"...With exactly no help from the government."

So I am deep into packing now... I feel like I just did this, maybe because I did, not 11 months ago.... But this time I don't have Tracy to show me the funny things she finds while packing and offer me old clothes. Emma Lou is good company though, she enjoys exploring all the empty boxes. And the weather has been a bit cooler this week, which is nice.


When I went over to sign my lease, its turned out the house needed a hose, a doorbell battery, a stove filter, and a few other little things. My new landlord, having just told me that tenants were like family, and handing me some cash for a garden hose, decided we should just go to Home Depot right then. So I hopped in his truck and off we went. He told me about his family and his history in the neighborhood, etc. Truly he is refreshing after my previous rather neurotic landlord. I have a good feeling about him, and about the house. It'll be fun to have my own whole house, a garage (really more like a barn), a little attic, a garden which is already producing vegetables and herbs (tomotoes, string beans, carrots, lavender, rosemary...). I will have to learn how to care for a garden, finally. And I will adjust to the the wallpaper in the kitchen. The cute nook makes up for it.



Fall plans are already unfolding. The Americana Music Assoc. conference in Nashville in late September, a trip to Missoula with Raina in October, New York for Thanksgiving. Maybe even a job with Planet Bluegrass in the spring... My festival looks like it may just begin to take shape.... Next week I get to start hanging out with Willa (who will be four soon!) again on Monday and Tuesday afternoons. There's a new band I might do some work for. And I have some great concerts planned: Andrew Calhoun, Crooked Still (who just got an amazing review in USA Today - http://blogs.usatoday.com/listenup/2006/08/this_weeks_revi_1.html), Tom Catmull, Anna Coogan & North 19, Chris Pureka, Edie Carey and Ashleigh Flynn. Tracy Grammer and Darryl Purpose are in the works, and maybe another health care benefit...

I finally read the rest of the Mother Jones cover article from the May/June issue so I could send it to Rebecca: "The Revolution Will Not Be Shrinkwrapped: Breaking the Industrial Food Chain." I liked this sentence: "The [$14 billion market in organic food] was built by consumers and farmers working informally together outside the system, with exactly no help from the government."