It's been a very busy few weeks here, mostly due to two items that are more similar than I would have thought they'd be before I compared them closely. The fiddle contest, which long-time readers (all, what, three of you???) will remember I've entered for three years now, was this past Thursday, falling at the end of a week-long visit from my parents. You could have used the pressure in my life last week to cook several large pots of whatever it is people cook in pressure cookers. I'm too razzled to think of what that might be, but trust me, it's well-cooked now.

This year, for the contest, I enlisted the help of a very talented fiddler I met in fiddle classes a couple of years ago. The contest is a team competition, so I needed another melody instrument. I love the sound of two fiddles playing together, and with my piano-playing compatriot (and Twin Sister) Deborah accompanying us, I somehow thought we had a good chance to place this year. Well, that, and the fact that the contest organizer had pulled one of the best competitors into a new division of the contest (fiddle bands!), opening up a space in the usual top finishers.

We played French-Canadian tunes, two beautiful pieces that we worked to death in several intensive practice sessions, and which I privately practiced until I could finger them in my sleep, backwards, standing on my head -- and with my parents in the audience for the contest, I actually felt like I WAS playing them that way. I worked on that crazy quebecois foot tapping until I could barely lift my right leg (which does the faster work). You can hear it on the recording linked above -- the clunk you hear on the beat is one of three clunks that come around it, but the recording didn't pick up the other ones. I didn't talk much about it with my playing partners, but I worked harder this year than any other. I honestly thought we had a chance.

Well, we didn't place. Again. One judge came to us afterward and said he had tried hard to convince the other judges that we deserved to place, but he wasn't able to do so, and to make it worse, the wonderful guy who organized the contest, a good friend and the best teacher I've ever had, mistakenly announced our number as a winner and had to backtrack as I did the best about-face I could muster without crying, switching from excited celebrating to gracious clapping for the real winner.

It was a miserable moment, and capped off a week of the high emotion that always accompanies my parents' visits. This time it was pretty mellow, comparatively speaking, but I am always waiting for the other shoe to drop, for a bad mood to hit my father or for him to pull me aside for another talk about what I am doing wrong, what is wrong with my in-laws, or how something I did is affecting the overall happiness of him or my mother. I didn't get much at all of that this time, so maybe I can relax next time. My father even defended my music after the contest, saying he felt we SHOULD have placed -- a far cry from his suggestion three years ago that my merely entering the contest made me "foolish." Thank goodness for small miracles.

For now, I am regrouping and trying to get my emotions simmered down enough to consider the three invitations I have to play square dances this fall. I loved the one dance we played two years ago, and this time, we have the chance to play with some pretty amazing musicians and callers. Collaborating with my other Twin Sister continues to be one of the great pleasures of life for me, and every chance I have to do that again feels like a gift. As for my parents, I think probably they are as relieved as I am that there were not many ugly moments this visit, and they are probably as anxious as I am to return to their normal rhythm of life. A friend just wrote to me:


I agree.

This year I went again to the Indiana Fiddlers Gathering for more uninterrupted music (and more torrential rain!). It was another great weekend, despite rain and fire ants, with opportunities for all the things I need to recharge. I discovered several great new tunes, including most of the tunes on the album "Idle Talk and Wicked Deeds" by Portland musicians The Flat Mountain Girls.

I may write more about the festival and the musicians I met, but for now, I just want to include the lyrics to the current favorite song in our house (and car). It's called Closer to the Mill, and I know the Flat Mountain Girls didn't write it, but I don't have the CD case handy to tell you who did. I find this profound in a very deceptively simple way. You want something? GO GET IT.  I aspire to get closer all the time!

Closer to the Mill
----------------------

If you want some heat, gotta draw a little flame
If you want something sweet,  you gotta squeeze a little cane
If you want a little wheat, raise a little grain
And get a little closer to the mill

Well it might sound funny, but as sure as I sing
If you want some money, gotta sell something
If you want a little honey, take a little sting
And get a little closer to the mill

Yodelayeeeeeee
Here's a little secret in the words that I sing:
When it comes to lovin', gotta take what you bring
Gotta get a little closer to the mill

Well if you wanna be a buyer, gotta have the price
If you wanna roll high, well you gotta throw the dice
If you wanna take a try, cut you off a slice
And get a little closer to the mill

Well it ain't no crime and it ain't no shame
If the gold is fine, well you oughta stake a claim
If you wanna be mine, you better do the same
Better get a little closer to the mill

Yodelayeeeeeee
Here's a little secret in the words that I sing:
When it comes to lovin', gotta take what you bring
Gotta get a little closer to the mill

My mother-in-law once told me that children always grow like crazy in summer -- that I wouldn't necessarily notice it while it was happening, but fall would come and we'd try on the last spring's jeans only to find that they would be several inches too short. It could be all the fresh air, the fresh fruit, the sunshine, or the mellow vibe -- but she's right. The kids -- and our lives -- are growing fast.

My Doodlebug, once an exclusively-dress-wearing-princess, has discovered the monkey bars and shorts this summer. She wears skirts and dresses less and less often, preferring to have the ease of movement that comes from unencumbered legs. I am relieved about the dresses, which I always found impractical, and very proud about the monkey bars. When she began camp this summer, she could not swing across even one rung of the monkey bars. Now she can make her way across all five of them on the little jungle gym at her camp -- both using her arms in the traditional way, and by hanging upside down with her legs and crawling across like an odd little upside-down-crab. She proudly shows everyone her "monkey bar callouses." She collects bugs with her friends, gets filthy every day, and ALSO comes home to play dress-up. It's a great balance. Despite my sunscreening her every day (ok, ALMOST every day), she is brown as an almond, and every little dirty smudge makes her more beautiful.



Little Shmoo is eating her way through the summer, and I just never get tired of hearing "Mama, can we make dinner?," even if it is ten in the morning. Her appetite is nothing short of miraculous, and it blows my mind to think of the difference between now and just 18 months ago, when we feverishly catalogued every bite of cracker. Every part of her is growing, from her beautiful kissable belly to her increasingly luscious golden-blond hair. There's even enough to make into a ponytail now.


The girls and I got really lucky just before summer began, and ended up with a bike trailer. They ride in back every day on the way to camp, to the beach, to the park, to the library, to do errands, almost everywhere. Days go by where we don't use the car, which is just what I had hoped for us. We can fit the kids, a beach blanket, a towel, water bottles, and two buckets & shovels into that thing, and we can be at the beach in 15 minutes!

The farm boxes that come on Wednesdays have introduced us all to the many things to be done with greens (including pulverizing and freezing them for winter, which is what one must do when one receives this volume of greens!). Last night's dinner was a stir fry of eggplant, zucchini, peppers, summer squash, carrots, cabbage, and onions, all from our farm box, with brown rice, oil, soy sauce, spices and pistachios being the only store bought portions of the meal. We've given away several heads of lettuce, but thrown away very little unused & rotten produce. We're only 6 weeks into our 20 week share, so hopefully we can keep this up.

Finally, tomorrow we are going camping with two other families. There will be eight kids and six adults, with the kids ranging from six years old down to seven months old. The fiddle is coming, hoping to make nice friends with a guitar scheduled to join us. Wish us luck!

It's summer, and we are just where we wanted to be. By fall, I know we'll barely fit into the selves we were last spring.

I identify myself as a bleeding left-wing near-commie hippie liberal, and that's probably being conservative, no pun intended. I don't talk politics too often because I am only too aware that my opinions could be backed up with a lot more research, but I don't read nearly enough -- so my reactions to the world are largely emotional and instinctual. Sometimes I change my mind after doing some reading -- cloth diapers being one example of something I thought I'd do, until I read more about it -- but the writing has to be good, and the research traceable. I think it's really hard to change people's minds (mine included) once they have an opinion, so I don't often try.

That said, I am beyond impressed when someone does so elegantly. My friend Karen linked to this story on her blog Free Range Librarian, and I was so moved by it that I am forwarding it willy-nilly to all my fellow BL-WN-CHL's (see above self-definition). It is a blog entry by a librarian who received an email challenging the placement of a children's book in his library, a book called Uncle Bobby's Wedding, that tells the story of a little girl guinea pig whose favorite uncle is getting married. Oh yes, and he's marrying another male guinea pig. The librarian wrote a beautiful, elegant response, well-thought-out and well-written, researched, backed by facts and documented. Had I received the email to which he is responding, I would have been hard pressed to do more than spew out a bunch of four-letter words. Maybe he did that too, privately, but his public response is inspirational.

Books like this get challenged all the time. The absolutely adorable book And Tango Makes Three is one of my daughters' favorites, and tells the true story of two loving male penguins raising a baby penguin together at the Central Park Zoo. It received no end of controversy. My reaction to the controversy was to rave about going to the library and challenging all the evangellically religious books, the books about putting your babies on a feeding schedule from birth, the books about cooking foie gras and veal, and on and on, all the things with which I disagree. After all, isn't that the best use of my public librarians' time? (If you could see me typing this right now, here in the coffee shop where I work, you'd laugh as I huff and puff over my computer and kick the wall behind the table.)

So, here's that link again, to librarian Jamie LaRue's response to the challenge of what sounds like a very nice book. Please read it, and even if you're not a BL-WN-CHL like me, forward it on to everyone you know.