Sunday, September 28, 2008

Tis' the Season

It's fall, the time when you've got to work fast and diligently to get some food put away for the winter that will hopefully come and put and end to the growing season. This is probably the favorite at our house, canned peaches. The freezer's almost full too.

Tis' the Season


A new feature in our food production is a dehydrator. We've done a few batches of tomatoes, and one batch of Thai peppers. The first person to contact me with the number of peppers in this pile can have a tablespoon of powder (a year's supply).

Tis' the Season


Not everything ends up dehydrated. I've just finished a "root cellar" under the basement stairs. Fortunately there are still potatoes to be dug.

Porch Fest


Ithaca's second best neighborhood recently held the second "Porch Fest" where lots of stellar musicians play music on the front porch and people go around and listen. It's great to see the streets blocked with people and the porches overloaded with talent. I bet there's a few dozen bands that have toured the US and Europe represented in these two photos. What's in the soil down there in Fall Creek?

Porch Fest


Not everybody played music on the porch; Karen, Jessie and Red just drew a crowd by sitting at Amy's and having drinks and snacks. Kevin displayed the best way to get around to the 30-some bands who were playing.

Porch Fest

Occasionally a band didn't fit on their porch, or in this case it wouldn't have made much sense as it's an enclosed one. JazzHappens did a great job turning the day into "Front Lawn Fest."
Gotta know how to improvise if you're going to play jazz I guess.

Porch Fest


Here are the Aceto Brothers playing with their dad, he's in his 90's but can still sing like a bird and play a sweet mandolin.

Three Day Bike Trip



Looking way back, Gail and I took a little three-day trip on our bikes with overnights at Mt. Irenaeus in Allegany County, and a B&B in Hammondsport on Keuka Lake. Three nice rides but quite a bit of up and down between Hammondsport and Ithaca. Stopping for garlic knots in Watkins Glen didn't help the hardest climbs from there to Ithaca.

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Steve Earle at The State

This week I finally got to a Steve Earle concert after listening to him for almost twenty years. It was at Ithaca's Historic State Theater and like a few other shows I've been to there, it goes on my all-time great concerts list. I'll leave the review to the professional writers, but I've got to say he said it best when he said he "is a miracle" after all he's been through. And yet he keeps writing great songs and doing shows like the one the other night where he plays for over two hours, giving it his all to the point he's drenched in sweat after the first fifteen minutes.
In reality it wasn't the first time I'd seen him live. Gail and I were in Saratoga Springs for a one-day festival this summer and he performed for about an hour, but it was just a taste and he was too far away in the big venue and tough to see/hear, it was enough to increase my anticipation. Another time I was in Washington for a rally opposing the war that still rages (even if we don't hear much about it anymore), guess we haven't been singing loud enough, and he was coming up on the bill but the buses were heading back to Ithaca and I had to leave before he came on. I just spent half my morning with him on Youtube, and came across this song from that show. I thought it was brilliantly used for the radio advertisements for his Ithaca show.