After bouncing around between Chicago, southern IL, the St. Louis area, NYC, Albany, the Catskills (NERFA), PA, OH, IN and MI, your friendly Human Pinball's in Kalamazoo tonight taking care of FARM business before heading home to our own cities, beds, spouses and families/kitties tomorrow evening. Whew! Been one heckuva month, and we've got a killer CD (or are about to, once we approve the mixes and mastering) and tons of memories, relatives and new friends to show for it.
Got some intensive work (final guitar/dulcimer/keyboard overdubs--my first keyboard credit--and second-chairing the mix sessions) done in a whirlwind couple of days down in Sparta; Gary worked tirelessly all weekend and week to bring it all into line and make us sound like we do at our best shows....with some subtle and tasty licks from a few of southern IL's most stellar Americana/bluegrass musicians.
We decided to make a preview cut---the updated version of "Let 'em Eat Moose"--available ASAP in honor (???) of Sarah Barracuda's book tour starting this week. Before hitting the sack tonight, I'll try to upload it here--but let me know and I'll shoot you an .mp3 too. Let's make it go viral--with no vaccine!
NERFA was amazing--many times larger than FARM but less frantic and more friendly than Folk Alliance. Made some lasting contacts, was wowed by some killer performances and jams (including the circles at the Local 1000 Showcase-Free Zone), and had a blast despite East Coast weed pollens and acid reflux (courtesy of Catskills culinary abbondanza) doing their darndest to try and sabotage my "pipes." Driving along Route 209 and the Quickway brought childhood memories flooding back--funny how much more beautiful the scenery is when you've been away for years; as a little kid spending entire summers up there, I guess I'd taken it for granted. The Hudson Valley Resort is the last of the old Borscht Belt resort hotels (it used to be The Granit, which was the northernmost on 209) still operating; the Nevele and Kutsher's are still standing but eerie, idle and empty. Gone forever are the bungalow colonies, Grossingers, the Pines, Tamarack, Homowack, Zalkin's (now a Yogi Bear campground), and the venerable Concord...along with the vaudevillians who got their starts there and the Kosher dining rooms that ensured nobody would ever make it back down to the city still hungry. (The food at NERFA was excellent--abundant a la the old days, with most of the old staples of my childhood like matzo ball soup, blintzes, Danish the size of dinner plates, prime rib, smoked fish, mushroom-barley soup, bagels, cheesecake, Linzertorte, etc.; plus concessions to diversity and modernity such as eggplant rolatini, pastas, stir fries, couscous, elegant fish and chicken dishes and even tofu. But nary a bowl of borscht in sight). Great music, renewing old acquaintances (including from other regions and other gigs from years past) and making new connections. And this year, we got some great work done for Local 1000--and brought new brothers and sisters into the fold.
Am discouraged about the Stupak Amendment, and chagrined that Orrin Hatch intends to introduce his own version in the Senate tomorrow (with the GOP aiming to delay, deny and hope the bill dies, as well as blocking every Obama judicial nominee---a tactic they decried when the Democrats used it on only a select few Bush nominees--and eviscerating the Dodd bill designed to protect consumers and put the brakes on Wall St. excesses and outrages). What is truly disgusting are two latest developments:
1. Those "Pray For Obama--Psalms 108:9" t-shirts, banners, even teddy bears that have cropped up. Sounds innocuous, even benevolent, right? NOPE. That psalm calls for God or "righteous men" to make the "days" of "illegitimate kings" "few in number" and even calls for "their wives to be widows and their children orphans." The ghost of Timothy McVeigh is grinning up malevolently from the netherworld, nodding approvingly. This goes beyond criticism and dissent: it is hate, pure and simple, urging violence, assassination and revolution, and it makes me sick to my stomach. It ought to sicken you too, whatever your political persuasion.
2. The about-face on breast-cancer screening guidelines. Ever since I lost a law school classmate to breast cancer at 28, and one of my best friends battled it valiantly from her diagnosis at 30 to her death at 42 (and my mother-in-law was diagnosed at 60 and defeated it long enough for old age to claim her at 95), I have been doing self-exams as instructed, had my first baseline mammo at 38, biennial ones in my 40s and annually starting at 50. Now they're saying BSE is useless and alarmist, mammos are unnecessary till 50, and biennially is just fine till 75 (when, presumably any newly discovered tumors would grow slowly enough to not need treatment). They cite the dangers, expenses and traumas of "false positives." Bull. Those are far outweighed by the failure to diagnose it earlier. Almost everyone I know who had breast cancer was diagnosed in their 40s or even earlier. The prime motivator here has got to be money. Breast cancer is NOT like prostate cancer, many more types of which are so slow-growing as to require only watchful waiting and periodic drug tweaks. Many more breast cancers are virulent and aggressive thugs that kill women in their prime unless nipped absolutely in the bud. It dishonors the memory of all our sisters we've lost to let the bean counters carry the day. We owe it to them (especially to Christine) to reverse this ill-advised development.