the other night I got talking with this songwriter kevin welch at the rice festival in fischer, TX. a very special small festival run and attended by emotional cowboys which are the REASON i love TX. we were in the backstage tent with music and crickets all these little sample boxes of a new kind of m & m with dark chocolate, not very good, I don’t predict they will be popular. kevin welch is a beautiful guy with long hair and a kind intelligent worn look. I guess he lived for years in Nashville and we came round to talking about it and he described living there in this very delightful way.  he was saying how at one point, I guess in the nineties, there was a real special songwriter scene he was part of.  he described how all day people would be tryin to write hit country songs and then at five o’clock at the bar or whatever there might be a bunch of songwriters, and one would say to another, so what were you workin on today?, and the other might just say the title, and then like ok so there’s this guy, he wants her to come back to him, but he can’t bring himself to pick up the phone, or whatever, and the other songwriter might go, ah yeah I tried that once, I couldn’t quite bring it home… kevin also said if a truly great song managed to get past all the bullshit and become a hit, all these songwriters would sort of rejoice together, like it was a win for the team, that beyond any feelings of personal ambition or competition, everyone just really wanted to see great songs make the mainstream. god I love that idea. the camaraderie on one hand, and the idea of selfless devotion to SONGS on the other.
great songs are rituals to be enacted again and again by different believers...
saw danny schmidt in austin, I love that man and his songs. he played a fascinating new one on his porch. also saw sam baker and got a copy of his fantastic new record ‘cotton’. i wish i lived in Nashville with those guys and we went to the bar at five o’clock

it’s one thing to do something because you love it.
it’s another thing to do something so you can tell other people that you’re doing it (facebook has augmented this urge but it seems like people have always postured for each other in this way).  maybe not JUST to tell people, maybe you love it, too, but if the primary feeling is pride and excitement that people will think you’re this or that sort of person because of what you’re doing… facebook.
and then, there’s doing something so you can tell yourSELF that you do it/have done it (facebook of the mind).
I woke up the other day in my bunk and wasn’t ready to face the world so I thought I would read some.  a friend sent me a book which is a collection of interviews with famous writers from the paris review, d.h. lawrence, robert frost, henry miller, etc.  it’s pretty great I’m just reading them one at a time.  so anyway I started reading this interview with aldous huxley.  it was very interesting for the first few pages and then I did the thing where you read a whole page and realize you haven’t comprehended a word cos your mind is elsewhere.  so I went back and read the page again and then turned it and read the next page without comprehending.  and went back and reread it and then read a third page without comprehending. 
and I was just beginning to go back over the third page when I thought to myself, who am I doin this for?  I’m not a student… I don’t have a paper to write… I don’t even have a dinner party to go to, at which to discuss the aldous huxley interview.  and I realized what I was kind of doing was, I wanted to be able to say to myself, “this morning I read an interview with aldous huxley”.  that I am not a waste of a mind.  that I am inquisitive and good.  isn’t that weird?
facebook of the mind is powerful and insidious.  I honestly can’t tell how much of what I do is motivated by it.  does anyone feel the same?

at one point last year my friend j and i were going to start this magazine of interviews with various people, mostly ones who don't often get interviewed, it was going to be called "jag", the idea was we'd ask these people to talk about things they were excited or knowledgeable about, and we'd print the interviews mostly verbatim, editing for thematic coherence but not for grammar.  but the magazine never got off the ground and the other day j asked if i minded if he posted some of the interviews he'd done on his excellent blog.  so i said ok but i'm doing it too.  so here's one of them, it's an interview with my maternal grandma lauraine and her good friend irene, somehow i feel like i shouldn't print their full names on the internet, i'm sure they wouldn't mind, but it seems impure somehow, anyway ENJOY:

Lauraine was born in 1925 on Staten Island, NY.
Irene was born in 1920 in Roxbury, MA.

CHILDHOOD
L: We were very fortunate in that my father had a job all during the Depression and we had a car.  We were one of the few people in our neighborhood that had a car.  My mother, for years, was the only woman in our neighborhood who drove.
And the other person who drove, beginning at age sixteen, was my sister Harriet—she didn’t have a license but she drove-- and the second car that my father bought was a huge Packard with pull-out seats, and he got it for very little money because someone lost their money and they needed the cash and so my father bought that car in 1933—a Packard.  And at age sixteen the word would go out that my sister was going to the beach.  All the children came, got in the car, and she would drive “like h---” down this highway that had been built in the thirties, the WPA-- no cars on it ‘cause most people couldn’t afford a car.  One child was always the lookout, so if there were any police cars…  We used to have ten, twelve children in the car!  And so that was our summer entertainment…  At nighttime, in the summer, across the street from us was a streetlight and all the young people would congregate there—boys up until probably the age of seventeen, eighteen, when maybe they had jobs, we played street games, hiding games, “ring-a-livio”, and I’ve forgotten some of the others.  And the whole neighborhood, maybe eighteen or twenty kids--
ME: You would just converge in the street?
L: --and we’d decide what the game was and have teams, and of course as one of the younger kids that was always something to be chosen, finally, to be part of a team.  And that was how we entertained--
ME: You mean you’d have two captains and they’d choose people for their teams?
L: Yeah, and then one team would go out and hide, or, depending on what the rules of that particular game were, against the other team…
…There were two ponds where we went ice-skating.  You had to walk, one of them was certainly two miles away, and the other a mile, but you’d always have someone to go with, you’d always take a raw potato with you, someone would start a fire on the banks of the pond, and you’d put your potato in there and while you’re ice skating it was roasting and then just before you got to go home you’d pull your potato out and you’d warm up your hands and you’d break it open and of course it tasted delicious, didn’t have butter or salt or anything, and you’d eat that and walk home with warm hands and it didn’t cost a penny.  And then they built two municipal swimming pools, both within a bus ride, a nickel bus ride, for me.  One of them I preferred to go to because the boys who went to that one were of more interest to me, and occasionally we would decide instead of taking the bus home for a nickel, we would buy a hot dog for a nickel, and then we’d have a two to three mile walk home.  
I: You didn’t know any different.  We didn’t know any different.  
L: That’s right.  And it’d be a whole group, we’d all decide, are we gonna walk home today, are we gonna buy a hot dog…?
I: …I think I walked to school, starting with kindergarten, no buses, no mummy-by-the-hand, and we crossed a big street, I think it must have been more than a mile walking to grade school… And when we got older and could ride the subway—it was also a nickel or a dime—we went into Boston, into the city, and Cab Calloway and all of the big name bands were on the stage, and you’d pay your admission, and you could stay there all day, if you went out and bought a candy bar, and then the next bunch came in, you could sit there, you could see two or three shows, I guess two maybe was the maximum…
L: … I never went to New York, but some of my friends did, to see Frankie-- Frank Sinatra—I never went, Frankie didn’t appeal to me for some reason.  But my girlfriends would go.  It would cost a nickel on the bus, a nickel on the ferry and a nickel on the subway and then I don’t know what it cost to go—
I: Probably a quarter.  To this day I can tell you, unqualifiedly, he is, to me-- there’s nobody that touches him.  And I listen now a lot and I can explain it by saying: he caresses each word.  When he says “love”, my god!  To this day-- I’ve got a lot of records, and there’s other good singers, Mel Tome, a lot of guys-- but to me, he represents the best…  And you would swear that he is trying to seduce YOU.  That when he’s saying, “hey, baby,” it’s YOU and nobody else.

DANCING
I: On Friday nights… we must have been-- boys and girls-- ten kids that would gather in somebody’s house and dance.  We learned how to dance to the radio.  And that was Friday night!  It would be like dating, but it wasn’t dating, it wasn’t one-on-one.  We were a bunch of kids, and we’d pair up, and we’d dance.  I must have been twelve because by the time I met Lewis I was fifteen and, you know, I had been around, with boys, he wasn’t my first...
L: …I met George at a freshman dance at Cornell.  He had never gone to a dance before, but both of his roommates were going.  He was a good dancer already.  I don’t know where he learned to dance, ‘cause he never really dated.  But… people learned to dance, then… I mean, everyone seemed to dance.
I: Yeah, Lewis danced.
ME: You learned dance steps?
I: Well, until the jitterbug, it was foxtrot or waltz.  And polka!  But I never had the energy to do the polka.  Lewis did.
L: But dancing was, in the thirties, popular.
I: Dancing was MUCH sexier then than it is now.  You were close—
L: That’s right!
I: --you were cheek-to-cheek, you could whisper little nothings in the ear, and it was yummy.  It was a heck of a lot, you know, not better, but different than it is today.
L: And maybe that’s why guys were more apt to learn to dance, ‘cause you couldn’t jump into bed.
I: That’s right.
ME: It was the next best thing?
I: A vicarious thrill…

MAKING DO
L: When we first were married, if George and I wanted to go to the movies, we had to scour the neighborhood for bottles.  Bottles had a two-cent deposit, and we would pick up enough bottles for ten cents each to go the movies.  See, there was a big push then… it was right after the war and so a lot of GIs were back in school and apartments were scarce, we paid forty-five dollars a month for our apartment and our income was ninety dollars a month, so almost fifty percent of our income went to--
I: Lewis’s older brother-- we were struggling, and could hardly make ends meet-- and Jack came over one night and said, “I’m gonna show you kids how to do this, I’m gonna fix you a budget.”  So we wrote down-- nothing like movies or anything-- we wrote down the payment to the bank for the mortgage, and the oil, and the electricity, and I don’t remember, whatever the necessities were for living.  So those things all came to two hundred dollars, and we were making a hundred dollars!  There’s no way in hell you can budget-- it wasn’t a question of doing without a dress, or a lobster, or anything-- the money wasn’t there…
ME: [Lauraine] was saying in the car on the way over that she has love letters that her father wrote to her mother and that in order to save paper he would write from top to bottom and then turn the page sideways and write horizontally the other direction over the other writing to save paper.  I’m curious what kinds of things were scarce during this time?
L: Well of course, we were married, and you were too, during the war.  Butter and sugar, a lot of things were rationed--
I: Gasoline, meat--
L: Meat, yes--
ME: How much meat could you have?
L: We had meat maybe once a week.
I: We had stamps that, we were given books of stamps, and if I knew Lewis was coming home on leave I would save up, ‘cause I knew he liked butter, and he liked meat and all that, and sugar…  
…To this day, I don’t waste a glass of water… Now I have a well-- it used to be I was taking from our own can-- but now I have a well, so I take pitchers of water up to guests or if I have water from the sink I use it to water the plants on the back porch.  I don’t use paper napkins hardly at all.  I don’t care how many of these (gestures) I use because they go in the machine and then I may or may not iron them.  I’m trying to think in terms of making do…  Even for myself now, if I cook a chicken Friday night, boy, that goes a long way, I’ll get another dinner out of it, and I’ll get a sandwich when I go to Neat Repeats, and I’ll get a little bit for a salad, so a chicken or a package of thighs that costs me two dollars, whew, I get a lot of mileage out of that--
ME: Do you use the giblets and the neck?
I: I save that for soup.  I save all that and when I’m ready to cook a chicken soup…  Did you ever meet that gal R....?   She was eating my chicken soup and she said, “My, this is very nice chicken soup.”  And I said, “Thank you.”  She said, “You know, no matter how long I cook it, it doesn’t get this good.”  I said to her, “R., it isn’t how long you cook it, you’ve got to have a certain ratio of the chicken to the water.  You put in three legs and a wing and fill the pot this high with water, you can cook it till doomsday and it’s not going to get strong, you know!”  But that stuck in my mind, she just thought, the longer she cooked it, the stronger it was going to get, but it doesn’t work that way… So I save the giblets, and even if I roast the chicken I take this part of the wing off, this little thing, and throw that in with the giblets, ‘cause there’s no meat on it…
ME: What about the carcass?
I: The carcass, I don’t do it, but some people save that also, and that goes for stock, chicken stock.  You just make a big pot of stock and you don’t buy broth in a can, you just use your own, you can freeze it in ice cubes, in ice-cube trays, and just use two or three… But for chicken soup, well you can’t do it from just chicken bones, you have to put the bones in with a whole big nice chicken.  You can make stock, or broth, with an onion and a carrot and some celery and simmer it down and get a broth, but in terms of a good strong chicken soup you have to have a good ratio of the meat to a small amount of liquid…

CHILDBIRTH
I: Yesterday was Freddy’s birthday—our Freddy—and her very dear friend called me and said, “What were you doing on this day sixty-something years ago?” I said, “I remember very well what I was doing.”  I was living with Lewis’s mother at the seashore, and I knew I had to come in, I guess my water broke, so Lewis’s sister, who had never had children, drove me to our house in Mattapan, and I washed the kitchen floor at about ten o’clock in the morning!  And then we each went down to the delicatessen for a corned-beef sandwich.  Nobody today would think of eating a corned-beef sandwich before she gave birth!  So we go to the hospital, she drives me to the hospital, and I walk up to the desk, and the receptionist says, “Yes, can I help you?” Selma almost punched her in the nose!  She said, “She’s having a baby!”  You couldn’t tell, I really wasn’t sticky-out-y, I was small.  And when the baby was born, in those days there were not enough cribs, it was wartime, so they used dresser drawers, (gestures) this one, and this one; Freddy was in a dresser drawer!  And only the husband could come and visit, because they couldn’t handle company, and flowers, and all of that, so every day, for about, well it lasted five days, you were in the hospital ten days I guess…
L: Yes, you were.
ME: Ten days?
I: Well, I think so--
ME: They would keep you there?
L: Even when Cheryl was born in ’48, you were in the hospital ten days.
ME: What were you doing?
I: I don’t know, but--
L: Resting.
I: I don’t know, but the part about this was, every day some other guy came and said he was the baby’s father!  I had five brothers-in-law, they didn’t want me to be alone and feel neglected, so it was Chuck, and Jack, and Bill…
L: They must have been thinking, that woman got around!  I took a course from the obstetrician that I had, Dr. Hall, before I had Cheryl, and this was before really good birth control came out, but he did talk about other ways of birth control, because what was the one thing called, like a cap?
I: Diaphragm.
L: The diaphragm was just out--
ME: That was the first thing that came out?
L: Right, but it wasn’t foolproof, or as foolproof as some of the other things, later… Anyway, Dr. Hall said, you know, there are some women, those ten days in the hospital are the only time they get a rest every year because they had a baby every year; as soon as they’d get home from the hospital, the baby’d be two months old, they’d have sex, she’d get pregnant--
I: Nine months later, another baby—
L: So Dr. Hall was saying, “That’s why I’m really all for the ten days in the hospital.”
ME: And when you were giving birth, would your husbands be there?
I: Mine wasn’t, we didn’t know where Lewis was, he was away.
L: George was away, too.
ME: Would it have been allowed, though?
L: No, oh no, no.  Husbands were lucky to get in—
ME: Would your mothers be there?
L: Yes, my mother was there.
I: Mine was gone… there was not air-conditioning there… you were in the labor room, windows were open, and somebody said, “if the men could hear this screaming, they’d never have sex with you and make a baby.  It was horrendous.  I don’t know how much you were medicated or not--
L: In my case I was really medicated; I was in labor for two days.
I: Oh, dear.  
L: But I think they did medicate heavily.  Well it depended upon the doctor—
I: Sure, and the position of the baby and all that.  But as far as I know… there was no such thing then as ‘normal childbirth’, where you “push, push, push…” and the husband holds your hand, and, “you’re doing fine, honey” and all that.  You just-- you were medicated--
L: I think the idea was to knock you out.
I: Yeah, pretty much.
L: Things changed...  Shortly after Cheryl was born, things changed…


DYING
L: Irene and I were both saying that our favorite books, really, are biographies.
I: …I’ve got one now… I’m interested-- Rose Kennedy-- her life story.  And I haven’t started it and you know I may not be able to tolerate the religion-- are you on our side?
ME: On which side?
I: George and I-- we are brothers and sisters together… what’s the word?
ME: Atheist?
I: Atheist.  Or what’s the other one?
ME: Agnostic?
I: Agnostic.
L: George says he’s an atheist, H. says she’s an atheist, I say I’m an agnostic.
ME: I think I’m in your camp.
I: I think—I’m an atheist.  But you know, I still say, I know people and a very, very dear friend of mine, her sister’s just been stricken with cancer, and they’ve only given her eight months to live—and M. is Catholic by birth, but she’s not a church-goer, but she said now, she’s praying for her sister… Now it’s not likely that she can pray for her to live, I wouldn’t think so, she can only pray that she doesn’t suffer too much.
L: That’s what I would hope for.  George and I have it all worked out.  
I: Yeah, right.  But Hospice has a great deal to do with people as they approach… I’ve seen some good stuff…
L: Yeah, you know, I did the Hospice training, and the first family that I was part of, I felt it was an honor to be part of that family going through the death of their ‘grand mamere’, because first of all she was such a fine, fine person, and secondly, the way each member of their family wanted her to pass on as peacefully as possible, and what they did for her to make—
I: You know the one that stands out in my mind most of all was E… I wasn’t there… but E. and I were very, very close friends.  And she was bathed in lavender and she was put in a beautiful gown and all the family and close friends were around her instead of carrying on, they were there, I don’t know if they were singing or reciting or what, but it was a beautiful ceremony from what I understand…  And in your case, with your first experience, over and above what they gave to you, did you feel… a satisfaction that you were able to help them in some way by being there…?
L: Yeah, I think so, because my role was to-- I’ve forgotten her name now-- was to keep her mind busy and more or less happy during those hours that she was under my care.  Now, she was very religious, she was Catholic… the priest came every other day and gave her last rites, which, to me, was sort of black, a black thing, but it made her feel good.  And her children, I think, were mixed, but they all loved her and each one, when it was their turn to be on duty, came up with either a book to read to her, or a story to tell, or they’d take her out for a little walk or whatever, to fill those hours for her in the best way that they could…
…The story is that she had married at eighteen a farmer who already had seven or eight children and then she had seven or eight children by him--
I: He should have had a different hobby!
L: Yeah, and she had six cows that were her cows that she milked by hand, it was a big dairy farm, and then she also fed the farmhands in addition to her own family, and all those babies growing up--
I: So how old was this woman when she passed?
L: She was early seventies.
I: Was it cancer?
L: Yeah.  But I never heard her complain… and everything you did for her, she smiled and said “thank you”… And I think it was just-- to see such love between all the family members—it was, to me, an honor to be part of that.
I: And conversely, you must have, in your experience, been exposed to situations where you didn’t find that in the houses where you represented Hospice--
L: Oh, sure--
I: And how do you cope with that, how do you hold back your feelings…?
L: Well, fortunately, I only had that with one family and-- you’re called in by the ones that do care.  And the others are on the sidelines-- the ones who can’t wait till grandma’s gone, that sort of attitude.  
ME: And you would pick up on that?
L: Oh, yeah.  I think people think when somebody’s dying they can say whatever they want, and sometimes they do, they let a lot of anger out, or I don’t know… but fortunately I only heard that from one family.

two nights ago me and sarah bowman of the bowmans and s.’s friend j. cruised the blue ridge parkway from Asheville to craggy gardens in j.’s green cutlass supreme, “GO green” as he described it, like traffic light green, with a white top that came down, it was chilly and foggy and even sprinkling a little, at least drops were shaking down from the trees which was so fun, to get wet in a car, like an amusement park ride, we were drinking cheap red wine from plastic cups and j. drove looking straight ahead while s. and I spoke rapid, inspired girl-talk.  someone should totally write a country song called “go green cutlass supreme,” I relinquish the title to whoever wants it, but please do a good job.  this is funny because the reason I was in Asheville was to teach a songwriting workshop at this beautiful camp the swannanoa gathering, and in one of my classes we were talking about clichés, how to identify them, how to avoid them, and we were doing this exercise where we took an idea like “freedom” and we all generated imagery that illustrated that idea, but first we ruled out some obvious clichés like birds and the sky, and lo and behold about half the class came up with driving imagery, especially motorcycle imagery, and I said, “well, I’m afraid riding a motorcycle might a cliché,” and this one woman, who I wouldn’t have pegged for a biker, said dreamily, “not when you’re DOING it…” and we all laughed and laughed, it was very sweet.
guys, I am going on an internet fast for the rest of the month of august.  catch you on the flip.  love anais.

please come for dinner

below are some eggs laid by our chickens.  n. & our neighbor split both the chores & the eggs, i sometimes help out too but i am not to be trusted because of going away on tour.  anyway our first batch of hens had a traumatic childhood (there is tons of trauma in raising chickens as n. & i have experienced before) because fully three quarters of the chicks we got died mysteriously when they were still small until there were just five left.  there was one chick we called "red" who seemed to be on her way out as well and our dear neighbor was so sick and sad about all the little chicks dying that she took red in a box into her house and hand-fed her and nursed her back to health.  and NOW, red lays these outrageously large-sized eggs.  see the photo below, both of those big ones on the end belong to red.

you can't even CLOSE the CARTON.  it reminds me of the batman story, in which a traumatic childhood experience results in superpowers.  here are some of the older hens, you'll recognize red.

happily n. and our neighbor got seven new chicks to add to the flock and they're doing great, no casualties.  there were a couple close calls in the late spring when it was still cold and a couple of times the power went out and their little heat lamp with it so we had to make a fire in the fireplace and house the chicks nearby.  now they all live outside, here's their compound, the big house is for the older hens, and the young ones are still in a separate area, we aren't sure quite when or how to introduce them.

any questions?

I was supposed to work at the farm today but it’s been raining so much it’s too wet to weed, the mud clings to the hands and slows down the work, plus I guess the farmer doesn’t want us to compact the soil.  we weeded some long rows of carrots a couple days ago, the camaraderie was fun, there were a dozen and a half of us working, which is why organic vegetables are more expensive, is you are paying like a dozen and a half struggling artists to weed them, but that’s a nice thought isn’t it, that the extra money is going into people’s pockets?  Plus, they taste so. much. better, the vegetables, I mean.

but I would rather eat corporate vegetables than corporate meat, which at this point really TASTES like pain and fetidness, does anyone know, has it actually gotten worse in the past few years, or have I just grown out of the happy meal days of my innocence?  in any case it’s hard to stay away from it especially on tour, but
I will not eat corporate meat
I will not eat corporate meat
I will not eat corporate meat
I will not eat corporate meat
I will not eat corporate meat
what bothers me most is not fast food places, where you know what you’re in for, but places like friday’s, and what’s that one, cracker barrel, which masquerade as actual restaurants with actual food, and charge more money, but are actually troughs of pain and fetidness.  if I am eating corporate food I want it not to resemble food at all.  I’d rather eat a twinkie than like meatloaf from friday’s.  are you guys with me.

I keep wondering if I should sign up for twitter, then hating the idea.  I dunno if byte-size is really my forte.  I’m gonna pretend for a minute I am twittering and see how it goes.

the indigo girls were like two pillars of a temple.  they were both equally powerful and they stood side by side at a weight-bearing distance channeling the harmonies of the goddess (ack I think that was too many characters!).

we moved the baby chicks over to the neighbor’s house this morning.  it was raining.  thomas the mouse was watching with yellow eyes.

ohhhhh it’s kind of like haiku, dig it! 5-7-5

everyone on airplanes
is reading that book called “blink”
should I do it too?

grilling asparagus
isn’t as quick as it looks
on the food network

oh, those are terrible, I sound very bourgeois!
i hate this post!
i will post it anyway.
that’s the culture we live in!

i was lucky enough to open up for ferron in montreal this weekend, it was really something special, i grew up listening to her records, 'shadows on a dime' was the big family hit, my dad made sure we knew the words to every song on that record, i can see it now, the LP, ferron on the cover in some kind of leather or maybe it was a sports jacket leaning in the door of a building, she looked very strong, manly and womanly at once, a serious poet.

here are some great ferron lines:
"hearts are like meadows, with their weathered potential, with their reasons diluted by reason itself..."
"life moves so mysterious with its cute little spins/and it's everyone's koan and door to get in/it's old human nature/it's cold or it's hot/i think of you often/i like you a lot/if it's snowin in brooklyn/i'd say snow's what we've got."
also it was very affecting when she directed this line right at us the audience during her show: "i don't forget about the factory/i don't expect this ride to always be/can i give you what you wanna see?/can we do it one more time?"
one song i didn't grow up with, but discovered on the new 'boulder' record produced by bitch, is 'girl on a road':
"my momma was a waitress/my daddy a truck driver/the thing that kept their power from them slowed me down awhile".  oh my GOD that is a good fucking line. 

i had this feeling watching ferron sing like that she is a kind of a priestess.  no kind of pious mind you.  but she said something backstage about when you say a word, like 'door', you "summon the spirit of the door".  it made perfect sense, words have power and medicine in them, all you have to do is utter them, that's a nice thought on an off-night.