A Day I Wish Would Go On Forever

This was a poignant day. We met Josh, who Marc organized the Red Dirt concert and music awards with in 2003. Josh is a generous, intelligent person who filled in some of the picture of what Marc loved. We also visited The Rooster, a tavern where two members of No Justice were performing. Rosemary had the video camera going. The music is outstanding. Kathy listened intently and connected to the music and the scene and must have been thinking about Marc.

Josh took us to a bbq restaurant in Stillwater where we had what I consider to be real bbq. I had chicken and fried okra, which looks a lot like tater tots but tastes like a spicey vegetable. I also had the best white bread I've ever eaten. And we had apple cobbler which was out of this world.

There are crickets and moths all over Stillwater. The moths, which are going nuts around the lights in the parking lot of the Best Western, get you ready for the popcorn ceiling of the hotel. You look up, and there's a chaotic scene of zillions of bumps.

It's a funny thing to be watching good guitar on stage. My brother Bill, who died 18 years ago, was an excellent guitar player and I haven't been able to watch guitar performances ever since. Tonight I watched the musician's hands and I remembered Bill. I grew up in a house where Bill played guitar all the time when he wasn't drumming. Bill's music was everywhere in our house. He loved music the way Marc loved music. I don't love it the way they did, in other words, I don't have the intensity. But I'll tell you, being a teenager was about the music. In the summer of 1967, the Summer of Love as it is known, I was in our side yard in Medford and Bill brought a radio out and said, "Here's the song I've wanted you to hear. It's Light My Fire by a band called the Doors. It's the music of the future." It was the long version and we listened. He looked at me to see if I "got it". I did indeed.

Many of you have written or called about my disdain for crop pants. You, too, find disfavor with this style element. It may be that we must band together, forming a movement against the crop pant. I have always wanted to serve humanity, making the world a better place, and I wonder if where I can do this is by mobilizing an anti-crop pant movement. Would you join? I think marches and leafletting, embargos, refusals to buy, moratoriums, boycotting advertisers whose commercials are on television shows where women wear crop pants. It worked with grapes. We could burn crop pants in the town square. We can throw my two pair on top of the fire. Someone has to do something. I am designing a crop pant outfit that I will describe in a later blog, an outfit that will rile you up, fill you with horror and rage. This is something for you to look forward to.

I'm reading Vollman's "Poor People", a book where the writer went out into the world and asked people why they are poor. There are no statistics, no solutions. There's just the story of poverty and conjecture in the lives of the poor. It is excellent.

You will want to know what I wore today. I put aside the safari pants and brought out the navy blue linen slacks (new, Orvis) and an elderly red linen shirt with princess seams. The whole outfit worked. For dinner, I wore Nordstrom's DKNY jeans and an Orvis buzz-off white t-shirt, hoping to prevent moth interest. That was another hit. As far as the Orvis safari pants, I'll probably wear them to the prairie thing we're doing tomorrow. The buffalo have quite a treat in store.