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sun coming up, first hard frost, 30 on the porch, Ofest, Pipestem, GaslandPerfect timing, hard frost on October 16. I am comforted by the turning of the wheel in the usual way.
Listening to: Dionne Farris, I Know What You're Doing Reading: Time Traveler Weather: 30, clear Another splendid Bramwell Oktoberfest has come and gone. This year was the 15th annual, though really it was the 14th public one, I think. Chairman George has triskaidekaphobia for real, so we skipped the 13th and went straight to 14 with his excuse about a miscount or some such nonsense. But that's a whole 'nother Oprah.
Ofest weather was dazzling, high 70's and sunny! Yummy delicious beer everywhere, a few weird but interesting beers, as usual, lots of tremendous food, friends, music, campfires. This year seemed particularly smooth, no big hiccups that I detected. All the beer arrived safely, ice, trash removed, tents erected, bands and gear, all without a hitch, really. Mountaineer's Old Snowshoe was among my favorites, and The River's Peachicot Blond smelled heavenly. I had a wonderful time hanging with Kelly Sauber of Dancing Tree, formerly of Marietta Brewing, who evangelized about the mighty and miraculous Paw Paw. My dear friend Renee cooked up a delectable curry soup for us. The Georges, the Joes, Camerooooon, Gina, the Space Cowboy, the Bluestone Wildcats, the sweet Virginia boys, Bad Fairy Gina, Andrew, Berdawn and Jim, Rory, the cast of delightful characters is much longer than this, and I love every one of them. Our kids enjoyed the annual reunion they've been having since they were 4 years old, which warms us as we imagine them continuing our tradition decades from now. Big George was there, this year in a scooter, we're all getting older. Thankfully. That's what happens if you're lucky, ya get old in the company of loving friends.
I didn't get to play much music around the campfire this year. There were numerous exuberant guitar bangers who were having such a fantastic time playing, reckless in their abandon, there was no room for fingerpicked vocal pop subtlety. No problema, I will get to play along with my sweet and wonderful St Marys pals soon enough at Pipestem, where we will regale each other with song after song, plenty of opportunity to fingerpicking there. I am looking forward a long string of Beatles and Neil Young and 70's pop chestnuts. And a pan of pot brownies.
This election season has been the most wicked in my memory. Will it just keep getting worse? Streams of ads of just absolute bullshit paid for by the Chamber and a bunch of teabagging assholes. And every office has 2 lousy republicans running, one pretending to be a democrat. Let's see, anti-choice, pro-gun, anti-tax, anti-labor, how can you call yourself a democrat? I'm voting for Jesse Johnson for Senate, damnit. I will not be Nadered again, I'm going to vote my conscious no matter how close it is between Raese and Manchin. Those two are just not that different, and I'm sick of voting the lesser evil. Has every generation had a moment where they all thought we are witnessing the fall of Rome all over again? All this greed and consumerism and waste and unkindness and environmental degradation, some days it's hard to stay distracted from the horrors I fear await my kids and grandkids. If it weren't for the glowing beauty of the fall leaves on this cold sunny day it might just absolutely suck.
We pulled off a great success with our screening of the film Gasland on Tuesday at the law school. Over 200 people came! We had Josh on the big screen via Skype doing Q&A! He was fantastic and still very engaged and passionate about the issues of environmental protection and evil DICK Cheney's frack technology. This ain't no joke, people, I know I just demonstrated in the previous paragraph that I'm all doom and gloom about the future, but seriously, the fact that hydrofracking has been expressly exempted from the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Superfund law (CERCLA), and others should scare the living crap out of us all. And it's not the miracle clean fuel that will break our dependence on oil from those mean old Arabs, as that flagwaving nutbag T. Boone Pickens is trying to brainwash you into believing. This fuel is FAR more dangerous to the environment to extract, these companies are not even fuckin american anyway (Chesapeake Energy, for example, is a Norwegian company), and if you thought BP polluted some water, wait till you see the creek by your house after your neighbor gets fracked. If you thought the San Bruno gas leak explosion and fire looked scary, wait till one of the high pressure gaslines that will soon crisscross your county blows up. And you don't even own your minerals, so it's not up to you when the big drill starts spinning. Please google the Halliburton loophole and fracking and gasland for more info, please be skeptical, please separate fact from fiction for yourself, please bust me if I'm wrong about any of this shit. Please let me be wrong.
Time to clean the kitchen, get ready for pickling peppers. Larry and I will hopefully can a shitload of pickled green and banana peppers, and our famous bread and butter jalapenos. Fortunately he got out and picked the remaining peppers from his garden yesterday in anticipation of the frost last night. Soon my kitchen will be smelling like vinegar and capsaicin, yum!
permalink posted by cat 7:42 AM
