Annual Bluegrass

It is hard for me to go a full year without at least one day at a bluegrass or old-time festival of some kind, but we had for the past couple, so today I took advantage of the annual labor day festival up in Kendallville to hear some live banjar. When you are not around a banjo, the idea of a banjo is funny. But when there is a banjo near you and it is ringing, you realize that is is not funny at all: it is, I don't know, not funny. It's cool.

A lot of the bands that played were full of young'ns. My favorite of the night, Midnight Ramblers, looked just old enough to drive their van from their home in Virginia--after they changed out of their awesome big white hats and matching pink shirts (really, they looked awesome--I wish I could pull that look off sometimes) they had this quasi-Abercrombie & Fitch look to them. It was a jarring change.

The crowd at these things often skews old, though; I don't know where the young fans are. B isn't one yet. He just wanted to go find dogs to pet.

The highlight of this festival is always the one or two groups that get up there and play some great clawhammer or at least something old, maybe something Ralph Stanley played. And then there are always the hats that you get to see, and you get to watch people eating a lot. A lot of people eating a lot.

A skatepark fundraiser bake sale. How fantastic is that! I stood around this booth for awhile thinking maybe that all the local skaters might ride through and raid the place, doing ollies or whatever on the pies, and how funny that would be, but they never came.

Don't even ask me what B ate for dinner. I'm too ashamed. But when you're around people eating the way these people were, your idea of what is normal gets warped quickly.

Raising the stakes

Look at this cool invite Sarah Jane made for our club. Cath saw it and said, "we have to get serious about this." Time for practice.

Kaifei

Our own Mason Hunter just released an ep under the name Kaifei, and it sounds a lot like a record made by Panda Bear's imaginary friend. I don't think Mason would disagree. It's great stuff. In one of the comments below, he gave the url where you can download it.

If I remember right, he told me that he produced most of this using a program called Fruity Loops. I downloaded the demo and it's pretty danged cool. I can almost imagine myself using it to fulfill my dream of becoming a DJ--even better, a vegan, skate boarding, documentary film-making DJ. School has started, but maybe I'll give that dream a shot next summer.

Cut it out.

What a cool idea. I wish I had seen these examples of book cut-outs before we made ours in Club last spring. I have a couple of books left over and a lot of Mod-Podge, so I might have to try something different. It would take an incredibly sharp knife to make those, though--we had a fair bit of trouble with our big squares.

Assistantships, cont.

As an fyi to this year's seniors, I am willing and able, I decided, to take assistants for any period of the day except 7th. If you're interested, send me an email.

Harvest Rule

If you grow tomatoes, it is a rule that, when your tomatoes come in, you have to take this exact picture. It is part of keeping your garden's Martha certification or something. So . . here is ours.

I must be the laziest vegetable gardener. I have watered that garden exactly none times--oh, but I do love to knock down weed starts with this old-timey hoe I got from my gramma Pierce. I forgot that I did that--so, not so lazy, maybe.

Catching up

Okay, that was some nice time off. First, some older snaps from a couple weeks back at the county fair:

Here is Michelle in her favorite barn at the fair, with this crazy kind of bunny that has to be the fluffiest thing in nature. Really, if every home had a couple of these sitting around the living room to pet every once in awhile, we, as a nation, would be a lot more chill.

Mike, showing my kids how to steal their first peak at a tractor pull. B was pretty into it.

The first "freak show" style exhibit I've ever noticed at our fair. And yes, we all paid to see her, and yes, it was sad and we felt bad afterwords, or at least weird.

And . . . school is coming. I know, because the marching band for the school near my home has begun practice and as always I can just hear the drum line practicing their Indian-drum style war-chant. It always makes the idea of the first day of school take on an ominous tone, but I'm excited for it, myself. School! Any AP kids from last year who are looking for an assistantship during 1st period, let me know.