AND LUNCH AT THE CIRCLE L

scott freeman (fiddle) & michael fox (dulcijo)

The last of last night's videos from the Front Porch is uploading onto YouTube now. Two of Michael Fox's story-telling tales I recorded and uploaded. One is him telling (reciting doesn't sound right for how he told it) the Stephen Vincent Benet poem, The Mountain Whippoorwill,

the other his story of why he calls his "ducijo" his "green banjo." At the end of The Mountain Whippoorwill, Scott Freeman joined him with fiddle and they played Hell Broke Loose in Georgia, the tune the hillbilly boy played in the Benet poem. I've read it over a couple of times now, and have listened to Michael telling it, in awe of Benet as a poet. He gets inside the fiddler's head while he's fiddling. He gets the rhythm of the tune going with words, phrases. It rewards a good reading.

Also uploaded 4 songs by Michael and Donna. I had one of Donna singing by herself an old song called Little Margaret. For reasons "unknown" it didn't take at YouTube. It does that from time to time. I have no idea why, and when I've tried uploading them again, they don't take again, so I wasn't able. I made the pictures with a zoom from the back of the room, which emphasizes my trembly hands, and I found the big chrome mic with the long chrome stand caused the automatic focus in the camera going all the time. When it is in the central region of the frame, the auto focus goes crazy. Donna's mic had a black stand and the auto focus didn't change with her. On Michael it was all the time, because he used the big chrome mic. I've wondered before why the focus changed a lot sometimes. It read distance by light somehow. That chrome stand play havoc with the auto mechanism. Everything from last night is up now on YouTube. Write in the Search box hobblealong1 and last nights entries ought to be at the top of what comes up.

I bypassed the Mtn Heritage Fest in Sparta today. There were bands I wanted to see. I had to go in to town to the library and Halsey Drug. Went in the back way. Cars parked everywhere. The library parking all filled up. Every parking place was filled up. At Halsey Drug the parking lot was full, both sides of the street between the PO and Ed Adams lined with cars. I went back out 18 north and re-entered Sparta by the street next to the bowling alley. I wanted out of there. Turned left on 21, drove out to the Circle L and had a good lunch. From there I came home. I wanted to spend the day getting those videos uploaded, wanted to plan the composition of the next portrait of a mountain musician, wanted to see a Takeshi Kitano film, Kikujiro.

I've lined all his films up at the top of the Q at netflix, giving myself a Takeshi Kitano film festival. He makes zany, off the wall kinds of films. Today's was himself acting a man of such an unpleasing personality he kept everybody at a distance, yet he's an interesting kind of guy at the same time. He and his wife, who nags at him all the time for being such a worthless slug, are friends with a boy's grandmother who is keeping the boy. The boy's mother lived some distance away in another city. The boy wanted to go see his mother, so the man's wife sent him with the boy to help him get there and back. They make the journey and the story is their adventures along the way, comic goofball kinds of adventures that are more adventures of the mind than physical adventures.

A little bit of me wanted to go to the Mtn Heritage Fest in Sparta, but the immensity of the crowd intimidated me. I wasn't going to buy anything. And I'm not one to shop just be to be shopping. I felt good for the people who put it all together. It was a good enough crowd they didn't need one more, esp a nonpaying one. I was advised at the library that I should paint scenes on circular saw blades---I'd make a lot of money. I oughta get a job if I want to make money. What I really ought to do is go up to the Air Bellows Outdoor Art Museum and make a contribution before winter. That's more my speed.