Jazz Cream
It's hard to believe it, but in some Internet cache, my old band, The Jazz Cream Assassins, still lives! In fact, we're still on YouTube, blogger, and myspace. Check out this video I found, and yes, that's me on guitar...
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Heart's Ease or Love-in-idleness
After breakfast, as I walked back to the hotel, a speck of color caught mine eye. It was flotsam in a green sea. There at lawn's edge, stood a flower proudly sunning itself, haughty though small, in the humid, salty air that blows through Newport News. Flowers stun me, halt me in my tracks, and draw me close, especially the violets. I've spent hours combing hillsides for the delicate beauties. I prize their faint scent, turn it into mead of the most delicious purple hue. Deep in a cold Ohio winter, a bottle of the bubbly brew recalls the warm sunshine of spring. This member of the violet family, Viola Tricolor, is a European native that is commonly planted as an ornamental here on the Continent. Sometimes it escapes cultivation, setting a tiny seed or two adrift on the wind to land underfoot, or perhaps to find a desert island, inhabited only by the native grasses, on which to start anew. It goes by many common names, including Heart's Ease and Love-in-idleness. Sh
The easy way to pick mulberries...
Mulberries are a special treat to me. I remember summers spent cutting my father's lawn. As I passed by his mulberry trees, I would stop and pick an handful of the purple berries. Those were the summers when all I could think about were the trees. I studied them every night, pouring over Peterson Field Guides, cross referencing and teasing out new information. There are two species in America (Red and White Mulberry). The fruits are nutritious when ripe, but hallucinagenic and poisonous when green. The young shoots are a pot vegtable. A few large trees grow by my appartment, boardering a water culvert that fills in the rain. Susan and I took out a large tarp today, spread it under the branches, then shook the tree vigorously. In fact, I climbed up 20 feet to shake the branches even harder. The berries landed on the tarp along with lots of midden (pieces of branches, leaves, etc.). We gathered up the berries into a large bowl, then took them inside and dumped them into a sink f