Weekend Update

But here's a weekend update while I have time.

I was sitting in the Speech Therapy waiting room on Friday talking to the other mothers and MerleFest came up. This woman (who as an undergraduate dated Rick Fox!) who I'm friendly with loves Elvis Costello so I promptly gave her Friday's tickets because I was too wiped out to go. I hope she went, cause I heard it was an awesome set. Nonetheless, we exchanged e-mails and I hope to hang out with her and her husband sometime because they have a booming social life as well as a child with special needs and that's a rare combination.

We got settled in the "Little Pickers" area right at 2:00 PM and who did we run into first? But Josh and Alex Boyer. Among 80,000 festival goers and we randomly ran into the Boyers three separate times. But I'm not complaining. MerleFest is not the same if you don't run into the Boyers. Alex (who was born the day after Grace) has been to 6 MFs and he's only 5! Then Monica and her husband walked up and it was a little mini Watauga High School reunion.

The kids wanted to jump and climb and swing and run around so that's mainly what we did all day. David and I have come to grips that MF with kids is a fantastic place for kids to play with excellent music in the background rather than a fantastic music-listening experience with excellent activities for kids. The kids ran around, played, danced, ate, drank sodas with caffeine and had a blast. We tried to catch a set by the Infamous Stringdusters on the Hillside stage, when one tune in, Grace literally somersaulted down a steep hill, and spilled her Sierra Mist all over her. It was all I could do to not laugh, because she was completely in tears, but we decided it was time to keep a movin.

The musicians of the 20th Homecoming Jam (Sam Bush, Doc Watson, Earl Scruggs, Jerry Douglas, Bela Fleck, etc) delivered in high fashion and it was all very pleasant to the ears, but we spent that set literally as far back as you could be in the Little Peckers, I mean Little Pickers tent watching over the kids in the sandbox. Conclusion: David needs to build a really big sandbox to put in our backyard. Not one of those dinky plastic sandboxes in the shape of a turtle, either; a big one where they and the entire neighborhood can get in and play. If he builds it, they will play. They played happily for over an hour while David and I sat back and actually got to talk to each other. It was nice. I was too tired to stay for the last act, Alison Krauss, who didn't even begin until 9:30 PM, and we left MF probably earlier than we ever have. Maybe it has to do with getting free tickets (thanks, Jane!) but I wasn't consumed this year with cramming as much music into the schedule as I possibly could.

And honestly? The best music I heard all day was a 5-minute set that I happened on in a guitar-selling tent where three musicians were unassumingly taking turns with the lead on a favorite fiddle tune: "Arkansas Traveler."

Yesterday was a lovely time catching up with Kate, Daniel, Sheila and my dad (although, the visit was in two shifts but that's something I can't get into now) and I came to another conclusion: visits to Boone where we stay only one night rather than two or three are perfect. I think it's always better to leave wanting more than the other way around.

Friday Haiku With Bird

Singing the Blues

Not seeing Elvis.
Just gave my tickets away.
What I crave is sleep

Singing the Blues

Roots. Music. Singing the Blues

I've been thinking a lot lately about roots music, my roots, my music, etc.

I spent the better part of my first two years of life hanging out in or around my dad's drum set. He kept a pillow in his bass drum to muffle /improve the sound, and I often took naps on the pillow in the drum. Twenty-four years later, my dad reunited with his band from the 70's and played that same drum set at my wedding reception. (By then I was too big to crawl in the bass drum to grab a few minutes of shut-eye, but believe me, by the end of the day, I wanted to!)

Tonight we're heading back to MerleFest, but this year my dad won't be there. The line-up has just gotten too impure for him, I believe. He's incredulous that musicians like Elvis Costello will be there this year, and that happens to be the act I'm most excited about hearing. MerleFest is celebrating its 20th year this year, which means the first one was held in 1987, when I was 15. My mom and dad went to the very first MerleFest, a celebration of American acoustic musicians created to honor Doc Watson's talented son, Merle, who died in a freak accident in 1985. My brother, sister and I were invited to go with our parents to the first MerleFest (which my mom fondly remembered was so small and "grass-roots" that people sat on hay bails in front of the "main stage" that was the back of a tractor trailer. Now, more than 80,000 people attend). I declined, however, probably due to the backlash I still felt over missing Cheap Trick not long before.

Cheap Trick came to Boone in the 1980's, the same evening that Bela Fleck was performing at ASU's Farthing Auditorium. Bela Fleck is a world-renowned virtuoso banjo player who was just getting started in the early '80's. My dad was friends with people who were friends with him (and, in fact, Bela Fleck spent time in our living room back in the day), and thought it was more important to expose his children to the culture of Fleck's music than the electric sounds of Cheap Trick. I wasn't happy about being forced to go to another bluegrass music thing (especially at the expense of missing Cheap Trick!), but I was used to it. It had happened all my life. I can't tell you how many fiddlers' conventions, Appalachian Folk festivals, and barn dances I went to growing up. Those kinds of things were as much a part of my childhood as hearing the names of the musicians on whom my dad is writing the definitive pieces: Merle Travis, Lulu Belle and Scotty Wiseman and Etta Baker. Those names to me were like names of family members--distant aunts and uncles whose names I heard a lot and knew were somehow linked to my dad (and some of whom I'd even met before, again in my living room) but who I didn't know well.

Now, I'm beginning to "know" these musicians deeper and when people who know my dad ask what he's working on these days, I can say with confidence and knowledge, "He's still writing about Merle Travis and Lula Belle and Scotty, but he's also working on a piece on Etta Baker, the 93-year old African American NC guitarist who died last September."

Last Sunday, my dad and I had a long phone conversation about the research he's doing on Etta Baker and how Paul Clayton was involved in "discovering" Etta--and Clayton's influence (and crush) on Bob Dylan and the personal ties my dad has to the people who were involved with the origin of Dylan's "Tambourine Man," and Peggy Guggenheim's cousin Diane's role in the Folk Revival movement--and on and on. I was drawn to everything my dad was saying, and it was 2 parts interesting because it just was, but it was 3 parts interesting because of his connection and interest in all of this and my respect for my dad's life's work. My dad considers his best written work yet to be the critical essay he published in 2003, The Three Doc(k)s: White Blues in Appalachia, where he juxtaposes African-American blues with Appalachian white blues using definitions of the primary blues aesthetic and the basic elements of a folkloric event: text, texture, and context. To read the beginning of this highly informed piece, click here.

I respect my dad's commitment and scholarship to the pure forms and definitions of folk music
yet I reject the rigidity and limitations those definitions impose. My dad won't give Gillian Welch and David Rawlings a fair listen because he'd rather hear that type of music sung by authentic women of Appalachia rather than GenXers from LA. His loss. And my musician cousins in Tallahassee, FL, who turned me onto traditional Irish music and bought me my first penny whistle (I now own 5!) have made their position clear that "learning directly by ear from an authentic traditional Irish musician is the best way to learn the subtleties of style in the true aural tradition that the printed page cannot depict." I'm sure that's true but I don't live in Ireland, and it hasn't stopped me from playing jigs, reels, and hornpipes with Bob and Cindy (and Matt and Kim). I was over at Bob and Cindy's house two nights ago playing my penny whistle and flute with them and even singing. And you know what? We sounded good. And we had fun.

I learned how to read music when I was six and started taking piano lessons and that skill has served me well providing enjoyment to me and others. My mom used to give me a dime everytime I played "The Rose" or "Run for the Roses" on the piano, and my grandmother loved it when I played "The Entertainer." She loved it so much that of her eight grandchildren, she willed her baby grand piano to me. My dad makes me play Bach's "Prelude in C" every chance he gets, and I think I'm going to start charging him to listen. (But my rates have gone up). Piano at age 6, violin at 9, flute at 12, guitar at 22 and pennywhistle a year later. I think I'll take up the mandolin next. I know I'm not great at any of it, but I'm good enough, and good enough is good enough for me.

I can't deny my dad's musical influence on what I like and what I play. (How could I? Classical, jazz, blues, bluegrass, gospel, rock-n-roll--it's pervasive. In fact, my dad said over 20 years ago that the only other profession he would rather do than being a college professor is to be a full-time drummer for ZZ-Top). But you know what? I had this funny feeling yesterday as I was looking at this year's MerleFest schedule. Yes, I'm excited about Elvis Costello and Sam Bush and Alison Krauss and Tony Rice and so many more. But I also had this funny reminiscent feeling of "No, don't make me go to the African-American Stringband Tradition tent." And I had this fantasy that if my dad was going to be there this year and by some chance of fate so was Cheap Trick? I'd say, "Daddy, can you watch Grace and Johnny for awhile? I'll be back in an hour."

Birthday Parties, Bubbles and Ballgames

This past Saturday I was out and about from 8:30 AM-8:30 PM. In the morning I had to work a few hours while David had the kids. Then I rushed back home to pick up the kids (but not David) to drive to Raleigh for Rosie Scott-Benson's b-day party. Rosie's grandfather knows my dad and asked what he was up to (which I'll write about in another post) and shared some stories about when they were at the ASU "Loft" together in NYC. Then we met David and 2 1/2 other families at a Durham Bulls game that no one watched. With 7 adults and 6 kids, spilled beer onto heads, cotton-candy in hair and all over faces, and a never-ending plea for "more corn dogs," it was impossible to have everyone together at the same time. So if you were there but missed the following exchange, I think it's worth repeating.

Me: Izzy, can I borrow your bubbles for a minute? I'm going to pour a little of your bubble juice into mine because I'm running low.

Izzy: I do it.

Me: Let's do it together.

(I guide the pouring of her bubble juice into my container, but when I'm ready to stop pouring, she's not and her bubble juice spills into Johnny's halfway melted sno cone cup)

Me: Oops

(A few minutes later Johnny returns to his sno cone that I'd forgotten about)

Johnny: Oooh, this tastes terrible!

Quick Stuff

Just when I thought our kids couldn't be any happier living in our neighborhood, on Sunday evening when we were out enjoying the great Earth-Day weather, another neighbor walked up and wanted to know if we wanted the swingset in his yard that his godson has outgrown. It's the metal old-school kind that I grew up with, and David and the neighbor literally picked it up from one yard and moved it to ours. It's slightly rusty and it's the kind where the poles raise an inch or so off the ground when the kids swing too high (sending me into cardiac arrest) but it's great, and they love it! I especially love the two double swings that they can get on and enjoy without needing me to push, but what I love the most are the conversations that they come up with when they think I'm not listening--just two free kids, pretending to be their favorite characters and getting lost in their own little worlds--just priceless kid-chatter.

There's so much going on these days at work and in life that I can hardly see straight. Unfortunately, the CROP WALK got rained out a week ago, but I met my fundraising goal and I thank you to those who donated...(I know who you are). Friday and Saturday are MerleFest and a quick visit to Boone then upcoming Literacy Council fundraisers, music parties, dance recitals, more work events, visits from cousins, I can't wait! It's times like this that David says, "I think I like it better when you're depressed."

One Year of Blogging

Guess what, y'all? Today's my one-year blogging anniversary! It's been a fun year and to mark the occasion, I'm starting something interactive. I'm calling it "Friday Haikus With Bird." (Think along the lines of "Tuesdays With Morrie," just more fun) Every Friday, I'll pick a topic on which to write a Haiku. You're invited to participate. Most of my readers don't ever comment so this might be something I do solo. If so, so be it. I'm not afraid of looking stupid. Today's topic is birds (or Bird). Why am I called Bird anyway? 33 years ago, when I was 2, I was down at the river in Owensboro, KY with my grandparents. I put my arms behind me and started dancing around and my grandmother said I looked like a little bird. From then on, I was "Little Bird," or "Bird" or "Birdie" or "Birdie Boo" to my parents. The funny thing is, Johnny did the exact same bird dance when he was 2. My high school friends and my college girlfriends knew about the nickname but I think that's where it kind of stopped. So, that's why I'm Bird. I always know when I'm on the outs with my dad, because when I call him, he says, "Hi, Sarah." But when all is good, and he's happy to hear from me, he says, "Birrrrrrrrrrd."

So, here goes nothing...

Bird

Flitting, Fleeting, Chirp
Free to dance and fly away.
So much in a name

Bird

Can you do any better? Show me.

The Kindness of Neighbors

How am I reacting to the Virginia Tech shootings? In addition to the obvious thoughts and feelings, the way I react to situations of horror beyond our comprehension and control is to strengthen my resolve to live and act and make decisions on everyday things, big and small, where I do have control.

We bought Grace a bike on Saturday so now she and Johnny both have bikes with training wheels that they want to ride every chance they get. Our neighbors have seen us out a lot and have seen the kids' excitement and joy they get from riding their bikes and showing them off. One couple down the street always stops and says how nice it is to see kids riding bikes in the neighborhood again, as their sons are teenagers, now driving cars.

Tuesday evening, I got home from work and Grace and Johnny were ecstatic over an anonymous gift that had been left on our porch earlier that day. "Come check out our bikes, Mommy! The neighbors left flags and horns for us! Come see! Come check it out!" David had already attached the colorful flags and bicycle horns on each of their bikes, purple and blue for Grace's and green and blue for Johnny's. Amazed, I asked David who gave us these bike accessories that had totally made our days? He said he wasn't sure because there wasn't a note.
We were both pretty sure, though, that it was the couple down the street with the teen-aged sons. We were right, but what I hadn't assumed was that it was the father's idea--that he'd been so nostalgic at seeing the excitement and joy that the bikes brought Grace and Johnny that he just had to go out and buy these bells and whistles for their bikes like he'd done for his sons over ten years ago.

People will remember this week as when the worst shooting in America's history took place. Our family will remember this week as the time when our neighbors acted in such a moving and generous way--just because.

Wild Mountain Thyme

To mark the beginning of the outdoor music festival season, I've decided to share a classic Lightfoot story with you.

It was summer, probably in 1995, (the year I was in Florida and therefore why I wasn't there), a big, outdoor music and camping festival near Boone, NC. My sister and brother were both there and all of our mutual friends that we've accumulated over the years. Kate wasn't 21, so she asked her big brother if he would go on a b-double e-double r-u-n, beer run, beer run, for her. He was at the drum circle and he said, "Not now, Kate, I'm into the drums."

The appeal of the "drums" wasn't limited to the rhythmic trance only those kind of drum circles can induce. The "appeal" was the women that were dancing around in a rhythmic trance. The women that didn't have any clothes on.

At Least They're Learning

Last night:
Me reading from Charlotte's Webb: "Wilbur didn't care. He kept walking toward the pile of slops."
Johnny: What's slops?
Me: Scraps of food that pigs eat.

Today:
Me: What are you two doing?
Grace: We're making slop.

Greetings from Indiana-Again

We’re in Indiana again, again past Indianapolis, but this time halfway between Indianapolis and Louisville, KY. It’s been a long week and we have 9-10 more hours to go tomorrow, but so far Operation Iowa Road Trip 2007 has gone pretty well.

Haven’t Decided if This is a Low-Light or Highlight:

· During the current worm obsession as Grace’s and Johnny’s favorite movie is “How to Eat Fried Worms,” hearing Johnny whisper to me that he has worms in his pants and discreetly pulling back his underwear and sure enough seeing about 10 colored rubber worms just hanging out with Johnny's privates. All day. To steal a line from the movie: "Boys are so weird."

Low-Lights:

• The weather. We knew it would be sweater and jacket weather but we didn’t expect it to be hat, glove and coat weather. We took advantage of yesterday’s heat wave (41 degrees) and spent about 45 minutes outside.
• Minor kids’ illnesses. Pink Eye, throwing up, stomach aches. But what do you expect when one kid swallows a piece of rubber “spaghetti ball” and the other eats 4 dinner rolls and 3 cupcakes within an eight-minute span?
• Little physical activity + too much sugar and fast food. Seven days of no exercise and bad eating habits make one weak.
• Riding a total of 36 hours in a car with restless kids who aren’t asleep. Kids who make a game of throwing everything in the food basket to the “way back” and then a few minutes later decide they’re hungry and thirsty and wonder where the snacks are.
• Dial-up Internet access.

High-Lights:

• Hotel stays. Watching tv in bed is a luxury for us. And we never get tired of free breakfasts, even when it’s cold sugary cereal and bad coffee. And the fact that Grace successfully jumped from one bed to the other without landing in the middle. That was a big deal.
• The fact that Grace named her new stuffed cat “Chicken.”
• The tie-dyed looking Easter eggs that we colored from a new kit that Grandma Mo picked up where you roll the eggs down the patches of dye.
• The Sopranos season opener. And the fact that Millie watched it with David and me and liked it. Any 80-year old woman who can sit through an episode of the Sopranos and not flinch any more than the rest of it is ok in my book.
• Spending the day with Millie cooking southern-style green beans (that we hand-snapped…while David was with the kids for a five-hour wild goose chase in Des Moines tracking down motorized cart batteries for his dad. But that’s a whole ‘nother story) and my very first rump roast that people at her birthday party raved over.
• Seeing the kids immediately warm up to their cousins (whose father is really my kids’ first cousin, which means his kids are their first cousins once removed, because their grandmother is David’s sister, and have I ever mentioned I love figuring out how everyone is related?)
• With our family just being there, and the 10 bouquets of flowers that were delivered yesterday and the party at David’s sister’s house with lots of great homemade food and memories shared between guests and Millie and Mille and guests and the fact that she is really the most remarkable 80-year old woman you could ever meet, that she said, and meant it, “This is the best birthday I’ve ever had.”

Greetings from Indiana

We're in a Ramada Inn in some small town in Indiana west of Indianapolis but east of the Illinois border. And it is freakin snowing outside! Just flurries, but still! The kids are body slamming each other as they jump from bed to bed; So far, I've heard nothing but laughter so I'm not stopping them. After all, they were cooped up in the car today for 13 hours having left Chapel Hill at 5:00 AM. David's plan was to keep the kids up as long as they could stay awake last night in hopes that they would sleep most of the day. I got home from the gym last night and Johnny announced, "We're skipping sleep tonight!!" That's pretty much something I'm never fond of hearing, and that's pretty much what he did. I think we all actually slept from about midnight-3:30 AM, then got up and started driving at 4:50 AM. We're insane. Actually, I'm really impressed with how everyone behaved today. There was significantly less screaming, hitting, cussing, and crying than the last road trip we took, and the kids didn't do too bad either.

We're off to Iowa for Easter and David's mom's 80th birthday (yes, he was a surprise) and we won't be back to NC until a week from today. I'll try to post at least one or two times between now and then.

Know Thyself

For as long as David has known me, he's heard me ramble on about "self-esteem" and the ways in which I attribute most individual, societal and even world-wide problems to a lack of self-esteem. It sounds simplistic, but I don't think I'm too far off base. The reason a former employee whom I supervised (one who was morbidly obese and has since died from heart failure) exhibited major passive aggression towards me for over two years? Low self esteem. The reason a local municipal figure manipulated and basically sabotaged a multi-agency effort to establish an after-school kids' program in a low-income neighborhood? Low self-esteem. Dare I say that self-esteem (whether low, or inflated to a pathological state of narcissism) had anything to do with the operations of Hitler, Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden? But, frankly, I'm tired of the term "self-esteem" because it's really hard to define and it's one of those over-used terms that tend to lose their meaning (just like hormones, thyroid, and sensory integration disorder in my particular case).

So, I've moved on to a self-awareness kick. My yoga instructor recently said, "We all want the same things. We just don't all know how to get there." I think that to live the life you want, truly knowing yourself is half the battle. And knowing yourself means acknowledging what you're really good at, what you really love, what you hate, and what you're not good at and you'll never be good at. So here's a little about what I know about me:

• I can't be trusted with electronics. When I borrow David's camera, I usually return it with finger grease on the lens cap. He hates that. I've washed two iPods in the washing machine. Yes, two!! Luck is on my side, because they both still work, even after the spin cycle.
• I can get a grad school application in on time, but I'm not so good at meeting other deadlines. I drove around for a solid year with an expired driver's license. And I knew it. I let prescription medications run out without refills left and then suffer for my lack of planning. The last time I did that, the side effects were so bad I experienced brain zaps and even got to the state in which I could literally hear my eyeballs moving back and forth. I am NOT kidding about that.
• I will avoid housework until the last possible moment, which is usually when someone is coming over, which doesn't happen that often.
• I am physically incapable of NOT talking to strangers and I am quite nosy when I do.
• I don't really enjoy shopping. I like new clothes and all that, but crowded malls and department stores make me want to vomit.
• I hate reading manuals. I figure things out while I go along, right or wrong.
• One of my favorite stores is A.C. Moore. I don't have much patience for complicated arts and crafts, but give me a glue gun, some feathers, a lamp shade, and ten minutes, and I'll produce something worthy of putting in my daughter's room.
• My taste in music is as diverse as my taste in friends.
• I'm as insecure as the next person, but I am certain in my uncertainties.
• I've let go of most of my personal fears but have transferred that energy in what I fear for my children.
• Group interaction energizes me, which makes me an extrovert, but I was painfully shy growing up. As late as the college years, I was so uncomfortable in one particular social situation that I literally sat at a brunch for over two hours listening to others talk while I couldn't bring myself to utter a word.
• I'm as comfortable talking to the CEO of a company as I am the custodian.
• If I had to choose between going to a 5-star restaurant verses my favorite barbeque joint, I pick the barbeque.