I remember the sixties

My sister and I in our winter coats back in about 1970 or so.

Family Fun Day at the Noxubee Wildlife Refuge

I took the kids to Family Fun Day at the Noxubee Wildlife Refuge this morning. It was foggy and a little chilly. This man had brought a live alligator as part of an exhibit from the Mississippi Museum of Natural History in Jackson. We were encouraged to touch him. He was very calm in the cold air. Can you guess which of my kids kept touching the alligators face? Even after we told him not too...Anyway, we met some friends there and had a good time. We got to try archery and hatchet throwing, we saw a great display of insects, butterflies and moths, we shot at computer animated prairie dogs and quail moving on a big screen with laser guns, ate free hot dogs, listened to live blue grass, and went for a canoe ride around the lake. Now we are back home and the ROTC people have set up army games in the soccer field behind our house. They are running around, hiding behind sheets of plywood, lobbing dummy grenades at spooky black humanoid forms, while men with clipboards chase after them. I had judo last night and learned the hip throw. We started out practicing rolls. Over the course of the hour, I must have either rolled or been thrown in a pinwheel motion threw the air at least a hundred times. And since class is at 6:30, I had been seriously contemplating my usual cocktail before class. Boy am I glad my lover talked me out of that. I came home sore, nauseous and a little disoriented. But it could have been much worse.

Rockin

Played a gig at Bin 612 in the Cotten District with a new friend I have made here in town. Last Friday we jammed in a yurt with a fire pit a few doors down. Buddy is good on lead and can play harp. He has a number of clever tunes in the tradition of Billy Sugarfix or Magnetic Fields, but like those bands I have a great deal of trouble evaluating such tunes in my field of reference. They hold no content for me. Pal O' Mine is more in the tradition of early Dylan and The Grateful Dead. In Chapel Hill, covers were forbidden. In Starkville, anytime anyone stands up and starts strumming a guitar a vacant-eyed frat boy with hippie hair will ask, you know any John Prine? You know any James Taylor? Anyways, we stuck to our original material, more or less. Played some gospel in the E.C. and Orna Ball vein. We have a regular Monday night gig now. Bin 612 is a very nice bar, with patio seating right on the street, nice interior, and they serve food. We don't get paid, but we can drink free. We have a twenty-five dollar limit on the bar tab. This is a good thing. The bars close at midnight here, which surprised me. That is a very good thing as well. I am going to have to learn some covers to keep this crowd engaged. It is an entirely student crowd, unlike Chapel Hill. There is no slacker subculture here feeding off the fat of the land. And most of these students are molecular biology or aeronautical engineering students. Please suggest some covers that are not too obvious and haven't been beat to death by evey busker from Tokyo to Innsbruck to Cambridge and Aspen. I'm thinkin to placate the Dylan fans "Meet Me In The Morning." from "Blood on The Tracks," if they ask for Neil Young I'm going with "Out of My Mind," by Buffalo Springfield. Absolutely no Taylor, Buffet or Dead will come from this troubadour. I am feeling nauseous just thinking about it. Please nobody tell Kevin or Crow or Shawn that I am even considering this. How about "Sitting in Limbo?" could I pull that off? I heard a friend play "Redemption Song" once and thought that it was very pretty. But the idea of drunk college kids grooving to that just about makes me keel over. Am I just arrogant? Do I need to just get over it? I could have some fun with "I'm Not Like Everybody Else," or "Your Gonna Miss Me," or maybe "Primitive," but this crowd won't even recognize that shit. Is there a Skynard song I could do and not throw up? I have always liked "Gimme Back My Bullets," and you don't hear that one that often. My set list last night:
War
Omaha
Data
Bird
Golden Green
Schoenste Tag (this is a cover of a Tocotronic song, but doesn't count due to extreme obscurity.)
Hundred Ways to Roll (none of yu'uns have heard this'n}

With the T-man I did:
Trials, Troubles, Tribulations (An E. C. and Orna Ball Tune)
Full Throttle
Radical
2nd Coming
One Day (E.C. and Orna again)

Somebody at one of the tables said there was a band there recently called the "Waco Dead." In the confusion I thought he said "Grateful Dead," and I tried to explain that, while I had a lot of respect for the Dead, I couldn't really listen to them or play that kind of music or any kind of jam music for that matter. No no, he said, this was a band called the Waco Dead, he siad. The Waco Dead? I replied. Now perhaps I would listen to that.

I suppose in the end I will have to work this out for myself, just like everything else. But I would appreciate some suggestions. If anyone wants to check us out this Monday we will be at Bin 612 in the Cotten District in Starkville Mississippi. Come on down. Ask to hear some Hank. Ask for Phish. I'm used to it. The question is, do I give in? And to what degree?

Lets get caught up

We did manage to get to the Tombigbee National Forest on Saturday. It was about an hour's drive to Choctow Lake, where we found a beach for swimming. It was a beutiful day and we ate our snacks and watched the boys splash around. Sunday we took it easy, did some housework, watched some football. On Monday I took the kids to Memphis to check out the zoo. We took the scenic route up, taking highway 9 to Oxford to have a snack under the trees on the courthouse square where Luster drove the wrong way around the monument in the final scene of The Sound and The Fury. We hopped back into The Climax of Blue Power and rode on up to Memphis, arriving at the zoo at one. Here you see the children in an upbeat mood in front of a gazelle, then later with the pandas in a faux Chinese palace they were pretty worn out. We left at 5:30 and got home at 8:30. I did not know it took that long to drive to Memphis, but I am glad we did it. The zoo was impressive, it included a herpetarium, an aquarium, polar bears, black bears, a tropical bird house with a walk-in bird habitat and much more. We were not able to see it all.

Check Out Darth Maul's Big Brown Eyes:

Here is a close-up of the evil sith which I took with the regular camera.