Category Archives: Life as it happens

Strawberry, unfinished

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So I finally got back to the Strawberry Music Festival this fall, after being away too long. There’s nothing particularly noteworthy or earth-shattering here;  it will probably look a fair amount like your family reunion photo album.

Assuming, of course, that your family reunions include a Celtic band doing “Shady Grove” at 1:00am providing music for a dozen 20-year-olds to do the Electric Slide in the camp road. Fire it up in a separate tab  so you can listen while you read:

Shady Grove – Strawberry 2012-08

The jam in Koala had just broken up and I was headed over to the bath house to have a wee. It’s only a 50-yard walk, so we could hear the music out in the road as soon as our jam broke up. As I got closer, I saw the band rocking under a streetlight. Guitar, banjo, bodrain, percussion box, and maybe more in the dark. I later learned that the dancers were just wandering around Camp Mather and wherever they found a rocking jam, they started dancing.

Unfortunately, the video I took didn’t show the green laser light-show that the hand-held device was generating.

The other pretty cool feature of this Strawberry was that some of our adult campers are now more free to hang out and visit/pick with us because their kids have become more independent. Kids who used to be in strollers or needed pretty much constant attention now come to their parents: “Hey Mom – can I go to the lake?” It’s pretty fun watching the parents themselves learn to detach. “The lake? Um, who’s going with you?” “Me and Sadie and Ellie and Rory.” “Um, okay.” [inflection trending upward, as in "Okay, I guess I think wow this is weird."] Sometimes those requests come mid-jam:

Watch at 0:40 as Jennifer, who is singing harmony, gets a request from daughter, Darden. The last time I was in Strawberry, Darden rarely left her parents’ pants legs, much less the camp. This year, her favorite line was “<Parent,> can I go to the playground?”

Of course, that means that there’s more time for us to visit with the parents who used to have their hands full of kids all the time: 

And of Wendy and Jennifer I must say a bit more. Both are parents of tweens who are deeply connected to the music that we play all the time in camp. Wendy was a fiddle contest winner since she was a kid; she grew up at the Strawberry festival and fidde contests. [1] Jennifer, on the other hand, was a listener and lover at an expert level for decades. She was a bluegrass DJ on a local college radio station (KFJC if you’re keeping score at home) for something like 20 years before giving up the gig recently. Thus we were delighted, though not surprised, when Jennifer announced that she was taking up the fiddle. It was like an expert boat captain declaring that she was going swimming for the first time.

With less need to look after their kids, both Wendy and Jennifer spent more time playing fiddle and as much as I missed having their kids around, I sure enjoyed the addition to the music. Thus, with great pride, I offer what I believe is Jennifer’s Interwebs fiddle debut, though certainly not Wendy’s:

I also need to note Dave Courchaine, the guitar player in the video.  Dave is a neighbor of ours at Strawberry and the bluegrass song he doesn’t know isn’t worth singing. He also steps up to play rhythm guitar for the beginning fiddle classes that Wendy teaches in her camp every morning. [2] I threw Moonshiner, a fairly esoteric tune [3] at Dave on Saturday. “Hey – that’s a great tune, let’s do that.” I never get to play it because nobody knows it, but of course Dave did. So I got to play Moonshiner with my friends and it was great. Thanks, Dave.

And mostly because it will make me happy to see their picture, here’s one of Julay Brooks and Tom Diamant. They are the dynamic duo of picking – if they’re in the house, you’re 2/3 of the way to a three-person jam. Three people is critical mass and tends to bring in more; the next thing you know, a full-fledged uncontrolled jam has broken out. Tom and Julay are, like Dave Courchaine, walking encyclopedias of bluegrass music (though Julay teaches classical piano for a living). They also provided the music at our son David’s wedding – a guitar/mandolin/voices duet that brought “oohs” of joy to all present.

I need also to mention Lisa “Kween of Koala” Burns, the founder and Queen of Kamp Koala. I’d have a picture of her, but for the last few years, she’s been on the staff of Hog Radio, which is the FM radio station that broadcasts all over the festival. She’s got a real two-way walkie-talkie and a badge and all that stuff. So we rarely see her, unfortunately. However, she has brought a couple of her bass students into the camp so we always have a bass player around, which is a nice touch. I’ll tell you what – here’s an older picture of LisaB, before she got her new haircut:

And with that I must tell you how Strawberry didn’t quite end this year.

Anyway, while the festival officially ends on Monday (Labor Day), a lot of people were headed out Sunday afternoon/evening. Some to get two nights of sleep in their own bed before work on Tuesday, some to beat the Monday traffic, whatever. So it was sadly decided that Sunday afternoon we’d take down the garage tent that serves as the official center of Kamp Koala throughout the festival – wouldn’t be enough people around Monday morning to do it.

But before that sad event, we were gonna have one more picking session. “All-gospel” it was decided and we rolled out the bluegrass gospel like a proper Sunday gathering should. But Queen LisaB decreed that the last song we’d play would be Steam Powered Aereo Plain, a John Hartford classic that is the Kamp Koala anthem. It was brought to us by Rodger Phillips, who… man, I don’t even know where to start.

Ten years ago, when I was a newbie at Kamp Koala, I was just starting to play the dobro. And “badly” is far too generous a term for how I played it. So I’d stand way in the back corner of the jams playing as quietly as I could. If anybody would look at me to take a “break” (essentially a solo for one verse), I’d either shake my head no or (better yet) not make eye contact. I was successful at this for maybe a festival and a half. Then one day, I was standing there in the back of the circle, happily looking down at my dobro and playing quietly. And suddenly looking back up at me was Rodger, who had bent his 6’5″ frame over and was peering up at me, silently saying “You’re going to take a solo, now.” I did, and it was awful, but that’s not the point. Rodger, who is a professional banjo player, has spent the last ten years making me, my sons, and many others welcome into the jams at Koala; I will never ever be able to properly thank or repay him.

This is Rodger at his happiest:

Anyway, told you all that to tell you this: we started playing Steam Powered Aereo Plain, and it was bouncing along just as it should, though you could sense a kind of sadness around the circle. This was the last tune for a while. Maybe a significant while. And we got toward the end of the piece, and played through the last chords with the required ritardando. But then a weird thing happened: Rodger got to the penultimate chord – a dominant “D”, and stopped. He said “We’re just going to leave this one unfinished. We’ll know where to pick up when we get back.”

And all of us realized that meant we were getting back together, because we had to finish the song. And you know – sing, eat, visit, drink, and do all that other stuff that comes with it. And to a musician, not one of us played that final “G” chord. We put our instruments in their cases and commenced to break down the garage tent, thinking that before we knew it, we’d be standing on that same general patch of dirt, putting the garage tent up, hugging our friends hello, and getting on with picking. [4]

Before we tore the tent down, we gathered for a group photo – such as you could do, given that many of the kids were off at the lake. This is my Strawberry family, the 2012 version:

And with that, adieu to another extraordinary long weekend of friendship and music. I miss you all, but the tunes and memories are in my heart always. Here’s an encore.

[1] To this day, Wendy can’t (or won’t) play Gold Rush, a fiddle tune warhorse. It brings back her memories of wearing “western cowgirl” dresses and doing the clichéd knee-dip that happens at one of the tune’s chord changes. I bet she has an involuntary contraction in her knee when that change comes around.

[2] You can set your watch at Kamp Koala when you hear “Angelina Baker” on a dozen fiddles next door. It’s 9:00am as reliably as Big Ben.

[3] While there are plenty of versions of the song on YouTube, I couldn’t find the upbeat bluegrass version of the song that Peter Rowan has recorded.

[4] Some years ago, I found a “Life is Good” baseball cap at Mast General Store in Asheville. It had a bano player on it. So I bought it for Roger, inscribing in laundry marker under the bill, “Are we going to talk, or are we going to pick?” He sometimes wears that hat and we can always reference it when the talking threatens to interfere with the picking.

Epic run-good for 55 years

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There is a phrase that you’ll hear poker players use: “run-good” (“I am in need of some serious run-good now”). It’s an acknowledgment that, despite the skill required in the game, we are still at the mercy of fate.

Interestingly, I claim that there is relatively little skill involved in life. At least mine, anyway. I was born 55 years ago today in Washington, D.C.. Washington, DC, Northeast, to be specific. An area which is (and was then) poor, predominately black. Me, I was born white, male, and middle class. My parents lived in the vanilla suburbs of Chocolate City (as George Clinton so eloquently calls it); as I recall, they used that hospital because it was one of the few that would let the newborn baby sleep in the room with the mother.

But there were kids born August 25th, 1957 in the next delivery room over who started out with little or nothing. Single moms, unemployed dads, awful schools, unsafe homes, etc. But those kids were no less wonderful, marvelous or miraculous than I was (and I think that every baby born is just that).

The difference in how our lives started (and likely have turned out): luck.

This last year, I have extended my lucky streak to a ridiculous 55 years. My family and friends are well, my job is great, and I’ve actually gotten healthier and more fit in the last twelve months. I’ve reconnected with some old friends, played dobro in a bluegrass band in Ireland, and saw Bruce Springsteen and Paul McCartney sing I Saw Her Standing There live in London. My parents, 82 and 84 years old, are active and settling into a wonderful retirement community near their old home. I’ve got an amazing immediate family, including a daughter-in-law who joined us just a tad over a year ago.

Lisa and I recently celebrated 15 years of marriage – a marriage against which the “smart money” laid odds. [1] And my elder son woke up at stupid:30 in California to call me and say “Hey Lee – happy birthday; I love you.”

Look, I know that hard work and intelligence and persistence and all that plays a critical part. But wait – where did that work ethic, intelligence, and persistence come from? Right – the genetic lottery.

Which brings me to the point: I am looking forward to the coming years and am prepping myself to make them as good as possible (thus the 10K run tomorrow, which I am dreading). But I also know that the run-good (or my life, for that matter) could end at any moment. Therefore, it’s worth repeating what I’ve told mutiple people: I know a little bit about statistics, and in these 55 years I’ve had so much more than my share of luck it’s embarrassing.

I hope that if and when the run-good ends, I’ll have the decency and clarity to say, “Hey – I’ve beaten the odds and then some.”

This here is a picture of the luckiest guy you’ll likely ever meet. It was taken ten years ago – but I’m still just as lucky.

[1] Hint: when the smart money lays odds against you, and you come up trumps, that’s run-good.

 

 

Take the stage – all of you

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I’m in London for some business and am staying at a hotel just a stone’s throw from Marble Arch, at the northeast corner of Hyde Park. In pennance for having eaten all the Lebanese food on Edgware Road Thursday night, I got up this morning and did a 5K through Hyde Park. Much to my surprise the temps were around 26-27 degrees C (79 in miles). What did not surprise me was a bevy of Londoners [1] out running with me. Fit middle-age men and beautiful young lasses with infinitely long legs gliding down the paths as if put there by the gods for their watching pleasure. But alongside were the older out-of-shape men (such as myself), the pear-shaped women, and the men with figures like basketballs.

The London 2012 Olympics have just ended and Britannia ruled. They came in an astonishing 3rd with 65 overall medals (29 gold) behind only China and the U.S. Yes, ahead of Russia. Perhaps the most heartwarming aspect for me was to see the nation embrace its diversity in a way that often escapes it. Being from the States, I think of that diversity as something of a birthright. But it seems that Great Brtain has clung to its notion of  “Anglo-ness” despite the reality of its population. Right up until its athletes, an eclectic mix of origins and ethnicities, started kicking Olympic ass.

So when Mo Farah, who won both the 5K and 10K runs, was asked if he wished he could have run for Somalia – where he was born, he said, “Look mate, this is my country.” And Britons of every sort cheered, “Yes, it is.”

Which brings me back to Hyde Park. I don’t know if more Londoners are out running, but I swear there was an extra spring in the step of those who were. Like they had taken to heart the Adidas Olympics-oriented ad campaign. Featuring still the most recognizable British athlete, David Beckham, [2] the videos (e.g. this and this) exhorted the country’s athletes to “Take the Stage” (including a Twitter campaign featuring the hash-tag #takethestage). When Team GB did just that, you could sense the rest of the country say, “Maybe I’ll get out there too.”

And Adidas didn’t miss the opportunity to salute Team GB’s success. They’re running a video right now with medal winners lip-sync’ing the Queen classic “Don’t Stop Me Now”, opening with Beckham saying “Action!” And then at the end, he says “and… cut” as a new graphic fills the screen: “#stagetaken”

So it was great fun being out among the Londoners in Hyde Park doing their bit to get or stay in shape even if we’ll never run like Mo Farah or Jessica Ennis.

P.S. Due to an unfortunate coincidence, the Adidas “Don’t Stop Me Now” video copied a low-budget version of the same song prepared by the people who are supporting Team GB in the Paralympics. It appears to have been an honest mistake, but the Paralympics folks are understandably upset and the Adidas people understandably embarrassed. Maybe they could get David Beckham to make a video with the Paralympic athletes. I’d watch that for sure.

[1] And visitors – I passed a “Virginia is for Lovers” t-shirt.

[2] Heptathalon gold medalist Jessica Ennis may surpass him now

 

Building the Best Place on Earth – one piece at a time

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A few years ago, my colleague Lara Wilson talked about her cabin in the Canadian Rockies, describing it as “The Best Place on Earth”. She may have even ™’d it. I told her about my family’s cabin in the North Carolina mountains, and we agreed that everybody, everywhere, should have a Best Place on Earth™ of their own.

Anyway, my dad gave me the coolest Christmas present – a jigsaw puzzle topographic map of the area where our cabin is. Interestingly, the U.S. Geological Survey doesn’t do topographic maps any more – satellite digital mapping (think Google Earth on steroids) has made such maps a quaint memory. But the USGS is clever enough to sell the maps as jigsaw puzzles – you can get the map centered around any address you like. And the centerpiece of the map is shaped like a house!

When I first turned the puzzle out onto our dining table, I panicked. The area is quite rural, and was more rural when the map was last updated in the 60′s. So lots of green and white, with contour lines everywhere (it’s in the mountains). I have to admit that the puzzle might have never gotten done if my mother-in-law (a puzzle genius) hadn’t visited. I begged for her help and she set about finding all the border pieces. In the two days she was at our house, she managed to build the entire border and even plug a few pieces alongside. How she did it, I’ll never know – recall that she was working without a picture.

When I finally decided to make a concerted effort to finish the damn thing, I knew I’d need help. So I went on the USGS website and discovered, to my delight, that they now give away high quality digital images of the maps. I downloaded the two maps of interest and got to work.

Words on the map began to come together (apparently everything in that region was called “Piney Creek” in the old days). A peak altitude (“2920″) was a wonderful treat since it usually locked a specific location. I learned the location of all the family cemeteries – I know where the Dollingers, Sullivans, Joneses (not mine, I don’t think), Weavers, and Baldwins are all buried. The Powers have three (count ‘em) cemeteries – all strung out in a neat east-west line. [1]

I learned the exact path of the Norfolk and Western railroad – long gone, but still remembered by a few older folks. When I was a kid, some of the track was still there as was the trestle bridge across the New River.

I got tickled when I put in the pieces that had the cabin, the house across the road where my grandmother was born, and some of my favorite fishing holes.

In the last week or so, I could see the “avalanche” regime of the puzzle solution approaching. 100 pieces left, 80 pieces, 50…

Lisa said “Will you be sad when it’s done?”

I said no; the earlier going was pretty frustrating. But as the pieces, quite literally, started to fall into place, the Best Place on Earth began to reveal itself. Roads connected, streams meandered, and I recognized the steep hills across the creek from where my cousin Rose Kirby used to live. I will miss that state of the puzzle, where I’d built the scenery, and each subsequent piece was a quick visit to some corner of the county.

I put the last two dozen pieces in this evening – they flew in almost on their own. I was also delighted to see that despite the thing being moved around the house for six months (poker games and dinner guests came and went), not a single piece was lost. Phew.

Lisa said, “So now you’re going to turn it out and start all over.”

When. Pigs. Fly.

In fact, I’m gonna get some of that puzzle glue and maybe even frame and mount it. It’s kinda cool to be able to run your fingertips over the Best Place on Earth™.

 

[1] There’s a pharmacist/dobro-player in the county named Mack Powers. I gotta stop in and see him – ask him which of the three cemeteries he’s planning to settle himself in when the time comes.

I guess I’m a road warrior now

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A few months ago, my spreadsheet of “Airports at which I’ve taken off or landed” reached 100 entries. This kind of blew my mind – that number really snuck up on me. But I guess after this much flying, I should know a thing or two about it, so I’ve listed a few things I’ve learned.

Packing

  • Learn to pack light. No, lighter than that. I’m still not a true minimal-packing ninja, but I aspire to it. Schlepping large bags through airports, paying for excess bags, etc, just sucks.
  • Minimize task loading and free up your hands. I carry my laptop and its accessories in a backpack so it’s hands-free. I know it doesn’t look as cool, but I’ve given up looking cool in airports.
  • Many smaller regional props and jets simply will not hold a traditional “roller-board” in their overhead compartments. When I have to carry a bag on board, I use soft-side luggage that will squish into the overhead. Otherwise, you’re facing gate-check, either waiting for it to roll up at the jet-way, or having to go to baggage claim to get it. In Europe they will blithely charge you a checked bag fee on the spot.

Stuff to have on long flights

  • An e-reader. At least for me, it’s the one indispensible thing. I used to have a Kindle, but now have the Kindle app on my work-supplied iPad. I feel like a kid at Christmas when I fire that puppy up and see half a dozen unread “books” staring back at me.
  • Real paper reading material. Until they calm down about electronics on take-off and landing [1], I want to have something to read on the going-up and coming-down bit. A New York Times or Times of London is a great way to kill the no-electronics time and it’s not expensive.

When you fly from the U.S. east coast to Europe, it’s almost always overnight. I haven’t reached the level of travel-fu that I get into the front of the plane that much, so I’ve perfected cocooning myself in coach. [2]

  • Noise-cancelling headphones are a must. Bose has obviously cornered the marketing on these, but I think my Sony’s (which cost much less) are better. They’re still not cheap, but they’re half the cost of a single at-gate upgrade to business class.
  • Sleep mask. I got a nice one at Container Store. Spend a few bucks for one that really does the job and feels comfy on your face.
  • White noise generator. I have loaded sounds of a tropical beach, rainstorm, and (my favorite) mountain stream onto my iPod, iPad, and phone (all of which are with me on the plane). That way if the battery on one dies, I have back-up.

The combination of these three devices allows you to completely remove yourself from what’s going on around you. I have occasionally woken to discover they’d brought the cabin lights back up and served a pre-landing breakfast and I’d slept through the whole thing. Yahtzee! It seems the airlines are particularly insensitive about bringing down the cabin lights in coach (sometime on an overnight flight, note how much sooner the front of the plane goes dark before the coach section). The difference between getting a couple of 30-minute naps and a solid 2-4 hour block of sleep is difficult to overstate.

  • Bring your own food. Airline food is (if this is possible) getting worse. Buy a meal in the airport and put it in your carry-on. You’ll be so delighted when they ask you if you want the “beef stew” or “chicken something” and you say, “Neither – just the side dishes please.” Then you only eat the brownie that comes for dessert.

Security

  • Practice your “disrobing-for-security” routine until it’s second nature. I now toss both my mobile and belt into my backpack while in the security line; it’s that much less to deal with as you reach the scanner.
  • With the advent of the  millimeter wave scanners (the full body scan ones that had Americans so scandalized for a while), you now have to empty everything out of your pockets (i.e. not just metal). This means your wallet, passport, and boarding pass. I am now putting those in a special side compartment of my laptop bag as I approach security. Partially so they can’t go walkabout during the scanning process, but  mostly so I can’t forget them on the other side.
  • If you carry toiletries on (I try to avoid it), have the baggie near the top of your stuff ready to come out. My sense is that (at least in the U.S.) there’s no quicker way to have your entire bag searched than to forget the liquids buried in your carry-on.
  • Double-check that you’ve grabbed everything on the far side. Get used to carrying everything of importance in a specific pocket, and then as you exit security, pat yourself down to be sure that everything is in its proper pocket. Recently, I caught myself without my passport and saw that some “helpful” security agent had moved it to a different tray as it came through. That’s what started my routine of bagging wallet and passport before security.

Safety on the airplane

By and large, I’ve become quite sanguine about flying. If Something Bad happens on the plane, there’s not a great deal I  can do about it, and I work hard not to worry about things I can’t change. However, I do have some things that I do as regards safety:

  • When they tell you to find the nearest exit, do it. Count the seat rows to that exit and say the number out loud. Don’t count on the “lights guiding you to the nearest exit”. I figure I can count to that number passing seats as I go.
  • I hate wearing shoes during a long flight, but I wait until 10,000 feet to take them off and I put them on as we begin our descent. If I need to get off the plane quickly, I want shoes on.
  • If I see people in exit rows who shouldn’t be there, I say something. Recall that if the plane needs to be evacuated quickly, you’re counting on the person in the exit row (probably at the window) to unlock, remove, and sometimes throw a 35-40 pound door out of the way (some airlines want you to throw the door out; others want it placed on the seat). Ask yourself if you like the current occupant’s chances of doing that in an emergency. Airlines are stupendously bad about letting obviously unqualified people sit in the exit row, but generally it’s easy to shame the flight attendants into moving people who will be of no use. I’ve twice gotten exit row seats because I pointed out that the person in the exit row had no chance whatsoever of getting us out of the plane and they swapped me in. That wasn’t my intent, but I wasn’t ashamed to take advantage of it. And I promise that the day I’m not sure I can get that emergency door tossed out, I’ll stop sitting in exit rows.
  • They tell you that if you have to evacuate the plane, don’t take your stuff. I’ve never had to evacuate a plane, but I promise you that people will be trying to grab their bags out of the overhead. At least, that’s what I suspect. At best, they’ll be trying to take their purses or whatever. I’ve made a promise to myself that if I have to get out of a plane, the only thing that will slow me down is helping somebody else out.

Seating

On short flights, I don’t care. On long flights, I want an aisle. There’s a safety component (you’re that much closer to the exit), but the main reason is so you have some moving room – particularly on overnight flights where there will be relatively little aisle traffic during the “sleep time”. I also prefer to not have to climb-over/disturb row-mates when I go to the lav.

But arguably the most valuable reason for having an aisle seat is that it puts you in that much better position to poach a multi-seat row. The value of having 2-4 seats to yourself (in coach) cannot be overstated. When you see the plane doors close, make your move. Of course, that means you’ve done recon during the boarding and know where you’re going. Generally nobody objects, particularly your current seatmates because your initiative is bringing them extra space for free. Some airlines (notably US Air) sell “premium” seating within the main cabin. They will actually bust you if you try to move into a “premium” seat within the main cabin (that is, some overly conscientious flight attendants do). It’s worth paying their premium seat upgrade ($15-$35) just to have a ticket in the seat-poaching lottery.

I need a full four-seat center row to really get stretched out, but many people (particularly women) can do it in three. You simply buckle the seatbelt around you in the center seat, deploy your headphones and sleep mask, and sleep across the ocean. In fact, on my most recent trans-Atlantic flight, I snagged a full four-seat row immediately opposite the lav. Nobody wanted it because of the constant coming and going, toilet flushing, etc. With my noise-cancelling equipment and the mountain stream soundtrack, I literally couldn’t hear the toilet (or anything else, really). I consider a four-seat row to myself to be essenstially equivalent to a first-class lay-flat seat in terms of sleepability, which (to my mind) is the only compelling value difference between the cabins.

Deplaning

When they tell you to check the seat-back pockets, etc. as you deplane, do it. This is particularly crucial when you’re leaving an overnight flight. No matter what you think, you are not operating anywhere near peak mental capacity. Specifically, don’t put your wallet or passport in the seat-back pocket. [3] I put them in an interior pocket of my computer bag, which is in the overhead. If that’s too dodgy for you, then carry one of those around-the-neck wallets and put it down your shirt.

Safe travels.

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[1] There’s a fundamental logic gap here. If our consumer electronics can “interfere with the plane’s navigation system”, then haven’t we given terrorists a great way to bring down a plane? I mean, how hard would it be to hack a normal-looking laptop to become a first-class RF-generator that would really “interfere with the plane’s navigation system”? Either they do or they don’t. If they can or do, then don’t permit them on the plane. But it turns out the airlines can make money from selling WiFi on the plane, and suddenly it’s safe now. [ClickAndClack] What kind of morons do they think we are? [/ClickAndClack]

[2] It’s called “economy” in Europe, and a friend of ours on Isle of Man just quaintly asked if we don’t call that section “couch”. “Ah no,” said her husband. “That would be first class.”

[3] Don’t laugh – guy in the seat next to me on a flight in the last 12 months found a passport in the seat-back pocket.