I had a long talk with a festival promoter today. He really wants us on his bill, but, y'see, there's a basic problem here: he offers that we "make our money" off "exposure to a tourist audience" which is fine and cool but we ain't got nuthin' t' sell! -- after probably an hour trying to explain the anthropological imperative of the community dynamics of a grounded music divest of status strata and legality ornamentation, I'm not certain I was any closer. "ok, ok" he says, and we agree because its a charitable cause but in the next breath he asks if we'd like to play a dinner club.

What I should have said was "Only if they stop eating, paint their faces and dance a dervish around the burning buffet tables. But I didn't.  read more »

Mark Harris had this crazy idea. Mark went ahead and did it. This is the story so far as Day 37, just past Wiarton ...

I got the usual questions from the waitstaff:
"You're not from around here?"
"No, I'm from Vancouver."
"You didn't bike here, did you?"
"Yeah."
"Holy --"
[ Day 37: "It Was a Beautiful Day!" ]

Last weekend the press reports told of a young man our local long-weekend police gates arrested and subsequently probationed for carrying a chest-pocket amount of this fungi. I'm sleeping so much better now. Absolutely, we don't mind you kids swarming off on bleary-eyed havoc sprees or getting into piss-drunk mass-brawl public knife fights or even stress tensored adults wound tight like the coil of a rifle, them sort is just fine by our local mores and stuff we understand and expect, but dag-blast it, the last thing we need around here is folks like his sort:

"... more than 60 percent of subjects described the effects of psilocybin in ways that met criteria for a 'full mystical experience' as measured by established psychological scales. One third said the experience was the single most spiritually significant of their lifetimes; and more than two-thirds rated it among their five most meaningful and spiritually significant."
[ Spiritual Psilocybin ]  read more »

wait, there's more ...  read more »

So many years later, and y'know, the jury is still scratching their heads over the man who called himself Guinea Pig B and guided his transformation through a simple self-query, "If the fate of humanity depended on what I did, what would I do?"

Some still call him an expert midway barker and a master of self-promotion, they call him 'amateur', 'naive', 'dreamer', 'hoaxster' and 'charlatan' even, but there's one thing about the man Time called "America's Friendly Genius": For a nearly-blind man, he saw the world with incredible clarity, not only for what it was, but for what it could, for what could be done, starting now, and given only the small efforts of nearly-blind, nearly peniless, nearly alone and unknown personal failures such as himself.  read more »

From Friday evening, a short video of our wedding ceremony, from the starting procession to the offerings of a drink to the faeries, sweetgrass for the cardinal spirits, tea for the parents of the bride and the beautiful song from Mike and Valierie. Set in the idyllic gardens at Rural Roots under the clear blue arc of the solstice sky accompanied by the birdsongs and rustling breeze. Best wedding I ever went to ...

May is attended by Rieko Sudo (also in kimono), and Paul Stewart and Rhoadie by me, with Karen Holgate, Sue Montgomery and Maureen Schmidt as May's bridesmaids and Nolan, Kaelin and Riordain are our attendents, Donna Andrew is our officiant, and with Mother Nature Dee Ashman holding it all together with her own very special magic.  read more »

Waitin' for the Weddin' flickr'd by TeledyN

Sun is shining, the birds are singing, the boys are down in the studio jammin', Carmen and Billy are out in the cookhouse kickin' up grub, and Paul an' me, we're a-sittin' out on the veranda, just waitin'.

Gonna be a weddin' soon.

Sent today, although it is reminiscent of casting bodily effluents windward, but if we don't try, nothing could happen. And yes, I did respond to that completely ignored Call for Comment before the bill too, but I'll trust Larry to at least make sure this one gets read. Can't promise the same for the other 10 million they'll receive ...

As a constituent who has been following recent developments in Canadian copyright law, I'm concerned that the Copyright bill presented by the government on June 12th goes too far in outlawing the lawful use of copyrighted material, and does not take into account the needs of consumers and of Canada's creative community who are positively exploiting the potential of digital technology. I'm disappointed that this bill adopts an American approach to digital copyright laws, instead of crafting a Canadian approach.

[ Tell MPs What's Wrong with the Prentice Bill ]

You can click through there to fill out your own template letter to be emailed to your MP; I highly recommend you customize your letter just so we don't bore the secretaries to tears. The full text of my letter follows:  read more »