the four upstairs bedrooms (mostly to college students). One of our rules is that anything they have that doesn't fit in their room goes in the attic. Nancy and I keep our stuff on the first floor and in the basement; they all keep their stuff on the second floor and in the attic; and never the twain shall meet. It really helps avoid a lot of problems. 

   Housemates often move out and leave stuff in the attic. Our current housemates only have 2 things in the attic: a duffle bag of stuff and a trash bag full of clothes. Everything else up there --- and it was a lot --- was leave-behinds. So, I spent all day (except a mid-day meal break, of course) taking absolutely everything out of the attic. All Day. Our attic is now empty! It's never happened before.Wow.

   WEDNESDAY (11 hours)  Got up and immediately went down into the basement and started tossing stuff we never use out of the crawlspace that we use for long term storage, and lugging it across the basement, and stacking it as close to the bulkhead as possible. I also went through the rest of the basement and did the same thing. I even moved a whole bunch of stuff that was already in the basement when I moved in 20 years ago! So I spent all day cleaning out the basement. All Day. There's still stuff down there, but it's only the stuff we actually use or aren't willing to part with.

   THURSDAY (8 hours)  Got up and immediately went to work on the 1st floor, first stacking stuff near the front door, and then when I'd finished in every room, I moved it all out onto the front porch. 

   My son Jason had called me the day before to say that he and Kelly (pictured left) were in the area and wanted to come by for an overnight visit and drive up to camp with my lovely wife the next morning, so around 4:30 my lovely wife buzzed downtown and picked them up. When they all got here, after a doing a little bit of catching up with the two of them, Kelly asked if they could help me get the stuff up out of the basement, so for the next hour or so, the three of us lugged, toted, and muscled the HUGE pile of stuff that took up most of that half of the basement up through the bulkhead and onto the front lawn. It was fabulous to get their help! It would have taken me 3 or 4 times as long to do it by myself.

   We had a great supper together (both asparagus and fiddleheads!) and then chatted in our livingroom until everybody but me went to bed. Then I spent way too long making a whole bunch of TAG SALE ---> signs, and then drove all around putting them up. It took at least three hours. Next time I'm going to photocopy them.

   FRIDAY (11-1/2 hours)  Got up and immediately began setting stuff up. There were already several people out there browsing through the stuff from the basement we'd put out the night before. Just a short while later, Nancy and "the kids" left for Maine. I spent nearly two hours getting everything off the porch and arranged the way I wanted it, all the while there were customers buying stuff. In fact, my first sale was less than five minutes after I first went out!

   So I spent all day (All Day) out front and didn't close down until after the sun went down. My best buddy Don had left me a message earlier in the day saying that he and his sainted wife Barbara (pictured right) were going to come down from Vermont after supper, spend the night, and help out the next day. They arrived just as I began shutting down the store, so it was really good to have someone help me spread the tarps over everything.

   We spent a FUN evening together before retiring for the night.

   SATURDAY (12 hours)  Got up and while Don & Barbara went out for breakfast because I didn't have much food in the house (remember: no income in May) I immediately went outside and started selling stuff. By the time my friends got back, I'd already sold quite a few of the Big Ticket Items.

   Now here's a little funny part: When they showed up Friday evening, Barbara had made a point to purposely tell me in Don's presence that he wasn't allowed to bring anything home. Don had responded by saying that she wasn't allowed to either. But when they got back from breakfast, they both immediately started browsing the front lawn and pulling out stuff and stacking it on the porch! And, in fact, throughout the day, each of them went back out and pick out even more stuff! Admittedly, he took more than she did, but most of what he picked out was stuff for his job. But, by the end of the day, these two bought so much stuff that they ended up being my biggest customer for the entire weekend! In fact, they bought more than any 6 people combined! Wowsers.

   When they weren't buying stuff, they were sitting on the porch side-by-side in wicker chairs keeping me company and testing out a whole bunch of the games Don had picked out for his clients to use. Towards the end of the day as things began to slow down a bit, I even got to play one of them with Don while Barbara took a nap in the free-standing hammock she'd bought.

   I closed down a few hours before sunset because business was a little slow and I had guests.

   After a nice evening together, my friends went home around 9:30, and I spent an hour or so picking out more stuff to sell based on the more popular items from the past two days: movies and cd's.

   SUNDAY (10-1/2 hours) Got up and went right back to it, once again, by myself. Stayed open for business until well into the evening before closing down for the night.

   MONDAY (9 hours)  Got up about an hour later because I figured there wouldn't be much business on the mornig of actual Memorial Day. It was indeed the slowest day business-wise, but still worth the time I put in.

   Around noon, as I expected, "the metal guy" showed up with his truck. He recycles metal for a living, and drives around to tag sales at the end of the weekend and collects free metal stuff that didn't sell. He made a big haul at our house! I even took him down into our basement and let him scrounge pretty much every hunk of metal junk in our basement including dead humidifiers, old plumbing, other hunks of piping, sheet metal, shelf brackets, and on and on. He was here for at least an hour.

   And then, right on schedule at 2:30, my lovely wife got home from her long weekend in Maine. I was just SOOOO glad to see her. I helped her bring her stuff in from the car but then went right back to selling stuff while she unpacked inside. 

   About an hour later, things had gotten kinda slow, so I started packing it in: moving everything I wasn't going to bring back into the house out near the road with big FREE signs, and moving everything I wasn't willing to give away up onto the porch. I finished in time for a late supper together. (Finally!)

   After a delightful home-cooked meal and wonderful talk time with Nancy, I did the dishes and then hauled the stuff on the porch back into the house. I was so beat that instead of putting it away right then and there as I had originally planned, I just stacked it up in the front room to be taken care of another day.

   The low-down is that after an entire week of work and 70 of labor, I not only completely cleared out our attic, cleaned up our basement, and got a mighty lot of stuff we don't use out of the house, I also earned enough moula to pay the rent. Yay! Yay! Double Yay!! Triple Yay!!! Quadruple Yay!!!!

    Now all I have to do is put away all the stuff in the front room.

 

 

 

 

 

   Today, as if I didn't have enough of my own junk to move around, I drove up to Vermont and helped my best buddy Don move some of his junk. He used to have a truck but now drives a Corolla, so he can't just throw the lawnmower and the grill and the screen house and the lawn furniture and... and... and... in the back of his truck; so I'm his guy. He and Barbara came down on Saturday and helped with my Giant Tag Sale; and I went up today and helped him rearrange the location of some stuff he uses for his job. We help each other like that.

   My lovely wife Nancy came along to hang out with Barbara while the men did the moving. Afterwards, we all got together and went over to Don's beat up old house in Westminster West VT. After settling in for a while, it started to get a little chilly, so I went to my truck to put on some more clothes. Just as I was finishing up, Barbara came by with a wheelbarrow. She was going to get some rocks to build a fire pit. I love collecting rocks, so I went and helped her. It actually ended up being Don & I who did most of the rock collecting ("men's work" and a' that and a' that). Four loads of rocks later, plus a pick/maddock, a trowel, and a bunch of labor, we had a really nice fire pit built and ready to use. Barbara collected wood and Nancy used her Girl Scout fire-building skills to build a 1-match fire. And the rest of the afternoon and early evening was spent sitting around the camp fire. Yay! 

   Besides the comraderie of it all, I also got something my lovely wife has been pining for: a clipping from a purple lilac! One of the places Don & I went had one growing in the front yard. I said I've been wanting some of that for my lovely wife. Don said that the low branch touching the ground is interferring with the lawnmower and was going to go anyways so I might as well clip it. Cool! I've got it in water on our porch now and really hope that it roots. We have white lilacs, but as I said, Nancy has always wanted purple, too. And it's the dark purple lilac as opposed to the lilac lilac, which is even better!

 

 

 

 

 

  Today, I wasn't feeling very well, but two good women helped me feel better: my fab- ulous and lovely wife Nancy and my dear darling  Myrrh who stopped in for a little visit. Thank you both.
   I also had a funny time with two other good women: my landlady Mary and her office compatriot Bonnie. I stopped by next door to pay the rent (thanks to a very lucrative 4-day tag sale) --- and as I usually do --- sat down and chatted with them for a while. We often trade juicy little tidbits of gossip and funny little stories --- as we did today --- and that helped cheer me up even more.

 

 

 

 

 

   Today, I made one more sale of stuff left over from my tag sale last weekend! I was quite surprised. 

   My lovely wife (see entry above) got tired of all the free stuff on our front lawn yesterday and spent several hours cleaning it up. She tossed a lot because several days of rain had ruined it, but the worthwhile stuff  she moved to the front corner of our yard where it's been slowly disappearing. (Someone even took the 1980's computer --- but not the keyboard or moniter!) The big heavy stuff though, she left leaning up against our kitchen porch railing.

   So this afternoon I was in the kitchen doing dishes, and there's a guy outside looking at the stuff. I called out the window, "Take it all. Get this stuff out of my yard." He looked up kind of startled because he hadn't known I was there, but he laughed and said something funny. So, on a whim, I went outside and struck up a conversation with him.

   Turns out he's a sculptor looking for raw materials and such. He said, "You got anything else you don't want?" to which I replied, "What are you looking for?" He started listing things he was looking for and I began listing things that hadn't sold but wasn't willing to give away for free. This went on for most of five minutes. But when I said, "Trumpet? Want a trumpet? I've got two for sale," his eyes lit up.

   I invited him inside, showed him my two old Conns (that's a brand of horn), and after at least 10 more minutes of fine conversation, he ended up buying one of them! Yipee!

 

 

 

 

 

 

    Our new Freecycle-style plant group, ChlorophyllPV, has been just wonderful. I've been collecting bushes, and Nancy's been getting rid of thinned plants. (Many people show up with trowel in hand and are willing to do some thinning for you!

   So, on Saturday right before lunch, I went and spent an hour digging up a 7' lilac colored lilac bush less than 5 minutes from our house. When I got home, my lovely wife and I spent a few minutes negotiating where to plant it. It was a stalemate for a little while, until I offered to build a retaining wall and put it in line with the forsythia hedge I've been slowly building up along the other end of our back yard.

   The back of our back yard slopes off towards the rear, but not as steeply as it used to. A few years back, it got landscaped to a more gentler slope. I want to restore the fence that used to be around our back yard; unfortunately, where I want to put the fence is a little too far downhill now to make it worthwhile. So my plan is to build a retaining wall across the back, backfill it with dirt from below the retaining wall, and then put the fence up along the top of the wall.

   So, if I'd just planted this lilac where we really wanted it, when it came time to put up the fence I'd have to dig it up and replant it again 3 feet up. So instead, I spent about a day and a half building a U-shaped retaining wall, backfilled it with dirt from the bottom of the hill (that dirt's going to be moved anyways), and planted our new lilac bush where we want it in all three dimensions!

   There's also the extra added bonus that we sited it so it's between our bathroom window and the lighted business sign next door that's been blaring into our bathroom every  night since the old fence came down 12 years ago. So all of a sudden this evening our bathroom window was in the shadows. It's great!

   Okay, so much for the "Lilacs" part of the title; now for the other part. Remember the photo titled "Two Things That Didn't Sell"at the end of my "Giant Tag Sale" entry about a week ago? Well, mid-afternoon today, just at the end of taking a little break, Nancy came in and said there was a woman out front wondering if I'd sold the guitar that was out front during my tag sale a week ago. Well, I pulled it out and showed it to her, She obviously didn't really know anything about guitars. (She asked if it was an acoustic guitar.) The short version is that she jumped in her car and returned less than 10 minutes later with her husband, a man in his late 60's. He said he was just a beginner and was looking for an instrument to learn on. I pulled it out, strummed a few chords, he turned to his wife and said, "He's good," and bought the guitar for the full asking price.  Yay!

   So, remember the entry just above this one titled "One More Sale"? Well, this entry could have been titled "Lilacs & Another One More Sale!"

 

 

 

 

       

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