Crabmeat Thompson: ARTISTIC News

WOW! What a nice time I had at Trap Pond State Park outside Laurel, DE, on Saturday night. Played for campers, many of whom came around and sat and were muy appreciative of the sorta story-songs you don't hear a lot on the radio. I'm only semi-bragging -- quoting one of them, actually. Scott, stout lad, wanted me to replay Stan Rogers' "45 Years" so he and Jen could dance. Fortunately, she wanted to dance even less than I wanted to play it again, but we had a GREAT time natheless, and Lana et al helped me load in before the deluge came crashing down.
Then today, although the Phillies lost, I had a GREAT time again (2 in a row!) in center-city Philly at Whole Foods, playing in front of the Bldg on a super-slick PA set up by my hero Joseph. Joseph, BTW, runs an open mic in Philadelphia, where I will be sure to appear shortly. Watch this space for details!
Nice gigs are nice; but this week I gotta woodshed. I've written a new tune, inspired by a conversation with an Iraq vet – a bit of the protest sorta thing and I think it might be good. Also on Tuesday I am taking the CRABMEAT SHOW across the river to New Jersey for a workshop on using technology to get work as a teaching artist. My benefactor for this is the DE Division of the Arts and my new pal SHEILA!
I will be busy on the ol' websites for a bit, and I'll try to put up your pic and feedback and all and… and…. and sometime I go interview Ms. Delaware USA, who is a neat person. For "Out & About." More on that in their September issue.

NEXT GIG: Crabby Dick's Delaware City on the 24th – Benefit for the Everett Theater.

Next Saturday, the 14th, I'll be at TRAP POND in Slower Lower Delaware, at 7 PM; and then Sunday, at WHOLE FOODS in Philly at 4. This is a benefit for Whole Foods, in conjunction with the Philadelphia Area Songwriters Association.

I was so wrong! It’s 40 degrees here at night, and it has rained every day but one. We are freezing and though we tried to prepare ourselves for being treated blah, I am appalled by the obesity. Chokoloskee was retirees who walked every morning and native fishermen, many of whom were hard and gnarly, even downright scrawny like ragged ironwood trees, burnt by the sun and snakelike. Others were large and vicious-looking but jovial in a scary way.

Watched a woman I Dover today, her belly lopping over and under her belt in those tight pants they feel obliged to wear. Outside an office – where she worked in some sort of government educational concern for chrissake! -- she leaned on the wall smoking. With each drag she would bring her arm up as if to salute, shove the butt into her mouth, with her elbow pointing forward, same angle every time, and grimace as she twisted her lips around it. Then, arm dropping down to her side, she would tap the ash, as the left side of her mouth twisted down and out like chimp and she blew out the smoke, ritually the same with every puff. I watched fascinated, unable to tear my eyes away. Of course I wanted to $%^#@ her. Duh!

She was a smoking machine.

Don’t get me wrong. People smoke everywhere, but sacred rituals in Chokoloskee are
1) Fishing 2) Barbecue 3) “Blazing Saddles.” I kid you not, That freaking film came on at least three times a week, and of the five or six times I was in Gary’s trailer, it was on three. I have to send them Rustler’s Rhapsody.

Well, I'm starting on the lawn and I have a picture of our deer on my desktop. Lots of good gigs coming up, too!

HOWDY DOO DA! Wow! We have been in the Everglades since November, and now the sun is beginning to find chinks where my sunglasses do not cover my eyeballs. I remember two years ago coming down to Marco Island to play for St Patty’s in mid-March. The flight from Philly went through a tornado or something, and it sounded like a semi truck was crashing down on the top of the plane, which would suddenly drop twenty or thirty feet like a broken elevator and the kids would CHEER! Like they were in a Disney ride, so I’m not surprised we have GW as president or that one in five Americans think the sun revolves around the earth, but at that point I didn’t care and was just glad to get to Ft Meyers alive.

St. Patty’s day me and Peter from Belfast and Fiona from Derry played from noon until about 8 at night at Mel Slawik’s place, Cathy O’Clarke’s, on Collier Boulevard. Pete and I sat up until late that night sipping and swearing we’d find the sonofabuck wrote Danny Boy and rip his liver out

“Next lobster-burnt black-knee-sox wearin’ Yankee devil asks for Danny Boy gonna find out what whack-fol-the-daddy-o REALLY means! Ay Laddy.”

Next AM I staggered off for breakfast and forgot my sunglasses. My doctor back home had never heard of sunburned eyeballs, but I’m sure glad it wasn’t permanent. I kept seeing big black spots – not those little ones that you get when the voices start nagging you to go ahead and build a bomb or have a sex change – no, these were BIG ones, like bats, and it took about a month and I don’t want them to come back!

SO … we’re coming home soon. Start the butterfly garden, see my feral cat, pick up some fireworks at South of the Border.

APRIL looks like loads of fun kicking off at dear old EAST END CAFÉ on the 10th with my young old friend JEFF KESSLER and his rock trio. Jeff (www.myspace.com/jeffkessler) is a red-hot guitarist and writes great songs and plays at Donald Trump’s place in AC, as well as rock clubs all over. AND he studied with Camille Paglia at Philly College of Art!

ON THE 16TH I’ll visit old buddy DAVE MUDDIMAN, behind the soundboard and maybe joining me on a song or two, at CUNNINGHAM’S on Kirkwood Highway above Newark.

THE 20TH is a fund-raiser wine & cheese and membership meeting of the PORT PENN HISTORICAL SOCIETY from noon until four PM. This is my one and only steady gig, as these wonderful folks keep having me back every once in a while. The museum where this is held is full of antiques and gear the watermen used when Port Penn was an active jumping-off for the DuPonts before they got the government to declare THEIR drugs legal and all the good ones bad. Just kidding.

Gotta go ride my bike before it gets too hot. See you soon. Best, Crab (www.crabmeat.net; www.myspace.com/jcrabmeat to listen, read, or respond).

OKAY! Rode around town. The usual clutch of scrawny old gals pedaling and power walking, often accompanied by one a them floor mop white dogs. I never liked little dogs, but then I never liked cats. Them floor mop dogs are pretty cute and don’t all yap or steal lawn ornaments, and they sure do fit in a car! Lola next door insists on showing little pink tummy every time I sit with her mom on the lawn chairs in front of Pete and Annie’s place (there is a picture of Pete’s tomato paradise in my “foots” at www.crabmeat.net and maybe on my space as well – I GOTTA find and Indian to outsource the website stuff to or risk becoming something NOT CRAB, more gatesian and loathsome, with pocket protector and coffee intravenous drip).

At the post office this AM Chris the postmistress had shoved my New Yorker into PO Box 818, but I was too early to go in and snitch a mini-chocolate bar from beside the register. I felt I had arrived as a Chokoloskian when I didn’t pick up my mail for a couple days and Chris left a piece of chocolate in the box. I’m saying this is the greatest freaking place to spend 4 months, or even just a week, to get away form the rat race and into Florida warmth while avoiding the tourist hordes better than anyplace I know of anyway. Gary Peeples – “the People’s Gary” – my friend from way back -- when Moby Dick was a minnow -- and the mayor of Parkway Village here on the island, says Key West and Chokoloskee are at the end of the earth, hence the weirdness. Reminds me a lot of Big Sur. Half the people know each other and wave at you when you go down the street. At first I waved at everybody just not to slight anyone. Now I’m back to being snobbish, but I do talk to ANY dog who will listen. Speaking of which: it’s like Big Sur in that everybody knows everybody’s dogs, their lineage and love lives, etc.

IN Big Sur there was even a scruffy white and brown dog who hitchhiked from River Inn up to Fernowood where he had a seetheart. If you saw him by the pump when you got gas you’d open your odoor and he would jump in. If you forgot to let him out at Fernwood he’d walk back, but he wouldn’t b ride with you next time.

Half the streets on the island here are unpaved and deeply rutted, and half the locals have bee in jail. IN fact Annie told me the other night they went for dinner and the cops came and arrested her waiter.

“I cawn’t believe it,” sez Annie from Noo Hamshah, puffing on her third cigarette since I sat down in the circle of lawn chairs beside Pete’s boat trailer, “the last three places we have gone out to eat our waiter has been arrested!” Not that unusual. In 1910 Mr. E.J. Watson from Plantation Island right near here was suspected of half a dozen murders. His hired hands were disappearing mysteriously and he boasted when in his cups that he was the one who shot Belle Starr, the outlaw queen, back in Missouri. The locals, including several families who still live here and whom I won’t mention by name because we aren’t packed yet, but who live down the street and work with us, decided Mr. Watson needed to stand trial, and when he resisted they gunned him down in front of Smallwood’s store where he’d come for provisions. The story has been put down in at least five books – three by Pulitzer Prize winner Peter Mattheissen, who’s in his eighties and lives near here at Lost Man’s River – and a play which will shortly be put on at a stage down near the store, which is at the end of Mamie Street (named, btw, after Mrs. Eisenhower -- Ike used to come to Chokoloskee & Everglades City to fish) where we live.

Catching gators and fish provided a living for these pioneer families, but Prohibition helped them buy cars and houses as they sped away form the feds among the mangrove hammocks of the Ten Thousand (actually thirteen thousand) islands right off shore. Pete had me out fishing in some of his secret holes, and at times you have to get on the bottom of his flat boat or get tangled up in the vines and branches which hang right down into the water. The eighties brought real prosperity, and later jail, as I said, for maybe half the Chokoloskoids, but now they are out and only once or twice a month do the Collier County cops grace us with their presence. Annie has hoot-inducing tales of kids jumping form the cop cars to run home or jump in a boat for Key West. And like how hard is it going to be for the cops to find them again? Same thing in Richardson Park when that was the big Meth lab, and is THAT why all those Harleys come thundering by every Sunday?

Who knows? Not me. I DON’T WANT TO! Idiot kid down the street got roughed up by some locals so his gal calls the cops.

“Why did they beat him up?”

“They thought he had a WIRE!”

Duh. What does that say about HIM, and whom are you pointing the finger at, you spoiled little rich nitwit you. And so: Goodbye Christina and Ronny (not their real names), and good luck wherever you end up now that the word is out and you can’t stay here! Can’t go back to Georgia either, I hear. Oh well, there’s always Alabama.

And me and Honeybunny and our little cat Cleo, WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE CHOKOLOSKEE.

NEXT WEEK: The Ochopee Skunk Ape vs. Chupacabra!

I’ll be at the PORT PENN HISTORICAL SOCIETY on Sunday, April 20th, That will be just about the big CRABMEAT RETURNS NORTH kickoff. They are just about my favorite group of folks and the open house is from 1 to 3 that Sunday with wine and munchies. I used to see Jim Vaughn there, but he’s gone and missed. You can’t miss the Historical Society if you come, unless you miss PT Penn, that is, which is possible. I don’t miss it – it’s 75 degrees here on Chokoloskee at 6:30 PM – but it will be swell to be back. Right now I have bronchitis from my January gigs in Wilmington. 80 degrees to 10 degrees is too big a jump!

WSTW is running a musical competition. I voted for Todd Chapelle in just about every category I could, and then Kyle Swartzwelder and Nik Everett. TODD wrote that GREAT “I’m from Delaware” take off of the Johnny Cash classic “I’ve Been Everywhere.” You should vote! Todd’s got a link on myspace, and if Nik doesn’t I don’t know Nik. Ditto Kyle. How come Ed Shockley never gets in this stuff? Or Johnny Neal or Kenny Jones. All THEY do is play about nine nights a week all over the US or the world in Johnny’s case and fly under the radar of Out & About , etc, because they are so busy playing and recording and being real full time musicians they don’t have time to play with the internet. There, I’ve said it and I’m glad!

I’m putting some FLORIDA pix in the Photo section here. One of my neighbor Pete and his tomato paradise. The guy’s from New Hampshah and can’t get over growing tomatoes in February so he has about a million, some upside down! I spiced up the pix on myspace, too.

Women here SCREAM when they drink. Scare me to death. I played a couple nights at “Almost Famous” MEL (Slawik)’s in Marco Island but I think he’s mad at me now for going up to Wilmington like a fool and breaking a date. Some crazy lady keeps calling wanting me to play her crab place, which is biker bar open from noon to four – NOON to FOUR?? Serving beer and Everglades food.

Wish I could bring a pelican home. I have to snap some photos of them.

Well thanks to Mongo I’ve found out that the Jewfish (now the “Goliath Grouper,” thanks to some geeks with too much time and no respect for lexicography) was first called that in 1695 by an explorer in Jamaica, who noticed the Jews there ate lots of this fish, as it “has both fins and scales,” and was thus a clean Kosher fish. Not to mention it’s among the largest to be found in tropical waters.

So on New Years Eve I set up and played a couple sets right next to the fish-cleaning station right here in Chokoloskee. My “manager” is Gary Peeples, “the People’s Gary,” an old friend from Venice days. Gary is president of the association here at Parkway Village where we are spending the winter, and decided it would be nice to do a concert for the neighbors. I sang “Ghost Jewfish in the Sky” and “Hava NoJewfish,” etc..

I also have at least one place to play: I’ll be doing a biker benefit on Tamiami Trail on the 12th, at Joanie’s Blue Crab Grille, a really cute place. RT 41, of Allman Brothers’ fame (“I was born in the back seat of a Greyhound bus/Rollin’ down old Highway 41”) is the old 2-lane connecting Miami on the East coast to the Everglades and the West. We are right smack dab in the Everglades, and there are flocks of weekend bikers on expensive bikes who can get away from the ratrace in less than 2 hours – right from downtown Miami traffic to our environs where time sometimes stands still and I think “must be Miller time” and it’s only quarter to two, and our neighbors never stay up past 9.

The “younger” (under 60) crowd was down en masse from Sebring this weekend and we’ve had houseguests and the cat is under the bed because they brought two dogs. Also lots of food – venison, wild pig, oysters and shrimp and whatever fish are caught. Two of this crew are licensed Everglades guides and yesterday we fished. Saw two bald eagles chasing the very numerous osprey around, and I caught a redfish which was ½ inch too short, but purty big to my eyes. Also a ladyfish which they don’t eat, and a couple oysters. Fun catching even if we have to throw them back. Redfish are not really delicious anyway.

Happy Holidays to all you folks out there in the busy world not fortunate enough to anchor here in Chokoloskee, the Enchanted Isle! In Chokoloskee the sun almost always shines and hearts are happy and bright. Palm, trees bend and dusky-breasted maids sway like those dashboard figurines if you are lucky enough to have one.

Tiny dogs in jewel-crusted collars run yapping through the night and all around you feel the happy glow of Christmas. People passing, doggies yapping, roosters crow down the street, in the air there’s a feeling of Christmas. See the coconuts and banana trees and orchids grow down the street, as I wrap up the last of the presents.

Silver bells…, etc.

Yesterday our neighbor Pete took me out fishing. Pete is from New Hampshah, and he said if we were lucky I might catch a Groupah. Pete’s boat is built to go in the shallows close to the banks of the mangrove islands off Chokoloskee Island, in the 100-mile swath called the “Ten-Thousand Islands.” There are actually more than that, revealed by satellite photography, but how many I don’t know. As we zipped around through them I was lost in about five minutes, anyway.

Pete baited me a big rod which didn’t see much action, while he kept pulling up too-small “snappah,” sheepshead, catfish, and groupah until he finally found a keepah. About that time the tide was running in pretty fast, and under the branches of the mangroves the smaller fishes were feeding. I felt a bit of a strike, so I dipped my pole, and when it ran out a bit I hauled back and then started reeling like crazy. I pulled up a groupah about two feet long and fat, with a head on it the size of grapefruit. Unfortunately is was a Jewfish and I had to throw it back. Unfortunate, too that when I realized he was going to release it I reached for my camera and the fish fell off and now nobody will believe me, assuming they'll even believe there is such a thing as a "Jewfish." (I just checked and in 2001 they were officially renamed "goliath grouper").

Each time Pete would move to a new spot I would have to pull the anchor up and then throw it out. I sang “Haul Away Joe,” which made him laugh. Then this morning the song was running through my head, and I remembered when I used to sing it a lot with Junior Wilson.

“Haul Away Joe” is a “short-drag shanty,” one of many work songs sung during the hauling up of the anchor or other tasks involving shorter pulls on a line.
When I was little boy, so me mother told me (to me)
Way haul away, we’ll haul away Joe
That if I didn’t kiss the girls me lips would all grow moldy (to me)
Way haul away, we’ll haul away Joe.

I used to sing this song with a trio, Crabmeat, Pedro and Junior, and the guys asked me why I wanted them to holler “tummy” at the end of the line. I laughed and said that I assumed they meant “to me,” as the work leader would be standing over the crew and telling them to draw the line TO him.
Then I did some research in my copy of “Songs and Stories of the Pirate Life,” (Cambridge, 1965) and found that, as Gilbert and Sullivan pointed out in the “Pirates of Penzance,” many pirates came from broken homes and were emotionally scarred. So the most successful pirate captains, like Captain Blood or Bonny William Winslow the Borneo Faggot, who had the happiest crews, cautioned new inductees that when they weren’t busy killing, torturing, branding, disemboweling, looting, raping, and burning women, clergymen, children, shutins, and the elderly, to remember: don’t be afraid to talk about your feelings. Thus even the redoubtable Blackbeard, according to Spenser et al (ibid), had embroidered just below the skull and crossbones on his black flag the words “nemo me faltere hable de sentimiento,” or roughly “do not fault to speak of that which excoriates thy liver.”

Consequently, landsmen who had problems adjusting to corporate policy or who had experienced rejection by their peers, or maybe had speech problems or were bedwetters often flocked to the gay pirate lifestyle. Onboard, however, it took some time to adjust to the rigors of pirate life. And this is where the sea shanty really had a function. Songs lightened the tedium of difficult and repetitious tasks such as weighing the anchor or washing up blood. But even the most hearty souls were often seasick, and an earlier version of “Haul Away,” from Sir William Childe’s compilation of 1605, includes the chorus: “Me gut is all asplay and I’m vomitose again,” later shortened to simply “tummy!” a cue to watch out, someone’s about to puke on your shoes.

When researching this I was drawn to reminisce about my own use of worksongs. As a college boy I worked summers to make extra money, and my work mates were jolly Negroes and Beaners, as they were then known. The Latinos would sing songs like “Mexico Lindo,” while the Negroes and I would join in or hum some Motown ditty. I got into the habit of accompanying heavy lifting with song, and when I was in gradate school, having little or no money and no time or inclination for the sort of empty-headed and alluring chit chat which goes with courting, I was reduced to banging fat chicks who would always buy pizza. I used to sing “Row Row Row Your Boat,” which not only lightened my task, but often caused the chicks to giggle, which would start them wobbling all over, adding a side-to-side and tilting sway to the straight ahead humping and bumping necessary to hasten the gushing of primal juices so I’d have a clear head for a return to parsing Beowulf or some other obscure tome.

Munching on pizza, of course.

We're on the island now. Getting used to eating ants. They are these little teeny guys who can crawl under the tops of most containers. Small enough this am, and i guess the light wasn't that good. they sure showed up in my omelet, but no way I'm throwing food out when it's 45 minutes to the market. Weather: boring -- 80 plus degrees everyday. Good boring, that is.

AT JIFFY LUBE yesterday this moron in blue-collar blues is sitting there with a laptop on his lap, a cell phone on top of that, and a Bluetooth gadget in his ear – loaded for bear. When he began to declaim at pretty much the top of his lungs – I noticed later when he spoke to the cashier he wasn’t nearly as loud – I began to hawk up mucus just about as loud and he glared at me. But I was ready for him – I had mirror shades on and I could watch him while appearing to look away. Nasty creep anyway.

I was wishing I had a cell-phone jammer – you can get them now though they are illegal. I even began this little treatise yesterday with a made-up encounter in which I jammed his cell; but then I realized that if I put that fiction on the Internet, the Homeland Gestapo could waterboard me, fly me to Egypt, and eventually drop me off on a hillside in Bosnia in my skivvies; so I censored myself. NO I DO NOT have an (illegal) jammer. The site that sells jammers has Tazers, btw.

When my van was done, I paid up and went over to Thurston’s in Fox Run to watch the University of Delaware play Delaware State for the first time ever, in the first round of the NCAA Division I football playoffs. UD is the uppity “research” institution upstate, with a new prez who actually came from the Ivy League, while Del State is the ag school and until recently all-black.

The Hornets of Delaware State were ranked #10 nationally, with a record of 10 and 1, while the Blue Hens of UD were at 13. Don’t know if that added a spark or if the level of competition in the MEAC, which is Del State’s division, was that much weaker. Probably both, and a combination of jitters and bad luck, but by halftime it was 44-zip in favor of UD. It was their field and their crowd, too, pretty much. Still, the coaching staff of UD was offensively high- handed, bulging way out on to the field, and at one point a coach put his arm around a zebra like he was talking to a child. Ugly, but a convincing win anyway. Omar Cuff had 288 yards.

Weird, too, because we’ve been watching multiple episodes of “The Wire,” a cop show set in Baltimore, with a realistic cast of Negro men in prestigious and lucrative positions for which they are overpaid and undermined by their own, and in which they alternately lie, steal, and duck incoming trying to hang on. Weird that the black coach of Delaware State had that harried same look about him. Weird that the murderous anti-hero of “The Wire” is named Omar, like UD’s 288-yard halfback.

Thought of calling my ex-roomy in Missoula, who’s a diehard Montana U Grizzly fan (they are ranked #2, and a couple of times Geoff and I have had bets when the Blue Hens met the Griz). Gave it up when I despaired of explaining to him the momentous sea change this gridiron battle represents in our tiny fishbowl of a tidewater state. UD the research institution is an original seagrant and landgrant and heavily endowed by Uncle Dupont. Charged with turning out chemists, UD has one of the top Chem Engineering schools in the world. Whole building full of Chinese mathematicians nobody can understand. Meanwhile Del State downstate is poor and black and churns out social workers and the occasional Hall of Fame Pro ballplayer. You’d think they would have a better ball team, but wow, lack of organization and poise really showed through. Maybe that’s not altogether fair – they might have lacked talent, too; hard to tell. The one time the Hornets crossed midfield they were inside UD’s five-yard line and probably would have scored except that the QB for some godforsaken reason just threw the ball up in the air, and a Delaware linebacker grabbed It away.

I’m pretty sure Geoff in Montana would have thought me a racist long before I got through expressing my real feelings about the game – what looked to me to be the worst case of buck fever or just coming up feeling like you’re in way out of your league because Del State was the black college, even though Omar, of course, was a Negro, as were plenty of Hens.

Oh well. I was a kid in a segregated country and now look at us. Hallelujah! I say, but you can see some cobwebs still hanging. We move fast in our society, but gee whiz – I was thinking today that WWII the Big One is as distant to my grandkids as the Civil War was to me. No more so, either. Think about it. No wonder there’s still this animosity from some southerners. My Dad was born in 1910, 45 years after 1865; so there were plenty of old Civil War vets around when he was a kid, and even a handful of very ancient ones in my childhood. Ditto ex-slaves; and there are people walking around today whose parents were slaves.

I met a German guy in Madrid who said “Are you form zat country of George Bush?” and I said “Yeah, I’m sorry.” To which he replied “I’m zorry too, I’m German!” His folks would have been Nazis or at least lived with Nazis or stood by and kept their mouths shut as the Holocaust swept on. As we do today. Over 100,000 dead Iraqis now, and the war has gone on longer than either the Civil war or WWII. Couple million Iraqis have fled the country, and of course they’ll eventually end up here, and the blue collars will bitch when they take their jobs in the first generation and their kids will run the hospitals. Their cousins will be murderous criminals, grossing out the by-then gentrified Russians. A ruined people. Support the troops? Well, what do they do over there? Organize blood drives, rescue puppies, distribute condoms? Kill people?

I don’t hate cell phones per se—I have one and use it. But SOME people…. . In the market down an aisle there are two women. They look like pretty nice women, the one a bit better dressed, the other maybe just came from cleaning house. The better-dressed one acts as if she owns the aisle, spreading out, gesturing widely with both hands, head cocked at a crazy angle to cradle her phone while she waltzes up and down, seemingly unconcerned with what’s on the shelves, and rudely oblivious of the other woman sharing space. We all – anyone within shouting distance—learn way more than we want to about this woman’s divinely glamorous life (she has somebody who will listen to her mindless palaver – we all do it, but when bullshit consumes you it’s a vice).
You see them all over; maybe you are one of them. Folks who feel one up because they have learned to use the latest techno craze AND that puts them in touch 24-7, as they say, with everyone who is anyone to them.
Meaning anybody else – the people waiting behind you in line, the dozen other humans in the Post Office, the little kid you leave in the bank when you go off and start into your car, still yammering away, your husband getting in the opposite door yammering on his (I actually saw this) so the tellers have to run after you with your child—anybody else is not included. Shut off to chance acquaintance, to any real-life entity.
Give me a freakin break. My father when I was a boy used to regale us with tales of his trip, at 16, hitchhiking from Philadelphia to LA with his brother. They wore their Scout uniforms and had all sorts of adventures, at one point bunking down in a jail outside Las Vegas.
When I read Jack Kerouac I was about 22, and as soon as I did I began to hitchhike. I’d always heard it was very dangerous, but then, so is driving. I never had any real trouble, though I logged thousands of miles, hitching from the Midwest back to the Northeast even when my folks offered me plane tickets. I actually avoided flying for years, preferring to take my time to drive myself if it was far and time was short. I drove from Seattle to Denver half-blind, having been splashed in the face by backwash from my car battery when I tried to top it off with the wrong hose. I was sorta stoned, too.
When I was 28 I hitchhiked from Oregon up to Vancouver Island, BC, and across Canada by thumb. I got rides from a drunk guy on a bender and had to hide from him and then wait hours for a ride because no way was I getting back in there and the drunken bastard wouldn’t let me drive. I slept in fields, I slept in a tent, I slept in hostels, I stayed at a guru’s ashram in Winnepeg, I got ride from two gals who worked in a topless bar and hung around the bar for two days drinking Ripple with them. Etc.
28 days it took. 28 days; no contact with mommy or daddy or my sister or my girlfriend or my ex-wife or my friends on myspace.com. Nobody I knew. So I talked to everybody I met. And I knew them. I told the truth. I learned, lots.
Sounds sorta monastic, right? Well, there’s a peace that comes only with tossing out all the garbage and getting right down to the essentials. And it’s hard, very hard, at times, especially the first time; but I’ve traveled since, to Ireland, to Spain, all over Mexico and Canada, solo. Lonely? Yeah, sometimes. Think anybody’s going with you when you croak? Think again.
28 days after leaving Corvallis, Oregon, I got off the bus in Wilmington and had to walk about 6 miles to my folks’ where one of the neighbors called the cops on me. I was unable to get a ride, and I’d had to take a bus in New Jersey – the first public conveyance I’d used other than a couple of freight trains I hopped in Ontario—because the Jersey cops were harassing me.
I just read in the New Yorker a review of the works of some Brit who walked from Munich to Istanbul when he was a teen. Took him four years and changed his life entirely. That man is 93 now and still walking and talking. Here in Middletown I see people in their thirties riding carts in the market because they are so fat.
Now I’m in the chiropractors’ office and this moronic hillbilly sits staring into space until his phone rings, at which point he becomes animated. The little jerk is on stage! I wonder am I just sensitive, but no – the receptionist is talking in normal tones ot a woman standing at her desk, and I cannot hear her. Two women converse in low tones and I can almost touch them. All I hear is a murmur, as of doves in trees in the moonlight in a yard where fireflies bloom. But the hillbilly with the phone – every goddam word, though he’s all the way in another room! This is a doctor’s office you creature of poop! And you could guess what it’s about. 1. Hello! 2. Where I am (my 10-20) 3. Poop delivery 4. When I will be there.
Touching the lives of others is a worthy goal. It’s the Christian thing to do, and the feedback nourishes the giver’s soul. Reaching out with a phone is the slogan for an ad campaign; it’s not the real thing.

I just tracked down the only way I could get Tom Rush’s live album “Trolling for Owls.” The ONLY way I could get it was from “eCast,” which I had never heard of, but which allowed me 25 tunes on a free trial, and downloaded in about 5 minutes. Slick.

There's a book out by Chris Anderson titled THE LONG TAIL, which offers fresh hope to unsigned “indy” artists. Anderson was writing an article about the website Ecast when he noticed a major change in the way music sales work. Previous market research dictated the "80/20 rule," meaning 80 percent of your sales come from 20 percent of your product. This explains why record stores are loathe to stock local artists – they take up valuable space that could be used for more Britneys, Beyonces, and Beatles, the three Bs, the 80 per-centers.

But, just as the internet has changed the political debate, it's changed the way people buy – especially music, books, and video. A brick and mortar store can only stock so many CDs; but an online merchandiser can stock millions of digitalized tunes. Rhapsody, for instance has a library of 1.5 million songs. Sure, U2 will sell the most songs, but Anderson was surprised to find out that about a million of those other songs sell at least once a month! And this is "the long tale."

Of course that means nothing to the editors of Billboard, but it means millions to Rhapsody, so it is to their advantage to list as many artists as they can.

So you can buy my CDs on Amazon! After I've put them on CDBaby, that is. They don't care if I am an old fat bald guy living in Middletown. In cyberspace no one can tell, and every dime I make is a couple cents for them. With a really long tail those pennies add up.

And shelf life doesn't matter. The pop music scene is appalling. You're done at 30, literally a hero today and nobody tomorrow. But Internet sales of music, books, and movies work differently. Anderson compares Blockbuster, ninety percent of whose movies are new releases, to Netflix, with a library of sixty thousand titles. Seventy percent of Netflix' sales are oldies. Same with books: "at Amazon.com … about a quarter of all book sales come from outside the site's top-one-hundred-thousand best-sellers."

What does this mean to "the little guy?" Well, I have about twenty copies left of my 1983 release on vinyl out melting in the barn. Recently a couple of people without turntables mentioned that old chestnut, which is dated because I sound different, it's on vinyl, and I don't do such raunchy material anymore (I am old and fat and bald, etc, and it SCARES people).

KUNAKI
So I typed in "cheap CD reproduction" and found a place called Kunaki.com, a real weird setup in Brooklyn, very impersonal, whose mission statement mentions "Kunaki prefers to be thought of as a machine." In an hour I had downloaded their software (for free). Another hour and I have uploaded a CD made from the vinyl and snapped about twenty pictures of the album cover looking good next to my mandolin on a bright red chair. Sort of folksy.
In three or four hours Kunaki is paid and everything is uploaded and Kunaki says the 30 CDs I order at $1.65 each plus postage will arrive in 3 business days. I say "Oh yeah, sure," figuring at worst I'm out about seventy bucks.
Ay caramba! The CDs arrive in less than 48 hours! I s[eed a half dozen off to CDBaby with thirty bucks and by the end of the week I get an email that two of them have sold!

Whew! My head is spinning.

A BRAVE NEW WORLD
It's a brave new world for somebody whose opus is off beat or not-for-prime time. Me, I realize I'll never be on MTV and I want to strangle Toby Keith.

Though personally I try to resolve these issues everyday – I spend most of my waking hours, when I'm not watching MTV beach parties and swilling Coronas, hugging my life-size Toby Keith doll—I have considered just accepting myself.

It's possible there is a niche, albeit a tiny one, for everybody.
Maybe not in Nashville, but in cyberspace, somebody might want to hear your screams.

AN ADDENDUM About Kunaki. I sold a few of those Kunakii creations. I listened to one first, but then I listened to another and … WHOOPS! Some nasty scritchy sounds. So I’ve been telling anybody who needs to know DON’T USE KUNAKI: Oasis CD now has a small-batch reasonable and quick repro service, and they are first-rate. SO I need to get in touch with anybody who bought the BAD “Animals, Vegetables, and Mineral Springs,” and assure them I’ll send a good copy if they wish, with my apologies.

And I just bought a USB turntable for under $100, with Audacity software included to take out unwanted scratches, etc, and I’m taking another go at converting the vinyl. Then we’re off to Florida!

Here’s how Sweety and Tucker came to live – and die – in our yard.
Janice was sickly so I started puttering and figuring I’d be pretty close to home in case she needed something – like another bag of potato chips, potato chips being next to penicillin both in healing and habit-forming-ness. I was puttering around with some software when Janice started screaming in the living room. There has been a burglary next door so I fought the urge to hide under the bed and willed myself into the living room.

Couple weeks ago I pulled some Giant Swallowtail larvae off our Hercules Club plants, and after I fed them up on plump juicy leaves and cleaned their poop for a couple weeks, their heads fell off and they became inert chrysalli stuck to twigs or the roof of their plastic boxes on the piano. Butterfly Bob next door advised me to put the inert babies in the fridge til spring, since if they hatch in cold weather they’ll just die. But we are in the midst of warm spell, and when I got to the piano there were four big butterflies flopping about in this little box.

Realizing they would bust up their wings I grabbed the box and ran out on the patio. As soon as I took the lid off a large male flew off into the bushes on the north property line, and another one, a smaller female, flopped out on the ground. She had a slightly damaged wing, but that happens anyway after they fly around and get nipped by birds or whatever. They can still fly and she flapped away after about ten minutes drying her wings in the grass, time I spent fussing with the next two and calling Bob over for advice. He’s always SO delighted to give it, and we took pains to get Tucker on a twig so her wings could dry out -- they also need to pump them so that blood or whatever they call it gets into the outer edges.

Well, I think Tuck was already damaged, since her poor wings are sort of curled up and if she’s not bird food by now she probably won’t last long unless the sjort bus comes for her. She’s cute, though. Who knows – an eagle flew over as I was putting her on a butterfly bush. About that time the first hatchling flew back around in great shape. Little Sweety clung to my hand and would not let go. So I’m walking around with this butterfly on my hand for about 15 minutes. I noticed that she was getting some slime on my finger, and when Bob came over for a checkup he informed me that was a sort of afterbirth of the miracle juice which allows them to go from an ugly wormy thang to what looks like a dead leaf to a beautiful butterfly. When they first hatch they are stuffed with this stuff and they need to poop it out and at the same time dry their wings so they can fly.

Bob showed me the best way to hang Sweety on a bush in the sun, and I snapped some fotos and then went for potato chips. Bet on the Eagles, it’s an omen. Or maybe not. The eagle – you may have seen this – was being pestered by a plucky sparrow. Me, I’m a Bucs fan. We’re looking forward to the Everglades, and what’s not to like with a gay red-headed Mexican quarterback?

Somedays, at least. Today Janice is sick, but yesterday I got to go riding with my lovely daughter Amy. The country we rode through, Chester County, PA, was hilly and lush with fall-bright leaves. I had the better horse, Bubba, which was good since I haven’t ridden for a while and she has been haunting these stables. Amy took the opportunity to show off her equestrian skills, which was fine with me; girl really knows her horses. She showed me how to signal the horse better, and cautioned me that these mounts are ridden all the time by women, so kicking them even slightly is a real insult and doesn’t get you anywhere because you just confuse the poor beast, which, in my case, would make two of us and total confusion.

Bubba was NOT confused when two fawns bolted across our path, literally scaring the poop out of Amy’s mount, Tucker, who is a short-bus horse, poor thing. Bubba stepped right over it and didn’t bat an eye at the white tails disappearing in the brush. Then when I came home and pulled into the driveway Bucky, our local fawn, went crashing out of the tomatoes or whatever he’s eating over there and bounced off into the woods. Whatever it is he really likes it, since Jan said she saw him recently, too.

Remember when they said computers were going to be labor-saving devices? Ha! They said we’d never use paper again! Oh sure. I just bought six reams of paper, my second box this year. I didn’t even know what a ream was until I started writing on a PC.

And labor-saving? With cell phones and email they can nail you wherever you are – at the store, on the beach. So you never leave work.

But what the hey. At Lonnie Fields’ farm outside Hartly, for the Annual Delmarva Folk Festival, there was a line of porta-potties featuring the very latest in potty-technology. I mean don’t you LOVE the new potties? The moment I open the door I’m in … Norway? Scotland in the heather? Wow do they smell great! And at Lonnie’s they even had the kind with the waterless hand soap, so you can cup your hands up to your face an hour after you leave the potty and just breathe in that Rocky Mountain sage – Aspen? No matter.

I was expounding on the joys of the new potties with my neighbor, a young woman with black hair and two kids. She was almost as rapturous as I was until I mentioned : “The new ones even have a URINAL for the guys.”

“Oh,” she said. “That confused me. I thought it was…”

“No, you didn’t … a sink?”

“That or one of those baby-changing stations.” Sure I can see it. A baby bath. Probably they need a sign for the Moms.

Well, anyway, the urinal gives the guys, at least, a chance to put the seat down. I hate to look in there. It’s depressing. A memento mori -- where we all end up.

An old friend has offered to rent us his doublewide in Chokoloskee, a 2-mile long island fishing village next to Everglade City. There are several books out about Chokoloskee and Mr. Watson, who lived offshore on an even smaller island. When the Chokoloskee-ites finally figured out that he was hiring migrants to work for him and instead of paying them he would kill them, they got together when he came in for supplies and the whole town murdered him. Now every year they put on a play reenacting the killing of Mr. Watson. Peter Matheissen wrote a book by that title.
Sounds like a fun place, si?

I decided to drive the van to Nashville, since I had a gig in Birmingham, Alabama, and needed to take sound equipment, so I packed lots of CDs for the boredom; but actually the radio was pretty good, what with all the talk show debate over Michael Vick and I gotta say COME ON FOLKS, THIS IS ALL JUST BECAUSE HE’S BLACK!

Like, hey, who doesn’t have fighting dogs. Raise your hands. Liars!

I mean I remember when I was growing up in Woodbrook, a comfy suburb of Wilmington, DE, hub of the DuPont chemical empire, built on Nylon and Napalm. I mean we weren’t , but dog fighting was in our blood, I guess, or maybe it’s primal, or maybe we picked it up from the scented air that wafted up from the magnolias my mother fussed over, I don’t know. All I know is that dogfighting, like hot dogs and circuses and those magnolias, got etched into my cerbellum (hypocampus? Dythyrambus, lebistesreticulatus???) early. Anyway, I can still see it clear as yesterday’s wine: a balmy evening in the burbs, Dad home from the golf course, gin and tonics and the barbecue and then maybe Lawrence Welk. Or if it was still too hot to sleep, we’d retire to chaise lounges on the patio.

About 9 PM Mr. Dallas would come over from next door with his hedge clippers in his hand and sweat on his brow and cock his eye at Dad.

“Wanna fight?” he’d say and laugh.

And Dad would snicker and hold up his Beefeaters and lime “Double or nothing and the loser dies, dude.”

“Proper, I am down with that, my crunk negro!” Mr. Dallas beamed and ran off to get Freckles, an ancient fat sort of Beagle that I watched when the Dallases were off on their yacht or exercising their polo ponies.

Into the pit that my Dad and I had dug out back we’d dump Mopsy, our fifteen-year old half-blind Cocker Spaniel bitch. Mopsy had to be dragged to the pit, but Freckles was all jacked up on Grasshoppers which Mr. Dallas had found out she loved. Grasshoppers are a girly blender drink made with Crème de Menthe, crème, and crème de cacao and taste like a mint milkshake but pack a wallop, especially if you’re a dog.

They didn’t give fighting dogs blood tests in those days and that’s one thing I’d like to see enstated now that this brouhaha over Mike Vick has brought dog fightiing out of its closet stage and will of course quickly propel it onto UTube and thence to Pay Per View, where I only HOPE it will out strip Jerry Springer and those Ultimate Fight shows in the ratings. But they’ll really need blood tests, because I rememeber I got so tired of having to shampoo Mopsy after she’d taken another ass-whooping from Freckles, whose MO was to knock her down with a swipe of her over stuffed hip. Mopsy, not being much of a fighter, really, would instinctively show her tummy and wag her tail like crazy, waiting for that friendly scratch, at which point in the fight Freckles would give her a good bite and then puke up half a blender of grasshoppers and pass out.
Mr. Dallas would whoop and demand that Dad execute Mopsy, and dad would always hem and haw and claim that our guillotine was on the fritz, and Dad would mumble something and hand over a wad of bills and I’d get to wash the puke off Mopsy.

Memories…

PIGEON FORGE BUS HIJACK Dolly Parton is from Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, home to Pigeon Forge Radio, which plays comedy and Tennessee trivia. Having driven past Pigeon Forge last week on my way to NASHCAMP outside Nashville, I now know that Tennessee river pearls are the state jewel, and lady bugs and some other pest are the state bugs. Not only that, but courtesy of Milton Crabtree, who does his schtick on PFR 9:30 AM, I heard about the bus hijack which took place near Pigeon Forge shortly before I passed through.

“Yep, we had a hijack really shook up the town. Seems this feller hijacked a busload a Japanese tourists. The bus driver went in to use the rest room and this feller hops aboard and takes off with all them Japanese tourists. Hit a pothole and broke the axle though. When he seed he couldn’t go nowhere he took off through the bushes. Cops expect to bring him in soon, though. Got over a thousand pictures of im.”

NASHCAMP I didn’t know what to expect from the songwriters at the workshop in NASHCAMP, about an hour west of Nashville in an antebellum mansion on a hill in Cumberland Furnace. I tend to get all closed up and hissy because I think some big cheese in the record industry should have discovered me by now, at least before I turned old and rotten but here I am and whadda ya gonna do? I’d be delighted if I could just make everybody laugh.

In fact they did.

When I decided to go to Nashcamp for the weekend workshop I called my buddy Kenn in Birmingham, because it looked to be about three hours south of Nashville (actually 4 or 5). He was a hero, booking me to play on Saturday AM at the Jefferson County Truck Growers’ Market. Kenn talked the growers into paying me handsomely, because the guy who did it last year died; and when they balked he told them to go shopping themselves. They came back. Stuff costs money.

BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA The Birmingham gig was sweet, given that I don’t expect much when it’s the first time and only a few folks have heard of me. I did have airplay on Kenn’s radio show, but how many of his listeners showed up at the gig? Who knows – well Kenn does, but I just went with the flow and managed to get two nice ladies on stage. One sang “Amazing Grace” wonderfully. The other lady, Erma, sang along with “One Ton Tomato,” which Kenn uses as bumper music on his radio show “Home Grown Tomatoes” (there’s a link in “links” here). Kenn also joined me on an earlier rendition of “One Ton Tomato” and his theme song “Home Grown Tomatoes.” But Erma refued to return to Nashville with me because she was married.

“So am I,” I told her, but she looked stardom in the eye and flinched when it beckoned. Oh well.

I also judged the tomato contest and gave my vote to the largest – 2 pounds—tomato, Usually I find the largest to have the most bland taste, but here no. I told Kenn that Jersey tomatoes had his all beat, and he reminded me they’d had a 100-year record drought. The barbecue was delicious. I told Kenn now I could get in the Great Barbecue Debate.

THE GREAT BARBECUE DEBATE Folks from up north wouldn’t understand – it’s a southern thang – but shortly after I arrived at Nashcamp the southern guys, from the Carolinas, Georgia, Missouri, began the Great Barbecue Debate, which, along with attitudes toward women (chivalrous in the south vs. Homer Simpsonic in the nawth), race (no comment), and the land (all the southern guys I met shared my sustainable-ag mentality, even when they lived in the city.

Maybe it was because it was lunchtime, I don’t know, but I had a flashback to my Florida days, when my friend Mike Reark left his bar and grill in charge of anybody he could find to pursue the more lucrative and gentile sport of catering huge barbecues, even following “The Cracker Trail” – a cross-Florida horse excursion which celebrates the days before AC and snowbirds in huge flocks. These guys take barbecue as seriously as cops do doughnuts or my cat does the pristine condition of her bung.

So I told Kenn that now I could boats that Alabama barbecue was hands down the best, even though in Nashville, one of the southrons explained, there’s “Judge Roy Bean’s Barbecue,” imported grill by grill and stolen by stone from someplace in Texas and reputedly the Barbecue to end all barbecues.

“Their brisket mmm melts in yer mouth.” I couldn’t bring myself to ask what a brisket was, but when I got home I had an invite in the email form Kenn, to his next barbecue-it-yourself, with a picture included of the cooking device itself. I cut and pasted a picture of the world’s largest barbecue (in Texas natch) and sent it ot him sayin it was in Delaware. He didn’t believ me of course, but I may have interested him in dragging some Alabama agriculture up here for the Punkin Chunk or the Artser Eat.

But getting back is a culture shock. I mean I just went to the grocery store and fully half the people there were morbidly obese . Guys half my age with guts hanging over their belts out as far as their head are the rule, and there were people on those little motorized carts and a couple guys with oxygen bottles. I mean in Florida those guys would be OLD, and not fat either. Here. Boy. J says I hate fat people but my grandma was sweet as pie and under five feet tall and so fat they had to weigh her on a meat scale at the butcher. “Stout” was the term they used, which meant she needed two canes to lever herself out of a chair, and her backside went out as far as the canes she held in front. Sweetest woman I ever knew, laughed at everything I said, and I loved her dearly. But nobody wanted to BE like her. These people, what do they lack? Love? Certainly not money or food—they consume tons of that.

Consumers we are trained to be, by TV, by school, and now by the Fuehrer.. Is it because of this blessed prosperity, so you have so much you want to really enjoy it so you need to ingest it, amnd then you hate yourself so you eat for comfort?

Right after Erma sang I got paid and got out of there, courtesy of Kenn’s wife Lisa who helped by wrapping cords. Blah blah and kiss kiss and see ya later and I hit the highway for Cmberland Furnace, Tennesse. Didn’t take me as long to get back up there because the Findley Street market is on the north of Birmingham downtown and on Saturday AM there was not much traffic.

It had been 105 and Alabama and Tennessee are having a drought; so when I was under the tent out the sun and there was a breeze most of the time the day was more pleasant than my humid and buggy back yard I Middletown. But driving to the Furnace I was DRY,and wished for a beer. But the camp regs read “no alcohol,” since it’s often rented to church groups and in fact we were being followed by a week with an AA group.

So I was delighted to find I sure had the right roommate! Ol’ Fred (not his name) from St Louis way had three or four coolers full of beer, and some of the buys from the Carolinas or Georgia hds brought a large mason Jar of moonshine, with strawberries soaking in it.

I got home Tuesday night. I was allowing myself an extra day but as usual just said fuggit and drove 700 or so miles, taking the occasional nap. No problem there, but on arrival I could see we'd had much rain, it was very humid and the grass was nine feet tall. So I cut about 2/3 of the back and then retired for the day when my 1912 Gibson Mandolin (that's right -- 95 years old and in primo condition) arrived UPS from Geroge Gruhn in Nashville. WOW! did I go overboard! Now I have to play all the time and really learn mandolin or get a job at the carwash to pay for it. Well, I have some nice work coming up!

There's butterflies all over the place and I gotta put up some pix! They fly right up to me when I am near their bush. My big giant female laid a passle o' eggs on the Hercules Club, which grew at least a foot last week. Think I got good pix of the blessed event (it's not a choice! It's a caterpillar! I brake for Pipevine Swallowtails!).

Eric, 34. Died in Monroeville, NJ while I was gone. I was lucky to spend a coupe days with him playing, singing, and laughing, but I thought he’d be there when I got back. NOTHING IS PROMISED!

In Nashville I went to the Open Mic at the Bluebird Cafe and didn't get on. But I
got a card that sez NEXT TIME I go to the head of the line. Also met Rodrigo, a Brazilian student who said he'd come see me on my next time. Nice talking with him and another guy who works at the Ryman Auditorium – quit college to just DO IT. Wanted to hear him play but got antsy and DROVE to Knoxville and them HOME HOME HOME.

NOW we leave in ½ hour for Avon Park and then EVERGLADES CITY, FL.


.

Howdy howdy! Well look at the big dummy now. The guy (moi) who moved to Montana in January is starting his tour of the Deep South in August. Last year at this time I was in Ireland -- that made sense. But I know I'll learn a lot in Nashville and make some friends, and maybe I'll get a gig. I HAVE a gig in Birmingham, thanks to my ol' buddy Kenn Gann, host of the "Home Grown Tomatoes" show. At the Oldest Farmers' Market in Alabama, open 24/7/365 for the large 75 years! He told me how many million tomatoes they sell, but it smooshed the calculator in my tiny Delaware imagination.
Fall starts out as KIDDY TIME! You might want to bring the leetle ones to WINTERTHUR! Or CEDAR LANE! Or FELTON! Time to learn the alphabet all over...whoopee! Now I get to draw bunnies!

I knew it would be a good day when Don’s vintage MG burbled into the drive just as I’d spread the pavilion’s parts out on the grass and started to scratch my head. With some duct tape and Don’s engineering genius, we were able to get the thing up in time for the sun to hit that part of the yard and warm up the bugs, who decided the pavilion was theirs and kept everybody out except for a couple of partiers who went in there to light their pipes. Later when the evening wind kicked up it graciously knocked the thing down with nobody inside but the bugs and screw them anyway.

Not all bugs, of course.

Butterfly Bill came over and invited guests for a tour of his butterfly flight house. Well, the second tour I requested because Diego’s wife was bouncing up and down with curiosity, and she has sworn to be here when the Giant Swallowtails fly. For now she had to be content with staring at them – and they stare back. These are not your ordinary caterpillars, but huge things about and inch-and-a-half long, who tear up foliage in big gulps and then spin their little sleeping bag, to emerge as the biggest butterfly in this region anyway, mistaken for a bird if you don’t look twice.

Happily the Evil Spirit came and left early and it too was mistaken for a bird. This was about 10 AM, and I’d been in the tent helping out with the pipe. In that dreamy state, under the mulberry trees’ shade, I was tuning my Martin as Wassy, graciously down from New Jersey, pounded out that lovely tune “Banjo” on the keys.

When he said, “Hey is that a hummingbird?”

I said “No my city friend. Oh Christ it’s one of those giant dang hornets.” One of whom stuck me a couple years ago as I was mowing down the side yard next to Bill’s, and when I went to brush him off just drove in deeper and brought me up with pain so intense it was like getting a really nasty needle. My head was sweating and I had to stop mowing to tear this bastard off my arm, where he’d drilled the fleshy part of my tricep – the part that on fat women jiggles and waves in the breeze as they stand in line for greasy deli meats and scream at their kids.

I said “Run!” remembering the time I burned out the nest of hornets and they chased me right up to the back door. On the Solstice, my Birthday, there seemed to be only the one, and in fact his visit was balanced much later in the day, as evening fell and we sprawled on the patio, when a yearling buck – a Good Spirit -- blessed the party, coming over from the northern pasture and nuzzling among the clover back by the woods path, stopping once in awhile to straighten up and gaze back at us.

Solstice: sol=Latin “sun,” stice from “sistere”= to stay still as “status, state, station,” etc) .

Then on Saturday I was the first “Caucasian”* to grace the stage of the Seventeenth Annual African-American Celebration in Dover. The third Saturday in June has been an African-American holiday dating back to 1865. On June 19th of that year, “Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. Note that this was two and a half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation - which had become official January 1, 1863.”

Note to self: beware of Texans – impeach when possible.

Good fun, organized by my friend Reuben “Hurricane” Salters, who puts the thing together. His terrific drum/dance group, Sankofa, performed all day.

So this wonderness continued until today, a day during which I crapped out, overextended myself, pushed the envelope too far. The reason? WORK. Argghh – no more of that.

My new CDs—1000 of them, arrived on July 3rd. Only momentarily until they go all around and are p for sale etc etc/

But the great thing, THE CAPPER: my daughter Amy came to see me on the 4th of July!

Howdy howdy, I’m all excited about some upcoming gigs! JUNE 15TH I’ll be part of a POETRY/FICTION READING at the CRIMSON MOON in Wilmington, given by the DE Literary Connection. As a switch, they asked me to sing, and as a matter of fact, my new album BIRTHDAY TRAMPOLINE (Release date by July 4th I hope) has some sorta poetic stuff on it; so it will work.
Then another first on the 23rd. I will be the first “Caucasian” to play at the Dover AFRICAN-AMERICAN FESTIVAL. Rueben “Hurricane” Salters decided he wanted some diversity, and he’s my man – runs a dance group called Sankofa – and wants me to play a bit ‘o Blues and I will oblige. I wanted to tell Reuben that we Irish don’t come from the Caucasus, which is in Russia, I think, but I managed to keep my mouth shut and will be good. Except I did make sure I wasn’t going to be in the dunking booth.
On the 27th you MAY be able to see me on Tim Quall’s TV show from Wilmington Cable, Channel 22 (?). We can’t get it here, but last time I was on they gave me a DVD, and the show was lots of fun and I must say I was pretty good TV, which is why I’m back and will be featured MORE this time (Means I get to sit on the couch!!! WOO WOO).
July 4th I’ll be at NEWARK LIBERTY DAY at the UD stadium, with shows at 4 and 6 PM. Will sing the “Star-Spangled Banner,” and might do it on my Fender, too, ala Jimi. Hope to see my cowboy buddy and Roscoe the Wonder Horse there again.
7/10 I’ll be in Wilmington doing an outdoor lunchtime concert between the City and County Buildings and they’ll also broadcast that on Channel 22. On the 11th I’ll kick off an exhibit of paintings by Delaware Art Fellows by singing a set at 5:30 at the Biggs Museum in Dover, and there will be more music and speeches after that. Biggs’ info is on my Calendar, if you’re inclined to come. They’ll have cookies and stuff, and the other Fellows are jolly good. The exhibits are interesting and well-done, especially if you’re into area history.
More stuff on my Calendar at www.crabmeat.net, but one funny gig comes up October 1st. The DE Division of the Arts, who awarded me a Fellowship this year if I didn’t already mention that, has an “Arts Summit” at Dover Downs. As if art and slot machines weren’t a strange enough combo, they have asked me to somehow present the Budgetary Impact Statement in a more entertaining manner. Somebody at their meeting said I was just the guy. Believe it or not (and you will if you know me) I am REALLY up for this.
Ciao. Happy summertime. Our butterflies are starting to hatch out and a big Palimedes was flittering around here just a few minutes ago. Gotta get this album stuff done and contracts out and the camera ready. Next month I’m working with a migrant summer school in Harrington, so it will be batty-Crab for 6 weeks, but mi espanol will improve – as will the ol’ bank account.
Tomorrow night is the last of the Sopranos. My friend Joey Perillo was “John Stefano” on the show just a couple weeks ago. He’s also in the regular cast of “The Wire.” Good guy.

Saturday Morning: Getting ready to go to the Big Apple where tonight my good friend Alan Wasserman will be giving a recital in Carnegie Hall. The recital corresponds with Alan’s 50th birthday, and as he is now halfway through his life it’s a good jumping-off to higher endeavors. In fact, Alan will be touring China later this month, along with a passel of his piano students, who will participate in some score written for 100 pianos played by 50 Norteamericano and 50 Jungwo Ren. Of course since so many of the American kids are Jungwo-Meigwo Ren, the thing will be overwhelmingly Chinese.

Strangely enough, the Chinese kids, at least the ones from New York, don’t SOUND Chinese at all, but interpret the music very European-ly. Much in the way that so many hot Japanese mandolin pickers take to Bluegrass like roast duck to bok choy. Okay, so I’m doing stereotype-shtick, but as one who spends a LOT o’ time with Chinese folk, believe me they are even more food-obsessed than Americans commonly perceive them to be. I mean I think “Chinese,” and I think food, then I think “whoops – profiling,” and then I think – “Yeah sure, well that’s where SARS comes from, from the land of Jeff Chan’s roots – Jeff Chan who flew, with all his relatives, to Vancouver when one of their clan secured some bear paws to eat. Jeff whose ethnic novel is titled “Eat Everything Before you Die.”

Outside from the more dangerous food fetishes, it’s a treat to eat with Wong. Last time we hooked up in LA his Japanese buddy Glen – a sweet guy with a gentle smile and a long grey ponytail -- picked us up and took us to a Thai-town where a Thai mechanic who seemed to owe Al a boon treated us to a banquet of lobsters and flowing beer and wine. Glen’s wife was from Guadalajara, and wanted to show us the Tequila Fest down there in October; but I believe they are in Japan now.

Another night Frank Chin brought some medical-grade to our room and I drove us to Korea town where we ate a pumpkin filled with seafood and strangely enough cheese. I remarked on the cheese – never a staple in the Asian diet, and Frank speculated it was “GI food” one of those anomalies added in to the local diet as a novelty when an army invades. Frank introduced me to food-strolling: we wandered among the tables looking at what other folks had ordered and seeing what looked good. I thought this pretty rude until I noticed the people at the next table definitely scoped out our spread before they sat down to order.

Well, tonight we’ll dine at Puttanesca with Al’s mom Florrie, wife Midge, and his gal Linda from long ago, who lives in London and only gets over once in a great while but wouldn’t miss this one. My wife remarks on how Al and I manage to maintain long-time friendships with some very sweet women, and I reflect: “not so hard if you don’t marry them.”