September 13, 2017
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Roadtrip adventures part 2: car trouble

I broke camp early on Sunday morning with a long drive ahead of me from Virginia back to Toronto. I didn’t get far though. A short distance out of Buena Vista, my car started over-heating. Before it got really bad, I turned around and headed right back to the campground.

My new friend George was super-helpful. We took a look and could see where the radiator was spitting out what coolant remained. It was Sunday. I wasn’t going to be able to find a mechanic open. I really didn’t know what to do. George drove me into town and we got more coolant and some stop-leak goo in the hopes we could stop the leak long enough for me to get home.

The stuff did its job and within a few minutes the leak sealed up. The system refilled with coolant, I was on my way. Everything was going fine until about half-way home in central Pennsylvania, when I started overheating again. I pulled over to the side of the secondary highway I was on. I figured I would let it cool down, refill with coolant, and hopefully that would get me home. Unfortunately this plan was a fail. The leak was back and had expanded and even with more coolant in the system, it was running very hot very quickly.

I learned from a fellow who lived across from where I stopped that I was just outside of Philipsburg, and this town had both a motel and a mechanic. I was able to drive into town without incident and pulled into the motel parking lot as steam began again coming from under the hood. There was nothing to do but get a room and find the mechanic in the morning.

Monday morning I was able to get to the garage on a cool engine without overheating too badly. It was only a few blocks away. The mechanic took a look at it and said the radiator needed to be replaced but everything else seemed OK.

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He made several calls in an effort to get me a radiator Monday. Unfortunately, the one I needed was a special order and they said they would not have it until Tuesday afternoon. I left the car with the mechanic, threw a clothes bag over my shoulder and walked back to the motel to book another night.

Food choices in town were somewhat limited to pizza, Subway sandwiches, McDonalds and a small Chinese buffet. Philipsburg is a quiet place without a lot going on for the stranded traveler. Fortunately, I had a book with me, Cabbagetown by Hugh Garner. This excellent novel is set in the original Cabbagetown neighbourhood in Toronto during the Depression. It traces the lives of a boy we meet as a 16 year-old named Ken Tilling, and the people he knows as they cope with poverty during several years after the crash. It’s an excellent novel and I recommend it.

After completing the novel, with plenty of time on my hands I checked out television. It seemed as if most of the channels down there played a huge number of commercials, many of them about insurance schemes or ads for miracle drugs with super-dangerous side-effects, from suicidal thoughts to liver failure to projectile vomiting. Always as the voice-over describes the side-effects, we see smiling people walking together, glowing with good health. I found a channel that showed nothing but bad Western tv shows like Bonanza and Gunsmoke and The Virginian and The Big Valley. I gobbled them up.

Check-out time Tuesday was 11:00 AM. The radiator wasn’t due in until some time in the afternoon, but with no place else to go I walked back to the garage. To my surprise the radiator was in and the mechanic was finishing up the job. I was on the road at noon and home in time for supper. There was a time when I would have been quite anxious about a situation like the one I faced, but this time I was fairly relaxed about it. After all, I was safe, the car was safe, I had a warm place to sleep and some food to eat. It was sure good to see Tuffy P and the menagerie, though, that’s for sure!

I partially unpacked last night and did up my laundry. I still have all kinds of stuff in the car though, to deal with today. I’m stalling.

September 13, 2017
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Roadtrip adventures part 1: Rockbridge Festival

Regular visitors to this page might be wondering where I’ve been over the past week, since I haven’t been posting. Well, I did a road-trip down to Buena Vista, Virginia (I was told it is pronounced Byoona Vista) for the Rockbridge Mountain Music and Dance festival – my first old time festival. I was thinking about going to the Clifftop festival earlier in the summer but that proved impossible. September turned out to be a better time, so off I went.

My plan was to drive as far as Winchester Virginia, stay overnight there, then do my grocery shopping and drive the last couple hours down to Buena Vista. I really had no idea where to set up camp when I arrived. There were already a lot of people there. The site is like a great big flat field, with the Maury River on one side and a line of trees and a hill on the other. There were people camped all over the place in tents, pop-ups and RVs. I saw right away there were still some spots along the river so I drove down there, found a place to park and set up camp.

I explored around a bit, made some lunch and decided a wee nap was in order. When I awoke, there was an RV parked next to my camp and I met a fellow named George. He was on his own for the moment but his wife Suzi joined him the following day. They live in Virginia, a couple hours away from Buena Vista. I learned quickly that many old time festival-goers (and are quite a few of these festivals in Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina over the summer) go to a lot of the festivals and have known one another for years. George took me around and introduced me to so many people and everyone was totally welcoming and friendly to me.

One of the people George introduced me to has somehow acquired the nickname, The Mayor. The Mayor doesn’t play music but he loves to be around it. If people need to make something or another happen at one of these festivals, The Mayor facilitates. He poured me a tasty beverage and we continued walking about, The Mayor introducing me to his “citizens”.

I learned that Rockbridge is one of the more laid-back festivals, in part because there are no contests. There are workshops on the Saturday for banjo, fiddle, guitar and more, and there are two square dances, Friday and Saturday night. At the heart of the festival though, is jamming and visiting.

They had two food trucks on-site near the dance tent for those who preferred to eat out rather than cook in camp. I tried both of them and found items like burritos and fried chicken tacos to be very good.

One day, there was an “Estrogen Jam”. This jam was to be for all women – or guys in dresses. I did see one fellow not in drag sneak in though. Here’s a clip from it….

Both square dances were excellent, with a different band each night. I have a clip from the Saturday night dance, with Aaron Ratcliffe calling and New Cut Road playing…

There were all kinds of jams going on, especially after dark. Some were big, others quite small….

Some of these jams went on into the wee hours. Nights were quite cool and some campers had built jamming structures with tarp sides, heaters and lanterns.

I was worried I might find it difficult to meet people at the festival, especially as so many of them seemed to know one another. My experience was the opposite – thanks in no small part to George who made me feel at home among his group of friends. I had a great time, and played plenty of banjo along the way. I’d love to go back to Rockbridge and some of the other old time festivals as well. They are at the heart of this music I’ve been playing.

 

 

September 5, 2017
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Tai Chi revisited

Back in the 90s I learned Chen Style tai chi first and second forms, and it became something I did daily. Along the way I also learned a couple other forms, including a single sword style, and some push hands, but it was the first form of Chen Style which became a daily practice.

Chen Style is the earliest form and perhaps the most martial of the tai chi forms. I got involved with it through a friend who had some experience with it and I liked practicing the forms right away. We had excellent teachers and I really worked at learning the movements as best I could.

At some point I just stepped away from it. Other things were going on in my life – including getting married. I didn’t seem to have time to continue classes and I learned quickly that the classes helped me focus on practicing the form daily. I stopped practicing the form daily and eventually stopped completely. At one point when I went back to it, I couldn’t remember all the details of the form. I regret allowing that to happen, and I don’t know how many times over the years I’ve told myself I need to get return to it.

When I left behind the grind of the work-a-day world to concentrate on making paintings and mosaics, one of my goals was to get back to practicing tai chi. Finally, I’ve signed up for some classes, which start later this month.

I’ll be going back to the beginning, since time has washed all my former knowledge and practice away, and I’ll be learning a different form, called Yang Style. Yang Style is a slower and gentler form than Chen Style, and given that my body is some 15 years older now (and I’m slower and gentler too), that makes sense to me. I hope to eventually learn the 108 movement long form. This will take quite some time and require plenty of repetition and practice.

At the same time, I’ve also signed up for an 11 week class on bird and plant identification. I’ve always been interested in nature, and I’ve worked on learning to identify mushrooms over the years, but my knowledge of birds and plants is still rudimentary. I’m hoping this class will increase my knowledge and also help me hone my observation skills. Tuffy P is taking a course this fall too, a weekly pilates class.

Always be learning, that’s what I say.

 

September 3, 2017
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Peaky Blinders

My friend East Texas Red recommended we watch a show called Peaky Blinders (on Netflix). This was not so long ago, but we’ve already exhausted the 3 seasons available so far.

Peaky Blinders is a story about a family of gangsters in post-WWI Birmingham in the UK. It’s well done, intriguing, violent and very compelling. The show reminded me of Boardwalk Empire in a broad sense and I’m OK with that comparison.  There were a few episodes which dragged some but overall I can’t complain. I enjoyed getting to know the characters and there were enough plot twists to propel the show through 3 seasons.

The show is peppered with music made and popularized decades after the story was set, including plenty of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and also including The White Stripes, Johnny Cash, P.J. Harvey, Arctic Monkeys, Radiohead, Tom Waits, The Last Shadow Puppets, David Bowie and more. Sometimes the music was remarkably successful, but I thought at other times is just seemed out of place and ineffective. Still, the choices were bold and confident and when the music worked well, it added intensity to the show.

The characters are a nasty bunch overall, operating on a twisted idea of a family code. The lead character, Tommy, is the boss, the thinker, the planner and increasingly the show revolves around his character. Other characters are given enough complexity to keep them interesting – for the most part. Some were stronger than others. For instance the character of Grace started out strong and intriguing, but later it seemed as if the writers didn’t know what to do with her.

I understand they are planning a couple more seasons of this one. I find that often, producers just don’t know when to stop when they’ve got a good thing going. I hope they don’t try to drag this one on for too long and end up sucking the life out of the thing.

Good show, with some exceptional episodes. Recommended (but not for the squeamish).

September 1, 2017
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Fiddle tune for a Friday evening

Here’s a tune by Reg Hill from his recording Ottawa Valley Hoedown. It’s called the Buck Fever Rag. Reg Hill was also well known as the fiddle player for Mac Beattie’s Ottawa Valley Melodiers. This is a great tune. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

August 29, 2017
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A tune named after a river

The river is the Scioto River in Ohio, but the source for the tune is apparently Burl Hammons from West Virginia. I’ve just learned from a banjo player in Ohio that the river is spelled Scioto and pronounced Sciota, but the tune is pronounced Scioty.  It has a pretty melody and I enjoy playing it. Sometimes I play this one at a relaxed tempo, as in the video below. Other times I play it somewhat faster. I’ve heard lots of different versions of this tune and I don’t think I’ve heard one I don’t like. I’m playing it in standard G tuning.

August 29, 2017
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The mud man and a social media connection

Some visitors to this little corner of the blog-swamp know that Sheila (AKA Tuffy P around here) and I have a modest collection of artwork by folk artists or outsider artists or self-taught artists – call them what you will. Many these artists come from the southern United States, although we have some Canadian work as well. We sometimes purchase artwork through the Slotin Auction. This auction is located in Georgia, but through the wonders of internet technology, we can bid online live during the auction.

One of the works in our little collection is a cement tablet-like head by a fellow named Burgess Dulaney.

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Dulaney lived from 1914 to 2001. Most of the work he made was not with cement but rather with mud, much of which came from pits on his property in Mississippi.

Some time ago, Sheila posted a photo of our Dulaney cement work on Instagram (a platform she no longer subscribes to, curiously enough), and was contacted by a fellow named Terry Nowell. Mr. Nowell, who lives in Texas, has a definitive collection of Dulaney’s work. He knew Dulaney and visited him many times over the years. It was work from Nowell’s collection that formed a 2003 exhibition of Dulaney’s work at COCA Anheuser-Busch Gallery in St. Louis. Terry Nowell very kindly sent us the catalog for that exhibition which featured article, Simple Beauty, and many photographs of Dulaney’s work, a photo of his cabin and a photo of the artist himself.

Burgess Dulaney was very prolific. He made as many as 900 works, most of which from unfired clay. We didn’t know anything about Dulaney or his work when we bought the cement work. Sheila saw it at the auction and was struck by its power and intensity. We’re grateful to Terry Nowell for contacting Sheila and sharing his love for Dulaney’s work.

Curiously, Dulaney is not the only artist in the American south who worked with mud. In Alabama, Jimmy Lee Sudduth made mud paintings. We have two of Sudduth’s paintings hanging in our home.

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Although Sheila and I are both well versed in the “fine art” tradition, we share a love for work created by self-taught artists. We’ve come across some tremendously powerful painting and sculpture over the years, which has taught us a lot about image-making. I think our love for this so-called folk art is reflected in the mosaic butterflies, bears, birds and so on which we make together.

 

 

 

 

August 29, 2017
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I love butterfly season….

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We completed this butterfly mosaic the other night. It has a 19 inch wingspan and is made from broken crockery, ceramic tiles, a wooden bead (on the noggin) and two plastic animals (can you find them?).